The hands that hold the economy aloft

Women constitute the core workforce in the country, but they rarely reach the boardrooms, nor do they get equal wages, basic facilities or promotions

Malvika Kaul Delhi

In India, there is very little room for women at the top, though the bottom is crowded with them. Take the now `shining’ private sector, that often flaunts Naina Kidwai and Chanda Kochhar as mascots of women’s corporate success. Actually, women make for only six per cent of the total industry workforce — "across all organisations and levels", according to a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) survey released in March 2006.

It’s not that women don’t make the mark. In fact, most placement agencies want to recruit women first. They find women committed and efficient and know that they will stay longer, say experts. They are as much of risk-takers as men and as much of strategists as their male counterparts.

The sunshine IT industry has already realised their potential — today, 24 per cent of the software professionals in IT companies are women.

Of course, there are some factors that actually work for working women in India. In one of her interviews, Naina Kidwai mentioned them as "being accepted as just another element in a diverse workforce consisting of many different ethnic and religious groups" with "the support of an extended family of mothers, sisters, and mothers-in-law ready to step in along with easily available domestic help".

Across the world, studies suggest that including women in the workforce not only boosts economic growth but also development. A woman who earns is far more likely to spend on improving health and education and be more vocal in demanding better infrastructure. Economic empowerment of women is one of the tried and tested routes to development.

Yet, as the CII survey says, women account for only four per cent in large companies and 18 per cent in medium-sized companies. Further, 16 per cent women are employed in the junior management category and only four per cent reach the middle and senior management posts. Women interviewed in the survey said that gender bias was prevalent during recruitment, especially for jobs in production, manufacturing and sales.

It is public knowledge that women in the private sector still don’t get paid as much as men. Even the NGO sector is guilty of this form of discrimination. In a way, ‘equal pay for equal work’ is more a phrase that appears in the Indian Constitution and has not been applied to several occupations. Worse, many companies hire women because they offer excellent resources at a much lower rate. Even companies like the ICICI bank, known to hire several women, some of whom have blossomed into leaders, prefers women because they agree to a salary lower than the market price.

In any corporate job, women rarely get the privileges men get. Although, they have become more `visible’, especially in the IT and service industry, they are put in posts that are neither strategic nor growth-oriented. Take the BPO industry, tapping the young and resourceful women of India.

Sadly, despite the encouragement some women have received, and despite the icons (Kiran Majumdar of Biocon), the glass ceiling has

grown strong and thick over the years. Take any average private company – the receptionist, telephone operator, secretary, hospitality in-charge and support desk staff – all are invariably women. Even the media, especially the electronic media, barely have women in key positions – anchoring and reporting is what most are forced to pick from.

In the last five years, several senior women executives opted out of the rat race – they prefer working from home – to maintain work-life balance. Understandably, they don’t see themselves only as careerists. But they also don’t see the climb up the corporate ladder without obstacles and, in some cases, already blocked for them.

The scenario is no better in top government jobs like the civil services – women’s presence is as low as 7.6 per cent (2000) in the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian

Police Service. The numbers get more depressing as we look at the specifics:

l Women, who represent 48.3 per cent of the country’s total population (according to the 2001), continue to have a poor work participation rate – just 25.7 per cent, compared with 51.5 per cent among men. Of course, it is better than what it was two decades ago.

l Almost 90 per cent of the unorganised sector has women as workers. Most of our domestic helps, head load carriers, handloom workers, weavers, salt workers, workers in brick kilns and stone quarries, toddy tappers, vegetable and fruit vendors, aggarbatti makers, farm hands – all are women. But according to the government’s own admission, while elaborating the key focuses of

the 10th Five Year Plan (2002-2007) – "these women still continue to struggle in the most precarious working conditions without any legislative safeguards."

Simply put, this means that many are not paid the same wages men get and a large number don’t get paid at all! Organisations like the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in Rajasthan have often talked about the contractors not even bothering to mention women’s names in the muster rolls.

This 90 per cent contributes enormously to the economy. Today women produce most of our food and weave and stitch most of our clothes. Unlike men, they do more hazardous work like mixing and spraying pesticides. They comprise 70 per cent in agriculture; 35.3 per cent in its allied sectors; 46.1 per cent in the Khadi and village industries; 65.5 per cent in handloom and sericulture.

So while there is almost no space at the top, women (both from the organised and unorganised sectors) support the Indian economy by being its core labour force. Unfortunately, the economy sees them as a resource – only to exploit. They don’t really make the decisions; they don’t appear in most boardrooms, and they definitely don’t get the credit they deserve.

In fact, this is the tragedy of India – women workers are not assets that grow with years, they are simply `human fuel’ on loan to fire the Indian economy and take it to the double-digit figure. The booming BPO sector is a shining example – women form almost 65 per cent of the

workforce, but the industry does not have much to offer in terms of better working conditions and safety norms.

The euphoria of some privileged women reaching the top never lasts when one looks at the daily rigours of an average working girl in India who has to reach her work place using unsafe transport and work often without an appointment letter, no regular salary, no accident compensation or death grant. Experts say that in the future, equal wages, better privileges and `active discrimination’ for women will go a long way in reducing exploitation and giving them the dignity women deserve.

But more needs to be done — a women-friendly environment needs to be created. When women entered the industrial workforce, everything was created for men — the machinery, the protective equipment, and the furniture. Even the labour laws appear to have a gender bias. But now, a drastic revamp is required.

Women need a work space that is safe, offers separate toilets, adequate maternity and health benefits, protection against sexual harassment and a mechanism that addresses the issue justly and speedily. Many women have admitted that sexual harassment was one of the biggest reasons of opting out of the workforce.

Hopefully, in the future, flexi-time, job sharing and child care facilities will become a reality in many offices. So will child care facilities like crËches.

For centuries women have been struggling to find an entry into the workforce. While the new millennium has seen some enter and even gatecrash, it’s time to open the gates wider. Once in, more should be invested in helping them grow, like an asset. Only then we can truly say that gender equality and growth will run parallel in the new economy of globalization.