The Indian government has been trying to give more opportunities to women in the job sector by bringing them under the reservation category but it seems as if it alone wouldn’t serve the purpose.
As per a study conducted by the World Bank, India stands at the 120th spot out of 131 nations when it comes to contribution made by females in the workforce. In simple words, India lacks behind considerably in terms of female contribution in the total Indian workforce.
On Monday, India Development Report was released by the World Bank and it stated that in order to increase the female participation, emphasis should be laid on providing them with a safe and supportive working culture, equal opportunities and incentives. The report also stated that the new jobs which were created had been taken by men due to societal norms.
What needs to be noticed is that the level of contribution has been going down since the year 2005 and that too when 42 percent of women are graduates. The report also points out that the GDP growth of India will increase by a percentage point if the contribution of women increases. The majority of Indian women workforce is employed in agriculture while in services and industry, only 20% women are working.
The senior country economist of World Bank, Frederico Gil Sander, feels that the women participation in India is decreasing because a good number of young women are choosing to study in schools while some are leaving jobs because they can’t see better future prospects and several others have left due to rise in income levels. This is what Frederico said,
“One reason why women participation in the workforce has come down is because a larger number of younger women are opting to stay in schools. Women want to work but there are not enough jobs being created.”
As per the report,
“Concerns about women’s safety are strong and often genuine while flexibility, availability of childcare and adequate pay are important given social norms that require women to reconcile work with household duties.”
One more concern that Frederico talks about is that if a woman leaves her job in agriculture, she is not able to get a job somewhere else. He also talked about the lower rate of employment generation; from 2005 to 2012, only 0.9% jobs were created in India and majority of them were taken by men.
The female participation in India is 27% while if we talk about China and Brazil, the female participation is something between 65-70%. Even small countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are doing better than India. If we look at other countries, we find ourselves close to Pakistan (24.6 %) and Arab world (23.3 %) but far behind from our other neighbors, i.e., Nepal (79.9 %) and China (63.9 %).
As per the report, the women entrepreneurs are likely to create more jobs for women but the problem is that the number of women entrepreneur is less in India. The World Bank country director, Junaid Ahmad says, “This is a cause for concern since higher labour earnings are the primary driver of poverty reduction.”
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