Women & Work - what we’ve been reading through May 2024
News, research, data, and recommendations about women and work - curated by our team
Hello, and welcome to CEDA’s newsletter ‘Women & Work’!
A lot of data insights (including some from our latest research), some encouraging initiatives from India Inc, other sobering data, and many more updates to read and think about in our May edition of Women & Work. We hope you’ll find it a useful read!
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. You can also press ❤️ to show us some love. Thank you!
🗞️In The News
The labour force participation rate of women aged 15 and above and living in urban areas was 25.6 percent in the first quarter of this year, data from the Quarterly Bulletin of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (Jan-Mar 2024) shows. This is up from the 22.7 percent recorded in the first quarter of 2023. However, the improvement has not been accompanied with an increase in the share of women engaged in salaried/regular wage employment. Read more here.
Colgate-Palmolive India will now allow 12 weeks of paid leave for supportive caregivers of children, up from four weeks previously. The policy will be applicable to biological parents, adoptive parents, and those involved in surrogacy. Caregivers will be allowed to avail the leave in up to 3 tranches, with no more than 2 months per tranche, within 12 months of a child’s birth or adoption. “We believe this is a step to aid in enabling women to return to work and allowing both parents to experience the joys of parenthood,” Prabha Narasimhan, Managing Director of the company, said in a social media post while sharing an update about the new policy.
A couple of reports in The Economic Times highlight the efforts being made by corporate India to improve women’s participation in their workforces. Several companies are focusing on increasing the hiring of women from campuses, while others are investing in mentoring and leadership programs to boost women at top positions in their companies. But a Mint report focused on the IT sector tells a slightly different story. Based on the analysis of data from annual reports of select companies, the report finds that the share of women in the sector has remained stagnant at around 36-39 percent, and companies will need to do more to improve this, the report notes. (Read the ET report here and here, and the Mint report here).
In Thailand, many women are leading gig-workers’ fight for better working conditions, reports Rest of World. Read here.
✍️ From Our Desk
December 2023 marked a decade since the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 came into effect. The Act lists down the duties of employers in this context. Among its many provisions, the act requires employers to disclose the data on the complaints of sexual harassment they receive in their annual reports. However, more than a decade down the line, we do not have any publicly available repository collating data across employers and companies. The data remains scattered across individual company reports, often in difficult-to-use formats, making it challenging to identify industry-wide trends and patterns.
At CEDA, we have compiled data on sexual harassment cases reported by Indian companies as reported by the companies in their annual reports. The data spans a decade, and covers 300 companies listed on the National Stock Exchange. To make our sample representative, we include companies of diverse sizes. We find that while the number of reported cases have increased over the years, the bulk of these cases are being reported only by a small number of companies, indicating likely poor awareness and compliance at large.
Read our full analysis here.
💡Research Spotlight
Globally, women’s labour force participation rates are lower than that of men. On average, 64.5 percent of women in the “prime-age” group (i.e. aged 25-54 years) were in the labour force in 2023, compared with 92 percent of men, data from the International Labour Organization (ILO) shows.
But what happens to the labour force participation if and when people have children, particularly younger children (aged six years or less)? Paloma Carrillo uncovers these trends in a recent ILO analysis.
Here’s what the analysis reveals:
First, no surprises, the presence of young children impacts women’s labour force participation a lot more than it impacts that of men. Women with young children have 12-14 percentage points lower labour force participation rates than women who do not have young children. On the contrary, among men (where LFPR is generally much higher), the variation is much lower.
Carrillo also looks at how the LFPR varies based on the type of household, and finds that household type has a significant influence.
As the chart above shows, among women, single mothers with young children tend to have the highest LFPR, followed by women with no children. Women with children, whether living with an extended family, or with their partners, have lower LFPRs.
Among men, single fathers have the lowest LFPR, and men with young children and living as a couple had the highest LFPR (but overall the variations are much lower than that among women).
Globally, 34 percent of prime-age adults have at least one child under the age of six, the research notes. Given the wide gender gaps in LFPR of families with young children, Carrillo recommends countries to:
“[E]nhance access to adequate, accessible, quality and affordable childcare services and provide paid parental leave to both parents. Additionally, they can implement broader policies like promoting flexible work options, providing other care services… investing in education and training for women and men, ensuring equal pay, and tackling gender discrimination both in and beyond the workplace.”
📊Datapoint
Nearly three in every ten persons (29.1 percent) in India were migrants as of 2020-21, data from the Multiple Indicator Survey (NSS Round 78) shows. While 11.4 percent of men had migrated, the corresponding share for women was 47.7 percent. Given the dominance of patrilocal marriages in India, these patterns are not surprising. The chart above shows the reasons for migration for men and women living in urban and rural areas. Note the shares for those who migrated on account of getting married, and those who had migrated for work-related reasons. (Analysis: Kulvinder Singh/CEDA).
👍 CEDA Recommends
This edition’s recommendations have been curated especially for our readers by Swagata Bhattacharjee, Assistant Professor of Economics, 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?
Swagata Bhattacharjee: I’d recommend the book The Economics of Women, Men, and Work by Francine D Blau, Marianne A Ferber and Anne E Winkler.
Anything published in the news media recently that shed light on an important aspect about women’s work in India?
A report in The Indian Express that focuses on the plight of female loco drivers employed with the Indian Railways, and how the lack of sympathy and apathy of the system in terms of providing adequate maternity benefits has led to multiple cases of miscarriage.
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?
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a TV series that is delightful in its portrayal of a woman in a male-dominated field. It's beautiful the way they deliver it through a very engaging story, too. Another classic gem is Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar, which depicts how women adapt with the changing world and how that shapes the socio-economic structure around us.
And a book that did the same?
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is an absolute favourite of mine, and I love the way this classic follows its female protagonist through her journey as she seeks to find her place in the wide world. For me, always, more than the romantic angle, Jane's independence and passion for discovering herself stood out.
⏳Throwback
In November 1919, the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted the Maternity Protection Convention, 1919 (No. 3), the first labour standard on gender equality. It recognised the right to paid leave as well as protection of employment during childbirth. The convention concerned itself with women employed in public or private industrial or commercial undertakings. Over the course of the years, the ILO has gone on to adopt other conventions on maternity protection to expand and broaden the scope of such protection.
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