The work participation rate for women in rural areas is 30.02 per cent as compared to 15.44 per cent in the urban areas. In so far as the organized sector is concerned, in March, 2011 women workers constituted 20.5 percent of total employment in organized sector in the country. India has made substantial economic progress.  Such economic growth, however, has not been matched by progress towards women’s equal economic participation. The country’s female labour force participation rate stands at just 27 percent, compared to 96 percent for men. Women’s access to decent paid work is an undisputed ethical and economic imperative as well as a primary human right and aspiration. It is clear that the current under-participation of women in paid employment in India is not due to their lack of will.  More than one third of Indian women primarily engaged in housework report wanting to work for pay if a job were available. Indeed, the participation of educated, capable women in the workforce makes for a strong economic argument. Emerging technologies and digitalization are transforming work in India. Labour relations, workplaces, industries and jobs themselves are being recast in the context of rapid technological adoption. It is within this context that existing gender disparities can either be reduced, or exacerbated. As the organization of work changes in India, there is an opportunity and need to redefine the social norms that govern women’s economic participation. This report sets forth a new normative framework that rewrites the existing norms that systematically keep women out of the workforce. Taking women’s under-participation in the workforce in India as an established starting point, this report offers six new norms for redefining the rules governing women’s economic participation.
On average, 66 percent of the work done by Indian women is unpaid, compared to 12 percent of men’s. This is a global pattern, as women in other parts of the world are disproportionately burdened with unpaid work and care work. In India women spend on average 352 minutes a day on unpaid work against 52 minutes among men With regard to unpaid care work, women in India spend on average 297 minutes a day on tasks such as taking care of children, the elderly and the sick; in comparison, men spend 31 minutes a day.
This is relevant as research has established an inverse relationship between the amount of time spent by women and girls on unpaid work, and their economic autonomy For instance, findings from a 2018 survey reveal that girls’ housework and domestic responsibilities contribute to a gender gap in secondary education. At the same time, over 40 percent of surveyed men report feeling that married women whose husbands earn a decent living should not work outside the home  The perception that women should not leave the private sphere in the absence of monetary need reinforces the burden of unpaid work.
India’s Amended Maternity Benefit Act stipulates that employers must provide women with 26 weeks of paid time off. Given the absence of a corresponding benefit for new fathers, it perpetuates the gender stereotype of women being the primary caregivers. The law also covers only formal and large-sized firms which, overall, employ only a small proportion of the country’s female workers.
It is clear that the additional disadvantages that working mothers face visa vis working fathers and childless individuals account for a sizeable share of the gender wage gap as well as disparity in promotions at work. Equally, it is clear that simply institutionalizing voluntary paternity leave and ‘flexi-time’ for mothers remain inadequate. For example, new fathers opt against taking paid time off due to the fear of lagging behind their work responsibilities. Therefore, innovative policies are required to incentivize more active sharing of care giving responsibilities and in the long-term, changing the overall organizational culture to reverse what is known as “motherhood penalty”. For instance, companies could support the return of working mothers into the workforce, by paying more to fathers/other parents for taking over the care giving responsibilities.
More than half of India’s workforce is self-employed, compared to 33.5 percent who are casual labourers and just 15.6 percent who are regular, salaried workers. This means that the vast majority of workers are not covered by the nation’s labour regulations. A significantly higher number of women in India work in the informal economy compared to the formal sector. For instance, in the largely unregulated domestic work sector, there are 2.3 million women domestic workers out of the 3.9 million domestic workers in India.
At the same time, countries including India are seeing a rise in non-standard forms of work such as platform work, the gig economy, temporary work and independent contracting. While these new forms and formats of work offer advantages such as easier and cheaper access, lower transaction costs, flexibility, and reduced barriers to entry, in most cases these workers lose out on the social security, benefits and protections afforded to those employed in permanent jobs.
India will need to find ways of both meeting existing gaps in social security and protections, and creating new social safety nets that account for the needs of workers engaged in new forms of work. One means of achieving this is to link protections directly to individuals rather than providing them through employers. This will require a re-imagination of social security provision mechanisms, as the employer-employee relationship becomes less prominent. Guaranteeing women’s right to a safe and equitable working environment becomes more important in intermediate spaces. That is, the premise-based nature of protections means that the many freelancers and platform workers that work in co-working or public spaces are not covered. The responsibility for underwriting the security and well being of workers must be reconsidered.