Working conditions of Indian women
Cavery Bopaiah
|
Explores many issues relating to women and work using the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data
|
Why are women and children among the world’s poorest? Jayati Ghosh, well known for her research and writings on social and economic issues, explores many aspects of female work and wages using the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data. This work is informed by her profound knowledge of the Indian condition.
Disparity
Ghosh explains how globalisation can depress wages in a country such as ours, when governments compete for international investments based on lower wages in the host country. The differential treatment meted out to roving international capital can reduce wages and benefits, and seriously impinge on workers’ rights. Outsourcing, subcontracting and changes in management attitudes mean that corporates are no longer rooted in communities or feel any obligation to them. Besides, business schools have been teaching that fealty is owed to the shareholder, not the worker. Among these neglected workers, women with their differential access to endowments (education, exposure, inheritance, and so on) are more susceptible to the demands of mobile capital in a weakly regulated labour market. The data indicate that between 2000 and 2005, female wages, as a per cent of male wages. have actually dropped — whether in urban or rural areas, regular or casual employment — in a regime of falling buying power.
Ghosh connects an increasing need for unpaid household women’s labour to government policies that may appear gender neutral. For example, budget balancing policies often prioritise cuts in social expenditures. Reduced funding for healthcare increases the care-giving burden on women and a lack of access to fuel or drinking water implies that women have to spend more time to get these. Even in agriculture, which is increasingly at a disadvantage vis-À-vis the non-agricultural sector, women’s wage rates are significantly lower than men’s for the same work. In family-based agriculture women’s time spent, say, on preparation of seeds or saplings in the house often goes unrecognised. One cannot help but worry about how contract farming, which could become more prevalent over time, would affect employment and incomes in our largely bedraggled rural economy.
Exploitation
If profit-seeking corporates are exploitative of women’s vulnerabilities, is the government any better? Ghosh cites three sectors — pre-school care, education, and healthcare — to show how our government was requiring women to work long hours and shoulder huge responsibilities to earn about Rs.1,000 a month in most cases. An anganwadi worker’s job description requires her to look after pre-school education and take care of some basic health checks of children. Similarly for nursing and pregnant mothers, she needs to provide information on health and nutrition. In some cases anganwadi workers also manage self-help groups. As Ghosh puts it, “These anganwadi workers currently are among the many unsung heroines of India.”
Worse off still are the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), who form a critical link between the community and the government health system. Their job requirements are endless but they are meant to be only ‘honorary volunteers’. Women agree to these conditions perhaps because these are the only opportunities available to them to earn, learn and be useful.
In case after case we see that women have low income expectations. According to an NSSO study, women own 39 per cent of the unorganised manufacturing enterprises having working owners. These women are willing to accept returns of less than Rs.1000 a month as “remunerative”. In the case of home-based workers exploitation is possible because of their inability to move too far from their homes.
Migrants’ rights
Some problems relate equally to both sexes. It is obvious that governments need to do more to protect the rights of migrants, whether of the international or internal category. With international migration, the government seems to wake up to taking action only after an atrocity occurs. These ad hoc and piecemeal measures to protect workers rights seem less helpful than precautions taken by some governments to protect their capital investments in foreign countries.
Perceptively, Ghosh reminds us that if our economy does not create more jobs we will be wasting our ‘demographic dividend,’ or the advantage of having a large youthful population. I admit that I am discomfited by the sight of our young men and women who are forced to accept jobs as security personnel and domestic help in the “service sector” of our economy. Is that the best use we can make of our precious human capital?
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Book Review
