When Rural Jobs Disappear, Women Are The First To Lose Out
5 years, 8 months ago

When Rural Jobs Disappear, Women Are The First To Lose Out

The Quint  

“Before you would see groups of waiting workers divided by skill, language and of course gender too; but now in the past two years and especially post-demonetisation a new division has emerged amongst the women,” she said. Operating with the upper hand as demand for jobs has decreased, employers have been asserting their bargaining power to divide the women on the basis of sexual attraction, with “the younger and slightly less-malnourished” separated from older women, said Dewan. A reduction in the number of rural jobs is also translating into a decrease in the quality of work that remains, creating a “highly mobile and fragmented” workforce, the report said. While such work may pay more than agricultural labour, it still comes “no way close to providing a decent regular wage”.

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History of this topic

69% growth in rural female employment during 2018-23, says government report
1 month ago

69% growth in rural female employment during 2018-23, says government report

New Indian Express  

India has witnessed significant growth in its Female Labour Force Participation Rate, particularly in rural areas, from 2017–18 to 2022–23, according to the government. In the executive summary of the paper, the authors state: "Our paper measures the final outcome of these initiatives as a cumulative growth in female LFPR across India, with a particular focus on rural areas. According …

Women’s participation in labour force surged from FY18 to FY23: PM’s economic advisory council
1 month ago

Women’s participation in labour force surged from FY18 to FY23: PM’s economic advisory council

Live Mint  

New Delhi: India's female labour force participation rate rose significantly from 2017-18 to 2022-23, especially in rural areas, according to a new working paper by the economic advisory council to the prime minister. The paper, which analysed data from the government’s Periodic Labour Force Surveys, said India's overall rural female LFPR surged from 24.6% to 41.5%, while urban female LFPR …

Why the increase in farm worker population is a worry
1 month ago

Why the increase in farm worker population is a worry

Live Mint  

Between 2017-18 and 2023-24, the number of Indians working in agriculture rose by 68 million. In India, while farms’ share in gross domestic product declined steadily over decades, the pace of decline in the share of agricultural workers in the workforce was slower. Women in the fields While the estimated number of men employed in agriculture rose by just 1.4 …

India Rural Colloquy 2024 Highlights Alarming Regression in Gender Gap Closure
5 months ago

India Rural Colloquy 2024 Highlights Alarming Regression in Gender Gap Closure

The Quint  

The session underscored the urgent need for actionable solutions to bridge the gender gap and foster greater inclusion of women in the rural workforce. As India continues to grapple with these challenges, the insights and discussions from the India Rural Colloquy 2024 serve as a crucial blueprint for policymakers, activists, and communities committed to realizing the full potential of rural …

Lifting the burden keeping Indian women from work
8 months, 1 week ago

Lifting the burden keeping Indian women from work

New Indian Express  

Women’s work participation across the world has been low and its recovery from the post-pandemic period has been slow. The International Labour Organization’s World Employment and Social Outlook Report for 2023 reflects on this persistent gender gap and pegs women’s participation in the labour market at 47.4 percent, as compared to men’s at 72.3 percent. Apart from the ILO's highlight …

Falling percentages, failing work conditions: A deeper look into women’s employment in India
8 months, 3 weeks ago

Falling percentages, failing work conditions: A deeper look into women’s employment in India

The Hindu  

It’s no secret that the number of women in the labour market is significantly lesser than that of men, but did you know that in India, when it comes to rural women in labour force, the number is not just low, but has been almost steadily declining over the years? And for rural women, it’s been steadily declining over time,” …

Turning the spotlight on the urban poor
9 months, 1 week ago

Turning the spotlight on the urban poor

The Hindu  

The India Employment Report 2024 by the Institute for Human Development and International Labour Organization poses questions on the trickle-down effect of benefits to the working class in the backdrop of a 5.4% average real economic growth, from 2015-16 to 2022-23. Hence, an analysis of income and employment trends of slum dwellers would reveal the prospects of economic mobility and …

Employment scenario in India grim, says ILO report
9 months, 2 weeks ago

Employment scenario in India grim, says ILO report

The Hindu  

India’s youth account for almost 83% of the unemployed workforce and the share of youngsters with secondary or higher education in the total unemployed youth has almost doubled from 35.2% in 2000 to 65.7% in 2022, as per the India Employment Report 2024 released by the International Labour Organisation and the Institute of Human Development here on Tuesday. Paradoxical improvements …

Despite Significant Jump in Female Literacy Rate, Participation of Women with Advanced Degrees in Workforce Low
10 months ago

Despite Significant Jump in Female Literacy Rate, Participation of Women with Advanced Degrees in Workforce Low

News 18  

The celebration of International Women’s Day marks the achievement of women’s empowerment, although, despite the significant increase in the female literacy rate, the number of working women with higher advanced degrees in the country has not gone up much. However, the National Sample Survey Office reports that only 2.9 per cent of the total employed people aged 25 years and …

Fall and rise in women’s work participation
10 months, 1 week ago

Fall and rise in women’s work participation

The Hindu  

Arguably, the debate around trends in Indian women’s employment is only outclassed by a similar one regarding trends in poverty. The broad contours of the debate, mainly relying on data from the National Sample Surveys and Periodic Labour Force Surveys, are the following: the work participation rate for women ages 15 and above fluctuated around 42% between 1993-94 and 2004-05, …

Budget 2024: Where are the ‘good jobs’? Wages aren’t working for women
11 months, 1 week ago

Budget 2024: Where are the ‘good jobs’? Wages aren’t working for women

Live Mint  

The budget that Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented in Parliament is just an interim one, but in an election year, even an interim budget is consequential as a signal of priorities. The latest round of the Reserve Bank of India’s Consumer Confidence Survey suggests that a vast majority of those earning an average monthly income of less than INR 25,000 …

Women are losing out to men in India’s jobless growth
1 year, 1 month ago

Women are losing out to men in India’s jobless growth

Live Mint  

The share of women in regular salaried jobs in urban India dropped from 54% in the first quarter to 52.8% in the second quarter, according to quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey data, Business Standard reported. Since salaried workers receive regular wages, that type of work is preferred to casual work or self-employment, which also includes working as unpaid household help …

The big threat to India’s demographic dividend
1 year, 1 month ago

The big threat to India’s demographic dividend

Live Mint  

Bengaluru: In a short press release, dated 13 October, the Ministry of Women and Child Development announced that the Female Labour Force Participation Rate for 2022-23 had improved significantly over the previous year by 4.2 percentage points to 37%. Non-obvious insights View Full Image One of the most under-reported trends is that agriculture, which is the least productive undertaking, is …

DC Edit | Women's employment a steep challenge
1 year, 4 months ago

DC Edit | Women's employment a steep challenge

Deccan Chronicle  

India is the most populous nation on earth and more than half of its people, 52 per cent to be precise, are aged below 30. Given that India’s sex ratio is almost evenly poised, about 35 crore women, a number almost equal to the whole population of the United States, belong to this group. Pit this against the current data …

As India’s population soars above all other nations, fewer women have jobs
1 year, 9 months ago

As India’s population soars above all other nations, fewer women have jobs

LA Times  

Sheela Singh cried the day she handed in her resignation. The women’s employment rate peaked at 35% in 2004 and fell to about 25% in 2022, according to calculations based on official data, said Rosa Abraham, an economist at Azim Premji University. A national jobs crisis is one reason for the gap, experts say, but entrenched cultural beliefs that see …

As India’s population soars above all, fewer women have jobs
1 year, 9 months ago

As India’s population soars above all, fewer women have jobs

Associated Press  

MUMBAI, India — Sheela Singh cried the day she handed in her resignation. It’s not only a problem for women like Singh, but a growing challenge for India’s own economic ambitions if its estimated 670 million women are left behind as its population expands. ___ The women’s employment rate peaked at 35% in 2004 and fell to around 25% in …

Analysis | As India's population booms, where are its working women?
1 year, 9 months ago

Analysis | As India's population booms, where are its working women?

The Hindu  

Pinky Negi, an Indian teacher with two master's degrees, loved her old job at a public school in the Himalayan foothills. Less than a third of Indian women are working or actively seeking work, data shows, despite progress such as better educational attainment, improved health, falling fertility rates and more women-friendly labour policies. Policy changes that could rectify these problems …

Women’s work is not valued properly: Indian development economist Jayati Ghosh
1 year, 10 months ago

Women’s work is not valued properly: Indian development economist Jayati Ghosh

The Hindu  

In her 2022 book, The Making of a Catastrophe, on the disastrous economic fallout of COVID-19, Indian development economist Jayati Ghosh writes that job losses and food insecurity were significantly higher for women. India is among one of the few countries that did not even achieve the MDGs for maternal health, and since then the pandemic has dramatically worsened the …

Why women get fewer jobs and earn lesser wages than men in India
1 year, 10 months ago

Why women get fewer jobs and earn lesser wages than men in India

The Hindu  

Published : Feb 27, 2023 12:39 IST Following the announcement by the Board of Control for Cricket in India in October last year of equal pay for all men and women Team India cricketers, the highest bid received by a cricketer in the inaugural Women’s Premier League is being celebrated as a watershed moment, not just in India but globally. …

At 56.62%, Participation of Women in Formal Work Under NREGS Highest in a Decade: Govt to Lok Sabha
1 year, 11 months ago

At 56.62%, Participation of Women in Formal Work Under NREGS Highest in a Decade: Govt to Lok Sabha

News 18  

The financial year of 2022-23 saw the highest rate of participation in a decade — 56.62% — by women in the formal workforce in rural areas under the Centre’s flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Data also shows that in 2022-23, in states such as Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, the number of women in the …

Women break new ground in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
2 years ago

Women break new ground in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme

The Hindu  

The proportion of women workers participating in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has touched a ten-year high in the ongoing financial year. According to the latest statistics available with the Union Ministry of Rural Development, 57.8% of the workers who used the scheme this year were women, their highest level of participation since 2012-13. “Additionally, the State …

Why India can’t afford women staying out of labour market
2 years, 1 month ago

Why India can’t afford women staying out of labour market

Live Mint  

Separately, Oxfam India’s India Discrimination Report 2022 revealed that wages are lower for women overwhelmingly because of discriminatory practices and only slightly due to lack of education and work experience. Besides, a significant number of qualified women were found unwilling to join the labour market due to ‘family responsibilities’, said the report. A recent Bloomberg Economics analysis estimated that though …

Women fail to get due recognition as farmers
2 years, 4 months ago

Women fail to get due recognition as farmers

Deccan Chronicle  

Adilabad: When the founding fathers of the Indian republic sat down to write the Constitution, the feature that they gave utmost importance was equality. There is a strong notion among the people that men take up “hard work” that women can’t perform and therefore women’s work is quite easy. Despite the work that women undertake require unique skills, women won’t …

How Crimes Against Women Deter Female Workforce From Stepping Out For Work
2 years, 4 months ago

How Crimes Against Women Deter Female Workforce From Stepping Out For Work

News 18  

Recently, PM Narendra Modi exhorted the importance of having a flexible, work-from-home ecosystem that would immensely boost women’s participation in India’s labor force. This, is despite recent data from the National Crime Records Bureau, reporting a steady decline in India’s total crime rate, which fell by 7.6% to 61 lakhs last year. This means that the crime rate per lakh …

WFH: Can it add more Indian women to the workforce?
2 years, 4 months ago

WFH: Can it add more Indian women to the workforce?

Business Standard  

One of the five pledges that Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed Indians to adopt during his Independence Day speech was equality, specifically equality for women. Modi’s remarks assume significance as India has one of the world’s lowest female labour force participation rate, or LFPR. Having said that, the International Labour Organization, or ILO found that a significant proportion of women …

Why India's Laxmi Deserves More Shakti Through Equal Skill Training and Job Opportunities
2 years, 4 months ago

Why India's Laxmi Deserves More Shakti Through Equal Skill Training and Job Opportunities

News 18  

A recent report by consulting group McKinsey Global has highlighted the immense economic potential India is failing to realise, all because women face work-related hindrances. As per the Time Use Survey Report 2019, women in India spend only 61 minutes per day on employment and related activities, as opposed to 247 minutes spent on unpaid domestic services. According to 2019-2020 …

What explains the rise in women’s workforce participation during Covid-19?
2 years, 6 months ago

What explains the rise in women’s workforce participation during Covid-19?

Hindustan Times  

Throughout the last two years, high frequency, monthly data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy has shown that women bore a disproportionate impact of the pandemic, losing a larger share of jobs, not only as an immediate aftermath of the national lockdown in April 2020, but successively, after each wave. And second, this increase was entirely driven by the …

Women@Work: 20 Million Indian Women Quit Work in 5 Years – It is the Greatest Resignation Ever
2 years, 8 months ago

Women@Work: 20 Million Indian Women Quit Work in 5 Years – It is the Greatest Resignation Ever

News 18  

Fascinating data came in from the fifth National Family Health Survey across more than 6.37 lakh households. Twenty million women just quit in the last five years, this is the ‘greatest resignation’ and sadly it doesn’t stem from an exalted search for work-life balance or purpose. Surely, the working conditions or cultural factors and even the extent of domestic unpaid …

May the Female Force Be With You: India Must Harness the Strength of Women in the Workforce
2 years, 8 months ago

May the Female Force Be With You: India Must Harness the Strength of Women in the Workforce

News 18  

Michelle Obama’s famous remarks that “No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens” deserves more attention than ever as we celebrate this International Labour Day. As a result of its strict adherence to social norms and patriarchal values, Indian society disproportionately places the …

How to ensure more women in the workforce
2 years, 8 months ago

How to ensure more women in the workforce

Hindustan Times  

India aims to become a $5-trillion economy by 2025. We focus on the fact that while the male labour force participation rates in the two countries are fairly similar, their female labour force participation rates are vastly different. The bulk of the research on female participation in the labour force has been on supply-side constraints: Family income and employment, marital …

'Factually incorrect': Centre rubbishes reports of Indians losing hope for work
2 years, 8 months ago

'Factually incorrect': Centre rubbishes reports of Indians losing hope for work

India TV News  

Highlights Labour force and workforce in the country increased during 2017-18 to 2019-20, govt said There has been an increase in the female labour force, the govt further said Employment is the primary concern of the Government of India, it said Ministry of Labour and Employment on Tuesday said that reports stating half of the working-age population has lost hope …

With no jobs, millions of Indians are exiting the labour force
2 years, 8 months ago

With no jobs, millions of Indians are exiting the labour force

Al Jazeera  

Frustrated with the lack of good jobs, more than half of the 900 million Indians of working age no longer want one. Now, more than half of the 900 million Indians of legal working age — roughly the population of the U.S. and Russia combined — don’t want a job, according to the CMIE. “The large share of discouraged workers …

Women@Work: Working Women Up Globally but Down in India. Is There a Way Out?
2 years, 10 months ago

Women@Work: Working Women Up Globally but Down in India. Is There a Way Out?

News 18  

My daughter who is in Grade 1 was in her Hindi online class and while doing the akshar श्र they were asked to draw a श्रमिक, without hesitation she drew me. If you look at data from the 1990s till date, across most countries, women’s participation in the labour force has increased. Our rate is significantly lower than Sri Lanka …

Shikha Mukerjee | India’s women must move on from hijabs, kitchens…
2 years, 10 months ago

Shikha Mukerjee | India’s women must move on from hijabs, kitchens…

Deccan Chronicle  

The time has come to talk of many things, beyond dress codes, obedience and protection as the price that women must pay to be safe, beyond roles and responsibilities, to the idea of equality, justice, freedom for women. Women’s participation as workers has declined, though more and more girls complete school education and enter colleges and professional programmes. Fewer women …

Agriculture is booming, but is the sector embracing of women and Indigenous people?
3 years, 1 month ago

Agriculture is booming, but is the sector embracing of women and Indigenous people?

ABC  

National Agriculture Day celebrates what the sector describes as its "fabulous and fulfilling" career opportunities, from mustering cattle in the Top End to developing the next breakthrough wheat variety. Key points: November 19 is National Agriculture Day There is a jobs boom in the sector, but women and Indigenous people still face barriers to work Sector leaders say sexism still …

Job loss in women-centric sectors, family care & more: Why young female workers were worst hit by Covid
3 years, 2 months ago

Job loss in women-centric sectors, family care & more: Why young female workers were worst hit by Covid

India Today  

Commercial activities might be limping back to normalcy but the scars of Covid on the Indian economy will take time to heal. While the overall employment-to-population ratio fell 1.6 per cent between January and March 2020, it fell 5.6 per cent for younger women, showed the latest report by the International Labour Organization. Women were disproportionately affected, accounting for 38.9 …

Coronavirus likely to lock India’s women out of job market for years
3 years, 5 months ago

Coronavirus likely to lock India’s women out of job market for years

Live Mint  

New Delhi: Savitri Devi has been searching for work since she lost her job at a garment factory in New Delhi, along with half her co-workers, when sales plummeted at the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year. "Whatever social and economic gains Indian women had made in the last decade, it has been largely wiped out during the COVID …

Trafficked, exploited, starved: The story of the pandemic and sex workers
3 years, 7 months ago

Trafficked, exploited, starved: The story of the pandemic and sex workers

Hindustan Times  

A 55-second video captures the ordeal a 19-year-old, trafficked from Jharkhand to Bihar seven years ago, had to endure. In March this year, just when the deadly second wave gripped the country, he sought the police’s help in Surat, from where 14 girls, mostly from West Bengal, were rescued in a single swoop. Many of the older sex workers have …

Why India needs a gender-positive recovery
3 years, 8 months ago

Why India needs a gender-positive recovery

India Today  

Gurgaon-based artist Akanksha Sarkar, 41, has given up taking on freelance projects. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021 estimates that the time it will take to close the global gender gap—in health, education, politics and economics—has increased from 99.5 years to 135.6 years. Home to 650 million women, India has slipped 28 places in the WEF’s Global …

85% of women in India missed out on raise, promotion because of their gender: LinkedIn study
3 years, 10 months ago

85% of women in India missed out on raise, promotion because of their gender: LinkedIn study

India Today  

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, has launched the Opportunity Index 2021 report which has found that around 85% of women in India have missed out on raises and promotions because of their gender. This year’s report dives deep to understand how women perceive opportunities, and how the gender gap is further slowing down career progress for working women in …

India’s women and the workforce
3 years, 10 months ago

India’s women and the workforce

Hindustan Times  

Why is women’s employment declining in India? The thrust of the predominant explanations is that women are dropping out of paid work or the labour force either because of fear of sexual violence outside the home; or fear of being stigmatised by the community that might see their work as a marker of low status, i.e. Women’s education has increased …

Gender Pay Parity: 37% Indian Working Women Get Paid Less Than Men, Suggests Report
3 years, 10 months ago

Gender Pay Parity: 37% Indian Working Women Get Paid Less Than Men, Suggests Report

ABP News  

New Delhi: Even as 66 percent of Indians believe that the condition of gender equality has improved compared to their parents' time, working women still face the strongest gender bias across Asia Pacific countries. In this alarming report, one in five working women in India stated that their companies exhibit a 'favourable bias' towards men when compared to the regional …

Only 7% of urban Indian women have paid jobs
3 years, 10 months ago

Only 7% of urban Indian women have paid jobs

The Economist  

Listen to this story. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a local research firm, put the share of urban women in or looking for work at just 7% in November. Their answers to questions like “Should men have more right to a job than women?” are more egalitarian than poll responses in Indonesia, where fully 53% of women pursue work …

The 'Women In Labour' Podcast: Journalist Namita Bhandare on why Indian women drop out of paid work
4 years, 9 months ago

The 'Women In Labour' Podcast: Journalist Namita Bhandare on why Indian women drop out of paid work

Firstpost  

In this episode of the Women In Labour podcast, we examine the big picture of what impacts women in the workforce, what’s changed, and why there’s a decline in the number of working Indian women. Since 2005, the percentage of Indian women in paid work has dropped from 35 percent to less than 24 percent come, but no one is …

Women's agricultural labour cause of malnutrition in rural India
5 years, 6 months ago

Women's agricultural labour cause of malnutrition in rural India

India TV News  

In order to improve women's lives and household nutrition and health outcomes in rural India, policies need to be context-specific, taking into consideration factors such as caste and location, says new research led by an Indian-origin scientist from University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Recognition of Indian women's roles in both agriculture and domestic work is key to improving …

It’s a great leap backward on the employment front in India’s rural areas
5 years, 11 months ago

It’s a great leap backward on the employment front in India’s rural areas

Live Mint  

Shiv Prasad has a plan—one that he feels can change his destiny. “The problem is that we, being part of the government, cannot acknowledge that demonetization seriously disrupted the flow of activity and massively contributed to employment-related problems.” A visit to a government-run industrial training institute in Banda, nestled inside a village named Motihari, is testimony to the utter lack …

CMIE data shows 11 mn jobs lost in 2018: Labour reforms need of the hour, but no political party is serious about it
6 years ago

CMIE data shows 11 mn jobs lost in 2018: Labour reforms need of the hour, but no political party is serious about it

Firstpost  

According to a report by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, job losses, and the number of unemployed people in the country have been steadily rising Almost 11 million people lost their jobs in the country in 2018. According to a report by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, job losses, and the number of unemployed people in the country …

Don’t Change the Women, Change the World
6 years, 2 months ago

Don’t Change the Women, Change the World

The Quint  

While the gender pay gap is a cause of concern in India, as elsewhere in the world, the stark lack of women in the workforce is nothing short of alarming. As per a 2018 World Bank report, India ranked a measly 120 among 131 nations in terms of female participation in the workforce. Indian women’s participation in the workforce is …

Gender pay gap at work: YouGov-Firstpost survey shows almost 50% of women feel salary doesn't reflect their work
6 years, 2 months ago

Gender pay gap at work: YouGov-Firstpost survey shows almost 50% of women feel salary doesn't reflect their work

Firstpost  

The pay gap between men and women is a topic that resonates with workers across fields: Whether in the film industry, the biggest multinational and transnational corporations, the media or even the world of startups The pay gap between men and women is a topic that resonates with workers across fields: Whether in the film industry, the biggest multinational and …

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