Even with declining gender ratio, the female population in urban India is very high in absolute numbers. One of the major components of the renaissance in the colonial period was the exposure of the women to modern education and...
moreEven with declining gender ratio, the female population in urban India is very high in absolute numbers. One of the major components of the renaissance in the colonial period was the exposure of the women to modern education and consequently opening scopes of employment in the tertiary sector. And we saw teachers in various levels, doctors, scientists, even engineers and pilots from the fair sex coming out in the first part of the twentieth century. The entertainment sector also attracted educated women. Other than that, women were engaged heavily in manufacturing, mining and plantation sectors and of course, they were uneducated, unskilled and mostly used as manual labour. At the lower rung, there was scope for domestic work at the personalised and institutional level.
After more than six decades after Independence, the picture is not at all bright. The work participation rate among the urban women is abysmally low at the national level, though there are regional variations. The literacy rate among women has increased significantly, there are ample evidences that more and more women are entering the portals of higher learning and often we hear success stories of individuals. But, given the national average, they are exceptions. The increase in work participation rate is exceptionally slow in recent decades and there is notable shrinkage in female workers in some sectors like mining and manufacturing. The only noticeable increase is in the tertiary sectors, unfortunately proportionately more in the lowest rung. In some pockets of the country, the household industries show tendency of rising employment. And there is also significant difference in proportion and nature of participation across the size class of urban areas. Since opening up of the economy in the early nineties, the scope of women employment has increased and there is significant mobility of educated women in search of jobs. But that is again not a universal phenomenon. There is hardly any feminisation of workforce which was hypothesized by the proponents of globalisation.
Global evidences show that increased earning capabilities are positively correlated with empowerment of women both in domestic and outside domestic world. The reservation of seats in local government institutions (both urban and rural) has brought a sizeable number of women coming out in the public sphere. However, there is hardly any reflection of this liberation in the workforce participation rate.
In this context, the paper will explore causes behind the low work participation rate of women in urban India. Apart from data sources like NSSO and Census, it will also take into account results from primary researches. The proposition that educated women are going for higher education and hence entering the workforce much latter has to be seen in the context of age-specific work participation rate. Also the differences across the city sizes have to be explored in terms of availability of opportunities in terms of both education and employment. The role of societal norms across religious and ethnic division will also be explored.
