Rather than make public spaces safer for everyone, it is easier for governments to try and keep women behind closed doors.
PHOTO: NAGARA GOPAL
Women and the workplace: The informal sector escapes the scrutiny of law.
WOMEN’S safety is their concern. Or so says the Karnataka government. It is this concern, apparently, that prompted the State government to amend the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act 1961. The amendment lays down fines of Rs. 1
0-20,000 or imprisonment not exceeding six months if any establishment that falls under this Act asks its women employees to work beyond 8 p.m.
What most people do not know is that the Act bans all night work by women but has dozens of exemptions including the IT and biotechnology sectors, the media, essential services such as hospitals, railways, airports etc. So the Act does not cover all women working at night, but only some, including those working in the hospitality and entertainment sectors and in retail.
News about the amendment being passed by both houses of the State legislature and receiving the assent of the Governor led to an uproar with the State women’s commission and other organisations pointing out that it violated rights granted women under the Constitution. As a result, the government has backtracked and announced that it will remove the amendment.
Out-dated provision
What needs to be withdrawn is not an amendment to the Act but the very provision in the Act that bans night shifts. The amendment has helped draw attention to an out-dated provision that continues in the Act despite the growing presence of women in sectors where night work is essential. If there are so many exemptions, why have the provision at all? This is the question that the women in Karnataka ought to ask.
For, the ostensible concern for women’s safety is based on a wrong premise. Whenever there is an attack on a woman worker, as happened when BPO worker Pratibha was raped and murdered in Bangalore, the immediate knee jerk reaction is to demand a ban on women working night shifts. Lock women up. Don’t let them out into the public space because it is unsafe for them.
Rather than trying to make public spaces safer for everyone, the easier route is to keep women behind closed doors. That is the thinking behind this kind of legislation. In any case, this law applies to only a minuscule proportion of women workers who are part of the formal sector. Millions of women work night and day as part of family labour or in the informal sector. There is no law that takes care of their needs. And they have no choice about when they work, how long they work, under what conditions they work.
The women who work nights do so because of economic necessity, not pleasure. In some industries, like the media, they know that they have little chance of getting ahead in their careers if they are not prepared to work anywhere and at any time. The very nature of the BPO industry requires night work. And in hospitals, working at nights is a given for nurses and doctors. In an ideal world, no one, man or woman, should have to work at night.
Also, besides the formal sector, what about the millions of self-employed women who run small shops in many parts of the country or sit in the night markets. These are poor women. Every paisa they earn is important — whether it is earned in the day or the night.
If the government is really concerned about women’s health, safety and welfare, it has to look beyond the dangers women face at night. More women are endangered by the carbon monoxide they breathe within their homes from inefficient chullahs near which they must sit for long hours as they cook for their families than from the dangers on the street. There are millions of women in India who suffer from complications during pregnancy because they continue to do heavy work, carry
water and fuel wood, and get insufficient nutrition even at an advanced stage of their pregnancy. One of the more shocking statistics in this country is the high maternal mortality rate.
Dangers within
And violence within the home endangers women as much as the prospect of attack outside. A recent study in Uttar Pradesh by the Johns Hopkins Institute of 2,199 pregnant women found that 18 per cent of them faced domestic violence during their pregnancy. The infant mortality rate for these women was 49.4 per 1,000 live births as compared to 24.3 per 1,000 live births in the women who had not been abused. “The conclusion we have to come to in our study”, said Dr. Michael Koenig from Johns Hopkins, “is that nearly one in five early child deaths could be potentially prevented if domestic violence could be eliminated.” This is where the real intervention has to take place.
So while the Karnataka legislation seems to have drawn a stronger reaction than it actually merits, it reminds us how easily governments resort to steps that ultimately penalise women instead of helping them. It also reminds us how often hard won concessions and benefits by women workers, such as maternity benefits, have been used to keep women out of the work place. It is this attitude towards women and work that has to change.
