Women & Work - all that we’ve been tracking through June 2024
News, research, data, and recommendations about women and work - curated by our team
Hello, and welcome to CEDA’s newsletter ‘Women & Work’!
As with every month, we bring you a round-up of some of the most essential news and policy developments, data insights and research on women’s economic participation in this edition. We hope you will find these worth your time!
Before we get started, a request: We are curating ‘Women & Work’ with the hope that it can provoke, stimulate and amplify conversations about women’s participation in paid work in India. If you like this edition, please do share it on your social media, and with your friends, family and colleagues. Thank you.
🗞️In The News
On June 19, India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation issued a circular that encourages all stakeholders to ensure that women comprise 25 percent of the workforce in the sector by 2025. Additionally, it has asked all stakeholders to take a range of steps to promote gender equality, including zero tolerance to sexual harassment, ensuring equal representation during recruitment, provision of maternity leave as per prevailing laws, explicitly encouraging women to apply for positions etc. Read the full circular here.
Our take: This is a very welcome step. Globally, less than six percent of pilots are women. India at 14 percent already has the highest proportion of female pilots in the world. This is something to be proud of. It is heartening to see that DGCA is not resting on its laurels, and plans to not only increase female representation further, but also institutionalise a workplace climate that prioritises gender equality. This is highly exemplary. We hope the industry will follow these in letter and spirit. Foxconn, a major manufacturer of Apple devices, has been discriminating against women who are married, a Reuters investigation has revealed. The investigation finds that the company does not hire women in its main iPhone assembly plant located in Sriperumbudur, near the city of Chennai, in Tamil Nadu. In response to the report, India’s Ministry of Labour and Employment has asked for a detailed report from Tamil Nadu’s Labour Department. Read the full investigation here.
Our take: At a time when increasing gender equality is almost a battlecry, Foxconn has taken several leaps backwards. Indian women have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to overcome barriers to join paid employment when work has been available. Foxconn’s highly regressive move reinforces the belief that after getting married, women are mainly responsible for domestic work. This is old-fashioned employer bias and a clear case of discrimination which Foxconn is exercising with impunity. On a related note, Apple has been sued by two employees in the USA for alleged gender discrimination in pay. Read more here.
It’s been an excruciating summer, even harsher for those on the margins of our economy, working outside often in peak hours with no respite. However, for over 46,000 women from different districts of India, an innovative insurance programme has been offering some relief. Run by the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), the Extreme Heat Income Insurance pays women workers a part of their wages for days when the daily temperatures cross a certain threshold. This allows workers to skip work without losing on their wages. Read more about the programme here and here.
In 2021 Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing introduced a new rule to ensure that boards of listed companies include at least one female director. The rule came into effect in 2022, and companies have till the beginning of 2025 to implement the same. So far, the number of companies with male-only boards have already halved, the South China Morning Post has reported.
💡Research Spotlight
What’s the representation of women like in the field of economics in India? New research by Ambrish Dongre, Karan Singhal and Upasak Das published in Feminist Economics tries to uncover.
Since straightforward data on this is not available, the researchers have collated data from various sources to put together different pieces of this puzzle. The data sources include faculty members of 120 institutions across India, participants of the Annual Conference in Growth and Development which has been held at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), New Delhi, annually since 2004, journal publications in the Indian Journal of Labour Economics (IJLE), and alumni data of select premier institutes.
What do they find? Let’s look at the broad numbers:
Representation at the postgraduate level: They find high representation of women among candidates enrolled in Economics Masters programmes. In fact, the share has been at least 50 percent since the beginning of the 2010s, and has increased over time. In recent years, a higher number of women have been part of these programmes as compared to men.
Representation among PhD students: Until 2014–15, around 40 percent of those who enrolled in (and earned) the PhD were women, find the authors (lower than their share at the MA level). Over time, this share has increased and has reached close to parity.
Representation among faculty members: As we focus on women working in the discipline, the representation shares start to look very different (and more skewed). Women made up less than a third (29.6 percent) of all faculty members who had a doctorate degree in economics, the authors find. The share of women is higher at the Assistant and Associate Professor levels and lower at the Professor level.
Representation in research: At ISI’s annual conference from 2004 to 2017, the share of women among the authors of accepted papers was 29 percent for the entire period. Further, less than twenty percent of papers were authored only by women. Lastly, the share of women among the authors whose work was published in IJLE was only 26.4 percent over the entire period from 2004 to 2017.
We highly recommend the full paper – it is full of valuable data and insights. Read it here.
📊Datapoint
India scored 0.641 on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index in 2024, placing it 129th among 146 countries (two places lower than last year). The Index scores countries on four dimensions – and scores them from 0 (total inequality) to 1 (parity). While India scores well on Educational Attainment and Health and Survival, the scores on the other two parameters – Economic Participation and Political Empowerment, it continues to lag behind. You can explore how India’s score and ranks have evolved since 2006 through our interactive tool here. Also read Ashwini Deshpande’s analysis of this year’s scores in The Indian Express here.
👍 CEDA Recommends
This edition’s recommendations have been curated especially for our readers by Yatish Arya, Assistant Professor of Economics at Ashoka University.
What’s an essential academic work that you would recommend to someone who is just getting started with working on the subject of female labour force participation?
Yatish Arya: One of the biggest questions in the history of modern civilization is why Europe became the cradle of capitalism, as opposed to countries like China or India in Asia. The paper "How the West ‘Invented’ Fertility Restriction" by Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth discusses the crucial role women's participation in the labour market played in this historical shift. The authors propose that the Black Death increased land availability, promoting pastoral farming where women had a comparative advantage. This led to the European Marriage Pattern (EMP), which emerged between the 14th and 18th centuries, characterised by late marriages and significant proportions of never-married women. EMP reduced fertility rates and stabilised higher per capita incomes in a Malthusian context, which eventually contributed to long-term economic growth.
Anything published in the news media recently that shed light on an important aspect about women’s work in India?
I’d recommend this article published in The Indian Express that focuses on women's representation in politics in India. The 2024 Lok Sabha elections highlight a regression in women's political representation in India, with only 13.6 percent of MPs being women, a decline from 14.4 percent in 2019. Despite the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill, which aims to reserve one-third of seats for women, the percentage of female candidates and their representation remains low. In contrast, Mexico's thoughtful and committed legislative reforms have achieved gender parity in politics. To address these disparities in India, top-down reforms are necessary but hardly sufficient to ensure positive changes. Only committed efforts from political parties and grassroot feminist movements can ensure progress and greater inclusion of women.
Is there a film that you can recommend which, in your opinion, does a good job of portraying the world of work from a gender lens?
When I think of movies portraying gender issues in employment, Zoya Akhtar's Dil Dhadakne Do (2015) comes to mind. Against the backdrop of a wealthy couple's 30th anniversary celebration on a cruise, the film beautifully depicts the complexities of women's lives within the confines of family and societal expectations. It underscores the importance of familial support and the courage required to break free from oppressive structures through two powerful characters, Ayesha Mehra (played by Priyanka Chopra) and Farah Ali (played by Anushka Sharma).
Farah, a dancer, defies her conservative Muslim family's expectations to follow her passion, symbolising the pursuit of dreams despite societal and familial pressures. Ayesha, despite her superior business acumen compared to her brother, is excluded from the family business and married off young against her will. Determined, she sells her jewellery to start her own business, becoming a top entrepreneur. Yet, her hard work goes unappreciated, and she faces constant pressure to fulfil family duties, such as having a child, to meet societal expectations. Eventually, Ayesha finds the strength to break free with her parents' and brother's support, highlighting the crucial role of emotional support from family in women's empowerment. Through its characters and their journeys, Dil Dhadakne Do advocates for women's empowerment and the recognition of their professional and personal aspirations.
And a book that did the same?
One of the books I highly recommend is Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize in the same year. Ammu's character in the book vividly illustrates the challenges women face in seeking employment and economic independence within a patriarchal society. Despite her intelligence and capabilities, Ammu's opportunities for meaningful work are severely limited due to her status as a divorced woman and her relationship with a lower-caste man, forcing her to rely on the meagre support of her family.
Ammu's plight in her struggle to find meaningful work to provide for her children underscores the broader systemic issues that restrict women's access to employment, denying them the chance to achieve financial autonomy and self-fulfilment. Through Ammu's story, the book sheds light on the deep-rooted societal norms that hinder women's progress and the need for change to ensure equal opportunities for all.
⏳Throwback
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Evelyn Mary Dunbar was a British artist who, in 1940, was commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC), a British government agency, as an official war artist. She was the only woman who was commissioned during the war, and recorded women’s contribution to the war, especially the work of the Women's Land Army. The Land Army contributed significantly to Britain's food production during the Second World War.
That’s all from us for this edition. Thank you for reading! We will see you next month. In the meantime, if you have feedback, questions, tips, or just want to say hello, feel free to do so by replying to this email, or drop in a word at editorial.ceda@ashoka.edu.in
Curated by: Akshi Chawla for the Centre for Economic Data & Analysis (CEDA), Ashoka University. Cover illustration: Nithya Subramanian