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Women at work

Extending social security to informal women workers is the need of the hour. Some sort of minimum employment guarantee scheme by the government is likely to help women informal workers as a stop-gap solution in case no work is available

Women at work

Imposing lockdown across the country to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus was a step in the right direction. Yet, the lockdown followed by a near complete shutdown of all economic activities brought about a devastating impact on the labour market, particularly women informal workers. What is the magnitude of the impact? The International Labour Organization (ILO 2020) report indicates that an estimated 400 million informal sector workers in India are at risk of abject poverty as a result of the pandemic and that women workers will bear the brunt of job losses the most. This is because of the invisible nature and informal work arrangements of women workers. Moreover, widening gender gaps in workforce participation rates (WPR) that existed before the lockdown have increased during the post-lockdown period. The last national Time Use Survey (1998-99) showed the most unequal gender division of household work in India. While women spend around 4.50 hours per week for looking after children, elderly, sick and disabled, men spend only one hour per week. This apart, women’s burden of domestic chores has increased during the pandemic period thereby causing their layoffs.

Trends in women’s work will lay bare further the precarious nature of employment of women workers. In India, because of women’s unacknowledged and unpaid contribution towards many economic activities, men have a hidden advantage in the labour market as they do not have to share the burden of domestic chores. Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), 2018-19 and National Sample Survey (68th round) clearly show that India has recorded one of the lowest WPR in the world. In 2018-19, the share of women engaged in domestic and allied activity together was 57.4 per cent and 60 per cent compared to just 0.5 per cent and 0.6 per cent for men in rural and urban areas respectively. There is also evidence that women’s WPR is negatively associated with the presence of young children in the household and that, over time, the burden of child-rearing has increased in India. During 2011-12, 33 per cent of married women with young children participated in the job market, while in 2018-19, it reduced to 24 per cent. In 201819, almost 31 per cent of women workers were largely employed as unpaid family helpers.

Among the employed, selfemployment is the predominant source of employment for women. Further, among the self-employed women, many of them worked from within the household premises, without having any fixed workplace and written job contracts. They were not eligible for any paid leave and any social security benefits. Only 24 per cent of women workers received wages according to the job contract. Given this precarious situation and the absence of any standard employeremployee relationship, decline in the employment of women workers during the pandemic period is the highest. 40 per cent of women workers who were working during the pre-lockdown period have lost their jobs amidst the lockdown. Rural women were hit the hardest of all. According to the Azim Premji University Covid-19 Livelihoods survey, the share of women reporting job losses was highest compared to men in India during the lockdown. But then, what are the plausible reasons for such poor condition of women workers? The main reason is that women working in the informal sector face different structural constrains. Rapid assessment studies conducted by the Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST) on women informal workers show that women in poor households work in more vulnerable categories of work such as domestic work, street vending, waste picking, home-based work and construction work. PLFS (2018-19) presents women’s employment distribution across industries along with a sectoral break-up. It shows that agriculture is the largest provider of employment (59.5 per cent) followed by manufacturing (13.8 per cent), public administration, health, education (12 per cent), trade, hotel and restaurant (7.2 per cent), transport, storage (1.1 per cent), electricity, water etc. (0.3 per cent) and mining and quarrying (0.2 per cent). In all these sectors, women workers comprise the largest group of landless labourers and they work on daily wage basis in informal work arrangements. All these sectors have been affected and hit hard by the pandemic. Of all these sectors, public administration, health and education industry are at relatively low risk in terms of job loss, but many of these front-line women workers are employed as voluntary workers like accredited social health activists and anganwadi workers. They are recruited on a contractual basis and are paid honorarium which is significantly lower than the minimum wage. There are about 10.6 million domestic women workers in India, and 82 per cent of them are employed in urban households, with wages lower than the national minimum wage.

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The ISST survey reveals that around 83 per cent of women workers faced severe income drop. All the women workers in the construction sector reported a loss of paid work, while 97 per cent of street vendors had no source of income during the lockdown. Women home-based workers did not have any income in their household since midMarch. Women waste pickers were also hit hard owing to restrictions on movement and they were forced to sell the waste at substantially reduced prices.

In a nutshell, the impact of Covid-19 on women workers is profound and devastating. Women workers are impacted differently because of gender dysphoria. Before the Covid-19 crisis, India was grappling with a low and declining women’s WPR along with a precarious informal employment.

According to the official Employment and Unemployment Survey of National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), WPR for women of the productive age group (15-59 years) was 32 per cent in 2011-12, which declined to 25 per cent in 2018-19. Although the Union government has announced a relief package, the effective implementation of the welfare measures poses a big challenge. Given this background, how will women workers overcome challenges at the time when the pandemic has hit the country’s economy hard? Following the recommendation of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS 2006), extending social security to informal women workers is the need of the hour.

Some sort of minimum employment guarantee scheme by the government is likely to help women informal workers as a stop-gap solution in the case of no availability of work. Finally, the increasing reliance of the government on underpaid women workers in implementing major public schemes like health, nutrition and education without even recognizing them as workers needs to be rectified.

The writer is Director & CEO, Sayantan Consultants Private Limited, Kolkata

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