Talk Excerpt: How women’s full participation gets systematically eliminated

I recently delivered a talk on why it makes economic sense to have women fully participate in the labour force. But the time I was preparing for the talk coincided with the huge, unmissable #MeToo campaign on social media. At this point, I decided to focus more on how women get eliminated from the system as such, because that still requires so much emphasis, and less so on the effect on the economy. Here is one excerpt:

There are essentially three stages at which women and their participation get systematically eliminated from the system. In this case, I will consider the example of India, since that is a society and economy I know and have studied. However, some ideas discussed are applicable across countries of the world, including developed countries like the UK and the US.

The first stage of elimination is what I would like to refer to as the ‘Struggle for Survival’. Female foeticides and infanticides are hardly uncommon. India’s child sex ratio i.e. the number of girls per 1000 boys in the age group of 0-6 years of age stands at 914, a decline of 1.4% from the previous decade alone and a 7% decline from the 1951 census, which was the first post-independence census done on India. 

The reasons for this are rooted in patriarchal systems that result in son preference. A UN women report states: “Unequal inheritance rights, dowry, unequal socio-religious status, unpaid work, unequal pay, lack of economic opportunities for women, focus on male lineage, a culture of honor that places a greater burden of safety and protection on the parents of girls – all contribute to building a society that favors sons and men, and neglects daughters and women.” And if we look at the child sex ratios for some of the most male dominated societies in the country, such as those found in Punjab and Haryana, the argument is seen playing out. The two states have the lowest ranks in state wise child sex ratios of 846 and 834 respectively.

The second stage is the ‘Struggle for Existence’. This is the stage of equal access to education and health care. Again, considering the case of India, here are a few facts:

1. 8-10 million girls were outside of the school system in 2016 i.e. they were not receiving education either because they had dropped out or had never been to school.
2. A recent World Bank report has a startling statistic – 40% of women in the 18-22 age group were married off before the age of 18. In other words, when they should have been studying, they were already married.
3. 23% of Indian girls drop out of school when they reach puberty because of lack of access to hygienic toilets or menstrual products.

All these points are self-explanatory. A combination of low incomes and social constructs are holding women back from a very basic level of existence that can enable them to function independently. But there are many women, like me, who escape this struggle as well. 

But no one, and by that, I mean absolutely no woman escapes the third struggle, which is the ‘Struggle for Support Systems’. This stage largely includes culture, though infrastructure and development also play a role. It includes examples like ease of travel at all times during the day, family cultures that allow women to progress professionally, workspaces that consciously and sustainably promote and project women among others.

When talking about this third stage I would like to spend a couple of minutes talking about safety of travel. And this seems to be the case all the way from London to Mumbai. There are serious cases, where women get raped and injured on their way back from work. There are multiple such instances reported, for example, from Bangalore, which is India’s IT capital. Since the cities have a large number of BPO workers, who end up travelling at late hours after their shifts are done. Sometimes on account of this, untoward instances arise, despite many safety precautions by companies, because infrastructure and cultures have not caught up with economic advances.

And this is not just true of Bangalore. Gurgaon, which is the satellite city to Delhi, also has a number of BPOs. 15 years ago, the BPOs had come, but good roads, lighting and the hustle bustle of the city had not. Forget about women, it was probably not safe for even men to travel after dusk in those parts. 

Note that these are some of the biggest cities where these issues are being reported. We don’t know what is even happening in some of the smaller towns. What we do know, is that just on account of the single factor, at least some women might be deterred from stretching themselves at work when required, pass up on good jobs only because they require travelling late or give up on working all together!

When we come to the softer and more culture driven aspects, the question of women dropping out of the labour force comes up. As per an ILO study from 2013, India ranks at 121 out of 131 countries in terms of women’s participation in the workforce is concerned. FLFP rate for India was 27% against China’s 63.9%, and it was 56.3% in the U.S in 2013.

The dominant cultural aspect responsible for this is the fact that home and family care is still considered a woman’s responsibility. Girls still get conditioned towards getting married and setting up a home very early in life, while for men no such rigorous conditioning is present. Unsurprisingly, women’s careers often take a back seat at some point in time or the other in their career. When they start a family, the support systems weaken further as taking care of the baby becomes a primary responsibility. A number of Indian organisations have made progressive changes to allow women to remain in the workforce even after childbirth but this is mostly heard of only in large organisations, which are not the most substantial part of India’s employment. 

This, adds to the already inherent biases – whether conscious or not, that could work against women across workplaces. And this is borne out by the numbers on women on the boards of Indian companies – only 12.4% of board seats in Indian companies are occupied by women according to a recent Deloitte survey. According to a Credit Suisse study, there are only 16% women in leadership roles in India. Unfortunately, these depressing numbers have the potential to create a self-sustaining cycle for women getting under-represented. 

If there are few women in leadership, first, younger women have fewer role models. I can tell you from my own example, of working in corporate India, there were just not enough women at the top levels. And frankly, I have been quite lucky that a number of the men I have worked with, encouraged to me to be more ambitious. But this is not true for everyone. There will always be some organisations and sectors that are more male dominated than others, since it has traditionally been so. Women can find it harder in these segments, but overtime, there is a lot of hope that challenges can be ironed out as more women enter the workforce.”