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IWWAGE-Institute for What Works to Advance Gender Equality

Note on IWWAGE Findings

IWWAGE promotes, synthesises and generates evidence on ‘What Works’ for women’s economic empowerment in India. The initiative focuses on moving from ‘How’ to ‘What Works’ to improve women’s participation in economic activities through access to decent work and economic resources, strengthen social protection networks, and facilitate gender transformative policies. To take the agenda of evidence generation forward, in the last one year, three studies have been undertaken by IWWAGE in India. This document summarises the findings from the three studies and lists the key policy concerns and recommendations that emerge across each of them. These include:

  1. Study on Centre based Child Care as a solution for Maternal Employment and Early Childhood Development: Recognising the complex and synergetic relationship between access to childcare facilities and women’s economic empowerment, a secondary review of global practices was undertaken to put together evidence on how accessible, affordable and quality center-based childcare can support women by reducing and redistributing the unpaid care work, and how it impacts maternal employment as well as early childhood development for children under 6 years
  2. Study on SHG digitisation: The study highlights that the majority of focus has been on MIS digitisation, followed by monitoring of SHGs. Linking of facilitators and group members to digital tools is in early stages of piloting and digitisation of livelihoods data is a distant goal.
  3. A rapid assessment of 181 Helpline scheme: IWWAGE was commissioned by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to undertake a rapid assessment of the implementation of the helpline scheme across different states in the country. The study was carried out across 11 states and aimed to understand the current status of implementation of the scheme along – i. Functionality of the 181 helpline; ii. State level MIS/databases; iii. Responsiveness of Centre staff, and iv. Integration between 181 Women’s helpline (WHL) and One Stop Centre (OSC).
Social Safety Net for Maternity Protection and Early Childhood Development in India

This paper analyses the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) system (its historical evolution and current form) and other policies that are intended to provide maternity support and early childhood development. In light of the learnings from the second paper, this paper attempts a gap analysis of the ICDS system – capacity and design – to reach the intended beneficiary. It highlights the fact that in an effort to provide integrated services, vertical programmes attempt to deliver their interventions using the common platform of ICDS, without accurately assessing the capacity or design of these platforms. Often the layering of additional inputs onto these platforms causes the system to overload, resulting in diminishing returns or exacerbating the negative feedback loops.

Moreover, human resources for childcare is one of the key features that influences the quality of the childcare centres. This paper includes findings from a qualitative field study on insights on human resources’ motivations and non-monetary incentives that influence their performance and productivity. This is accompanied by articulation of potential research questions and some next steps to further the agenda of early childhood development and maternity support.

Public Provision of Centre-based Childcare in High, Middle & Low-Income Countries

This paper “Public provision of centre-based childcare in high-, middle- and low-income countries: What are the systemic features that aided the effective scale up of these programmes?” highlights that the provision of public childcare sits in a large complex adaptive system made of building blocks, such as governance/accountability, financing, scope of the programme, human resources for childcare, data systems, evaluation, costing and impact, and social norms, that need to work in cohesion to ensure a positive impact on two outcomes: maternal employment and early childhood development in large-scale programmes.

The main contribution of this paper is to focus, in a comparative study format, on the systemic features that have allowed low- and middle-income countries to implement and iteratively scale up centre-based childcare programmes. This is supported by examples from countries which were cognizant of this complex adaptive systemic thinking, and iteratively scaled up programmes, achieving a positive impact on the two outcomes mentioned above. This paper also documents examples of small-scale, alternate/non-government models of affordable, quality centre-based childcare in India that support working mothers. The intention is to show the feasibility of adoption of the systemic thinking to deliver quality service in India.

Impact of Centre-based Quality Childcare on Maternal Employment & Early Childhood Development Outcomes

India has low Female Labour Force Participation (FLFP) and this has ramifications on women’s economic empowerment and India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The issue is compounded by time-poverty endured by women, masking the burden of unpaid work, a part of which is unpaid care for the children and the elderly. Often, social protection and child development programmes in India, and globally, target a certain population in isolation, ignoring unintended consequences – for example, child nutrition programmes often prescribe interventions without considering the demands these impose on a woman’s time. At a household level, this translates into exacerbating time poverty for women and deprives children of direct care in early childhood. At the state level, this results in disjointed or siloed social protection policies and diluted programmes for women’s empowerment and child development. “Centre-based Quality Childcare: A Case for Public Investment for Improved Maternal Employment and Early Childhood Development” is a three-part series of papers.

The series is a commentary that emphasises the inter-connectedness of labour, women’s empowerment, and child development policies and programmes. It elaborates on this inter-connectedness’s criticality in planning and implementation to actualise the additive effects (positive feedback loops) and alleviate exposure to risk factors and unintended consequences (negative feedback loops), especially at the critical points in the life cycle of a woman (childhood to adulthood). More specifically, this first paper in the series maps the pathway on how accessible, affordable and quality centre-based childcare can support women by reducing and redistributing the unpaid care work, thereby alleviating time poverty to a certain extent and improving the quality of care for children. It brings together evidence of how public provision of centre-based childcare has had positive impact on the two outcomes of interest – maternal employment as well as various aspects of early childhood development for children under six years of age.

Making Skill India Work for Women

By now, the facts of Indian women’s labor market participation that should be jarring have become rote: Indian women, particularly rural women, have dropped out of the labor force in a period of strong economic growth; Indian women’s labor force participation rates are lower than all other G20 countries outside of Saudi Arabia; and the latest Labour Force Surveys suggest that, even at less than 24% overall1, female labor force participation continues to decline.Frequently, Skill India is mentioned as a means of altering this pattern for young women by bringing them into the workforce. Such skilling programs can give women useful training and directly connect them with employers who are eager to hire them. The most recent NSS employment data (2011-12), suggests that young, unmarried women are a particularly high potential group: they have very low labor force participation rates, but report relatively high interest in working—32% of respondents in rural areas and 28% of respondents in urban areas who were out of the labour force reported willingness to work (Pande, Moore, & Fletcher, 2017). Data from a small survey we conducted with skills trainees in Madhya Pradesh further substantiates this: women were less likely to be working than men, but unemployed women and men reported similar levels of job search, even for jobs that required migration2.While skilling provides substantial opportunities for young women’s economic empowerment, constraints to women’s participation in such programs abound. In a context where income- generating opportunities are absent for women, norms have emerged that reinforce this exclusion and impose substantial barriers to women’s entry. Even when quotas for women’s participation in skilling programs exist, our research has highlighted the myriad of challenges women face to join skilling and then in translating this skilling into a longer-term employment opportunity. In a survey of 2,610 former skilling trainees, we see a clear leaky pipeline for women. Women are less likely to receive job offers at the end of skilling, highlighting potential discrimination. On the supply side, female trainees are also less likely to accept job offers they do receive (see figure 1). Contrary to common expectation, women that join jobs are just as likely to stick with them as men. While this provides some scope for optimism, all trainees report disappointing employment outcomes overall: one year after skilling, only 1 in 5 former trainees still earned an income.

So what keeps women from joining skilling and remaining in jobs? Our research to date, which has included a small survey in central Madhya Pradesh of potential trainees and their parents3, a phone survey of former skilling participants from seven major states, and analysis of administrative data from Odisha, a top skilling performer, point to several clear constraints to women joining skilling:

 First, women’s skilling and labor force decisions are made in consort with, and typically with permission from, family members. These coordinated decisions often inhibit women’s ability to take-up skilling and employment. Despite women wanting to work at high rates, male family members often retain more gender-biased attitudes towards women’s work: from our small survey in Madhya Pradesh 31% of fathers and 42% of male youth did not believe that women should go out to work. In our phone survey of former trainees, the top reason women reported not accepting a job was that their family did not give them permission to do so (see figure 2).

Males, in contrast, most frequently declined jobs because of dissatisfaction with compensation. Similar dynamics were reported with respect to leaving post-skilling employment, where women dropped out as a result of family pressure and men dropped out principally because of job-related dissatisfaction.

Second, with the growing demand for skilled work in urban cities, migration raises major concerns about safety for both women and their families. In a small survey of training-eligible youth in central Madhya Pradesh, 69% of females reported it is unsafe to live away from home even during training, compared to 31% of males. Male guardians also overwhelmingly report they believe crime is more likely to happen in urban areas than the village (85%), and both violent and non-violent crimes are more likely to happen to women (84% and 86%, respectively), suggesting they would be relatively more concerned for their female family members’ safety post-migration than males’. These concerns, due to the influence of family members on girls’ employment decisions, have limited women’s take-up of skilling – when women are offered jobs outside their district and state, their job acceptance rates decline. The same does not hold for males.

Third, potential trainees seem to have inaccurate expectations regarding their wages in jobs post- skilling, which may limit the perceived value of skilling for women. This discrepancy is clearly a barrier for males’ skilling success, but may also keep family members from allowing women to accept job offers after skilling. In our survey of potential trainees in rural Madhya Pradesh, male youth reported they would need to earn 13,827 INR per month to accept a job in Bhopal and women report they would need to earn 12,231 INR per month. These reservation wages nearly double when considering migration to Delhi: male youth report that they would need to earn 26,788 INR per month to relocate to Delhi and female youth require only 20,740 INR per month on average4. In reality, the average monthly salary offered to DDU GKY trainees for jobs in Delhi is 7,800 INR and 6,550 INR in Bhubaneshwar.

These three critical facts pointed our research team to the importance of two crucial pieces of the female skilling and employment puzzle: First, given high leakage along the “skilling pipeline”, it is necessary to identify which women are most interested and likely to take up training, accept jobs, and remain in employment prior to investing in training them. Second, to involve women in skilling and employment, families need accurate information and support help them feel comfortable giving women permission to join skilling. To address these issues, our team at EPoD India at IFMR, along with researchers from Harvard and Oxford, is working with the state of

4 In contrast, average monthly wages for the youth who were employed was Rs. 8,771 for male youth and only Rs. 1,527 for female youth.

Odisha to test whether local self-help group (SHG) leaders can better identify willing women workers (and supportive families), and provide potential trainees and their family members with information to encourage women to take up skilling.

The theory of change behind such an approach assumes that SHG leaders have networks that will be able to identify willing trainees. They will have an insider’s perspective on which potential candidates will be successful since they can screen for characteristics related to labor market success –a family’s need or even potential participants’ individual traits – in ways that a recruiter from outside the village cannot. These local leaders are likely also well-connected to potential trainees’ families and can serve as an important liaison between training centres, employers, and the government.

Our project takes place across 317 Gram Panchayats in Ganjam and Nayagarh districts in Odisha. Through an RCT, we study Odisha’s SHG-linked recruitment model. We compare SHGs across three groups: In some randomly selected areas, training centers recruit participants using traditional methods of sending center staff to rural villages. The two other randomly selected groups employ the SHG-linked recruitment approach, where local female SHG members recruit trainees instead of training center staff. These two groups differ in terms of the training they received – one group of SHG recruiters received the standard training and the other group received additional information on male and female trainees’ employment prospects in different locations, and potential wages across locations. This additional information we hope will help equip these leaders with more accurate information to share with families about young women’s employment prospects post training. While the study is on-going through 2019, we are optimistic that this study will help us understand both the efficacy of the SHG-linked recruitment model, as well as to identify strategies to address some of the barriers that still keep women from benefitting fully from Skill India.

Charity Troyer Moore is the India Research Director for Evidence for Policy Design at the Harvard Kennedy School. She leads research-policy engagements with a variety of entities in India to ensure that research is attuned to the problems facing policymakers and integrated into policy design and program implementation.

Soledad Prillaman is a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. Her research interests lie at the intersections of comparative political economy, development, gender, and the politics of the welfare state, with a focus in South Asia

 

Sources:

Artiz Prillaman, Soledad, Rohini Pande, and Charity Troyer Moore. “Can Skill India Help Rural Women Integrate into the Labor Force? Learning from a Successful State.” 2018. Draft working paper prepared for the International Growth Centre.

Artiz Prillaman, Soledad, Rohini Pande, Vartika Singh, and Charity Troyer Moore. “What Constrains Young Indian Women’s Labor Force Participation? Evidence from a Survey of Vocational Trainees.” 2017. Available here.

Evidence for Policy Design and IFMR. “Women and Work in India: What do we Know?” 2016. Policy Brief.

Pande, R., Moore, C. T., & Fletcher, E. K. (2017). Women and Work in India: Descriptive Evidence and a Review of Potential Policies. CID Working Papers 339.

Women’s Employment Within an Entrepreneurship Model

To advance conversations around women’s employment and entrepreneurship, IWWAGE and the Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST) co-hosted a roundtable on January 21, 2019 at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The dialogue was set against the backdrop of the NITI Aayog’s strategy document ‘Strategy for New India @75′, which identifies low female labour force participation as a key barrier to economic growth and proposes promoting entrepreneurship among women as a strategic solution.

The roundtable brought together academics, practitioners, researchers, and corporate representatives to deliberate on how entrepreneurship models can be better aligned with women’s employment needs. Discussions underscored the need for capacity building of women’s collectives, access to affordable credit, and improved market linkages. Participants highlighted that entrepreneurship is often viewed as a coping mechanism rather than a career path, especially among younger women who aspire to formal employment.

Key barriers-such as limited access to institutional finance, absence of adequate support services, and disconnects between skills training and employment aspirations-were explored. The importance of unpaid care work, safety at workplaces, and the heterogeneity of women’s needs were also emphasised in shaping inclusive entrepreneurship strategies.

The event concluded with a call to develop a broad position paper on women’s entrepreneurship, and to foster partnerships with states and private sector players. There was consensus on the need for holistic macroeconomic strategies that position entrepreneurship within the larger context of women’s employment in India.

Note on IWWAGE Findings

As part of its commitment to advancing women’s economic empowerment, IWWAGE undertook three key studies in 2018 to generate actionable evidence that informs policy and practice. These studies focus on critical areas affecting women’s participation in the workforce and access to support systems:

1. Centre-Based Childcare as a Solution for Maternal Employment and Early Childhood Development
This study explores how accessible, affordable, and quality childcare can reduce women’s unpaid care burden, enabling their participation in the labour force, while also enhancing cognitive and socio-emotional development in children under six. The research highlights the need for improved service quality, greater access, and consideration of prevailing social norms in programme design.

2. SHG Digitisation
With the expansion of digital services, this study examines the process and impact of digitising Self-Help Groups (SHGs). It assesses how technology can enhance financial inclusion, transparency, and efficiency in SHG operations while also identifying gaps in access and digital literacy among women.

3. Rapid Assessment of the 181 Women’s Helpline Scheme
This assessment evaluates the effectiveness of the 181 helpline, a critical support mechanism for women facing violence. It highlights the need for better infrastructure, trained personnel, and integration with other support services to ensure timely and sensitive responses to women in distress.

Together, the studies offer valuable insights and underline the importance of strengthening public systems, leveraging technology, and addressing social barriers. IWWAGE continues to advocate for evidence-informed strategies that improve service delivery, promote gender-responsive policies, and enhance women’s access to economic opportunities and support mechanisms.

Women in Agriculture

This section draws from an ongoing Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE) and Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) study that aims to understand the impact of structural transformation in agriculture on female employment over time, by assessing the role of women farm managers. This study uses data from the India Human Development Survey (2004-05, 2011-12) to understand the rise in female farm management, its variation along demographic dimensions, and the differences between cultivator households managed by men and those managed by women.