Downward spiral of FLFP rate - Women and their Unpaid Work amidst Power Dynamics of a Patriarchal Society

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Feminisation of unemployment, widespread informalisation of female labour force coupled with abysmally low wages and ever expanding gender wage gaps has become the reality of today.

Unlike the global trend, India has witnessed a secular decline in women’s employment rates over the past few decades. Even though we have progressed as the 5^th largest economy in the world, the economic prosperity seems to be skewed against women which form over 48% of our population.

According to World Bank statistics, there is significant divergence in terms of labor force participation across males & females with FLFP comprising only 20.3% while men constituted for 76%.

This has been accompanied by a faster rate of rural women withdrawing from their jobs.

In an attempt to understand the falling FLFPRs, we have analyzed the role played by female literacy, education & household wealth and allocation by leveraging the findings of the latest National Family Health Survey(NFHS) followed by an analysis of the psychological aspect linked to the same.

Rising Literacy & Education levels accompanied by low FLFPR – why the paradox?

Literacy holds relevance in understanding the increase in unemployment rate as recorded in the NHFS data which highlights that 23% of women and 11% of men have no schooling, additionally 84% of men and 72% of women are literate. As observed from subsequent rounds of NFHS, there has been an increased percentage of sampled respondents completing higher levels of education coupled with a decreasing gap between women and men from 2015-16 onwards.

Apriori one can expect a positive correlation between higher levels of literacy and female labour force participation owing to educational achievements as an effective job market signaling tool, greater freedom to exercise choice, enhanced levels of awareness in terms of individual rights and greater agency over finances, assets and other resources. Then what explains the current observed paradox?

A research by Afridi et al (2016) empirically concluded that increasing education levels amongst rural married women and the men in their households are the most prominent attributes contributing to the decline in FLFPRs. They also provide suggestive evidence that there is a rise in more educated women’s returns to home production, relative to their returns in the labor market which translates to low FLFPR and thus results in a paradoxical situation of high literacy accompanied by low FLFPRs in India.

It has also been observed that there is a significant gap in the skills required for higher official positions and those possessed by women which might explain why unemployment still persists despite rising literacy.

This trend can also be attributed to the very dominant patriarchal society which leads to gender discrimination and crime against women, hence making workplaces unsafe for females. This acts as a disincentivisaiton mechanism forcing well informed, educated women to sometimes opt out of labor force due to wage gaps and safety threats.

Most importantly, work performed by women largely constitutes unpaid work which is unaccounted for in FLFPR calculations. The unpaid work in context refers to the daily chores of keeping the household intact and the caregiving aspect of it.

As per reports, women put in around 532 minutes of domestic work each day while men account for only 51.8. These numbers are concerning as 49% of women in India do not have work to be accounted for in GDP calculations as a result of the unpaid work not being considered.

The psychological aspects behind the decline

Second Shift in an employed female’s work schedule

The second shift primarily point towards working outside of the home and then doing household duties, this can mainly be attributed to the patriarchal structure of our society. This prevails throughout the different social classes and the different designations are irrelevant to the opposed societal standards. Considering women in Indian households are more accountable for household duties, they find it difficult to partake in mutual that inhibits them from taking time off to tend to do other domestic duties.

The motherhood penalty is also a considerable reason for the increase in unemployment rate as there is a disparity in pay, benefits and maternity leave. The Intersectionality of women from the diverse backgrounds in unskilled and skilled labor which can be directly correlated with the dipartites presented within the workplace. This can also be deleterious towards non-working mothers as they have to worry about future employment opportunities’ which in the end forces them out of the workplace permanently.

The ever widening wage gap

The PLFS Statistics state that the rate of which men are paid 1.7 times more than women. This wage gap has witnessed a secular jump since 1983 as illustrated through the graph below. This wage gap can be one probable disincentive driving women out of labor force due to abysmally low wages in comparison to male counterparts.

Inspecting the wage gap from a sectoral viewpoint, it is observed that this gap is more pronounced in the rural areas vis a vis the urban ones as the rural-urban division is altered by the migration of labor from unskilled agricultural industries to greater productivity sectors like industry and manufacturing.

Table 1

 Source:  Estimate using NSSO 68^th Round data

Moreover, the wage gap difference is not just restricted to sectors but is also seen across different levels of educational qualifications. As illustrated in Table 2, the Indian workforce is characterized by an adverse wage disparity for women regardless of the socio-economic parameters adopted with a sharp spike in the “Primary to Higher Secondary Category”.

Source:  Estimate using NSSO 68^th Round data

The problem of working long hours and traveling to work place

Safety concerns, increasing crime against women, caregiving as a demanding side hustle is often taken as invisible constraints limiting the choice set made available to women in terms of finding appropriate employment. For example, given the implicit safety concerns, women have to leave work early and thereby are unable to put out the same output as men, which decreases overall productivity and morale of the organization. For traveling jobs as well, there is presence of a glass ceiling limiting a woman’s flight professionally.

Occupational segregation

It is vital to talk about the facet of gender disparity due to the variance in benefits, pay and work conditions between two genders or their personal characteristics in order to understand the decrease in rate of unemployment among women.

Some of the reasons for occupational Segregation can be attributed to Individual preferences, Educational & Work disparities.

1. Individual Preferences

There are instances where women opt out of higher paying positions to prioritize spending time with their families. Sometimes women also do not pursue further career opportunities’ due to the Gender hierarchy and find it comfortable to stay at home to take of children and other family members.

2. Educational & Work Disparities

According to the 2011 Census of India, 82% of men can read and write where only 65% girls can do so. This creates an Imbalance in the opportunities’ that can be pursued in terms of career advancement. We can primarily attribute this phenomenon on local culture, poverty and the dominant patriarchal society present in rural India. Work disparities can be present in many ways in a workplace in the form of lack of work incentives, forcing them into lower paying jobs because of their gender and racial ethnicity.

Conclusions

As India progresses towards a more equitable society, we need to acknowledge how far we’ve come since Independence and need to recognize how far we need to go to be more accommodating to the opposite sex. As our honorable PM Narendra Modi has highlighted in his 76^th Independence Speech about respecting and treating women with the utmost dignity and it is only then we can progress as a nation. Finding ways to account for the unpaid labor women do is a very significant part on the way we look at the work they do. There should be more efficient checks and balances for the implementation and the formation of economic reforms introduced to help women in their employment opportunities.

Written by-

Saniya Salunke : Saniya Salunke is an Economics & Finance enthusiast. She is a student at ISBF UoL and also the Secretary of the Student Council.

Roshil Kevin Jayakumar : Roshil Kevin is an Accounting/finance student at SIBF UoL. He is the founder of DoDonate and a finance enthusiast.

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