India has been ranked at 108 in the annual Global Gender Gap Index, 2018 by the World Economic Forum. Global gender gap index is a part of this which measures gender equality across four pillars– they are economic opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment and health and survival. Women in India earn less than men even if they have the same educational qualifications, data from a recent government report also supports the finding. The Economic Survey 2017-18 revealed that women comprise only 24% of the Indian workforce.

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Highlights of the Report:

• The ‘Men and Women in 2017’ report released by the statistics and programme implementation ministry in May 2018 contains data on average daily wages and salaries for men and women aged 15-59 years, arranged by industry and type of work.
• In urban areas, a woman with a graduate degree gets paid Rs 690.68 per day in the transport and storage sector while a man gets 30% more at Rs 902.45.
• In agriculture, an illiterate woman worker in rural India receives Rs 88.2 per day while an illiterate man receives Rs 128.52, which is 45% more.
• However, there are some sectors in which women get paid more than men, although by smaller margins.
• In the construction sector in rural areas, for instance, women (irrespective of the level of education) are paid Rs 322 on average per day while men are paid Rs 279.15, which is Rs 43 or 13% less.
• In urban areas, in the transport and storage sector, women are paid Rs 455 on average per day, irrespective of the level of education, while men are paid Rs 443 per day–Rs 12 or 2.7% less.
• A graduate woman earns 5.8 times more than an illiterate woman in rural areas while graduate men earn 3.6 times more than illiterate men.
• A graduate woman earns nearly four times more than an illiterate woman in urban areas, while graduate men earn nearly three times more than illiterate men.
• Women in top management in India earn 18.8% less than men as per the Global Wage Report 2016-17 published by the International Labour Organization.

Reasons for the Gender Wage Disparity:

• Patriarchal Mindset:
  • Preference for male employees over female employees
  • Preference for promoting male employees to higher positions
  • In rural areas, women are given lighter work deliberately in agriculture or other sectors thus making them eligible for low payments.
• Lack of Transparency:
  • Due to lack of transparency in salaries in private sector, many women are unaware of salaries which they should actually get. In Government sector jobs, this disparity is much less because people working on same posts are entitled for same compensation.
• Socio-Cultural Reasons:
  • Career breaks taken by women due to socio-cultural issues, marriage or pregnancy and parenthood duties.
  • Higher Education levels of women also allow them to pursue leisure and other non-work activities, all of which reduce female labour force participation.
  • Insufficient availability of the type of jobs that women say they would like to do, such as regular part-time jobs that provide steady income and allow women to reconcile household duties with work.
  • Concerns about safety and Harassment at work site, both explicit and implicit.
  • The cultural baggage about women working outside the home is so strong that in most traditional Indian families, quitting work is a necessary precondition to the wedding itself.
  • When increases in family incomes are there, due to the cultural factors, women leave the work to take care of the family and avoid the stigma of working outside.

Solutions:

• Private companies and corporate sector must have salary audits.
• Enforcement of Equal Wages Act should be done in letter and spirit.
• Adequate intervention from Government to ensure equality of pay to both men and women for the same work. Strong labour market institutions and policies such as collective bargaining and minimum wages lowered the pay gap.
• Digital fluency and a planned career strategy might help women to close the pay gap.
• Non-farm job creation for women: there is a need to generate education-based jobs in rural areas in the industrial and services sectors
• The state governments should make policies for the participation of rural women in permanent salaried jobs.
• The governments should also generate awareness to espouse a positive attitude towards women among the public since it is one of the most important impediments in women’s participation in economic activities.
• Local bodies, with aid from state governments, should open more crèches in towns and cities so that women with children can step out and work. The crèches will open employment opportunities for women.
• Supply side reforms to improve infrastructure and address other constraints to job creation could enable more women to enter the labour force.
• Higher social spending, including in education, can lead to higher female labour force participation by boosting female stocks of human capital.
• Skilling the women:
  • Initiatives such as Skill India, Make in India, and new gender-based quotas from corporate boards to the police force can spur a positive change. But we need to invest in skill training and job support.
  • The private sector could also take active part in training women entrepreneurs. For example: Unilever’s Shakti program, which has trained more than 70,000 rural women in India as micro-entrepreneurs to sell personal-care products as a way of making its brands available in rural India
• Equal pay: The principle of equal remuneration for work of equal value that is protected by Indian law must be put to actual practice. Improved wage-transparency and gender neutral job evaluation is required to achieve this end.
• Assuring safe access to work: It is important to improve existing transport and communication networks and provide safe accommodation for women who travel to or has migrated for work.
• A useful and easily implementable idea would be to give income tax benefits to women. It would be a bold and effective step to increasing India’s female workforce participation.
• For political empowerment of women, their representation in Parliament and in decision making roles in public sphere is one of the key indicators of empowerment.
• Gig Economy provides women flexible work options to pursue their career while not missing important milestones in their family lives.
• Drawing more women into the labour force, supplemented by structural reforms that could help create more jobs would be a source of future growth for India. Only then would India be able to reap the benefits of “demographic dividend” from its large and youthful labour force.

Conclusion:

Unlocking the potential of women definitely requires an increase and shift in the composition of overall employment opportunities as well as questioning of societal strictures. As the country commends itself on world-leading economic growth and aspires towards a $20 trillion economy, it becomes necessary to take women along to make this goal a reality. Societal change will be the largest needle mover, but a constant push through the government, organizations and individuals is critical to bend societal norms for the better.