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Voices from the Field

With approximately 67 million women mobilised into Self-Help Groups and federations, owned and represented by women, the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) holds great promise for advancing women’s socio-economic empowerment and offering them resilience in times of crises such as the current pandemic. SHG federations across India not only offer means for many poor women to build sustainable households, but are also platforms for them to seek support, including financial, social and psychological support that they derive by associating themselves with others who are like them.

Stories from the ground during India’s lockdown phase are suggesting that Self Help Groups (SHGs) of women are being involved by state governments in the fight against COVID-19. SHGs across India have worked day and night to manufacture masks, run community kitchens and assist in health checks. They have helped spread awareness about the virus in the local language and in a culturally-sensitive manner within their communities. Yet, SHGs and their members have been impacted both socially and economically, with many reporting intensive losses to their work and livelihoods, increased drudgery and unpaid work burden and rising incidence of domestic violence. In line with IWWAGE’s core mandate of informing the policy agenda on women’s economic empowerment in India, this report presents a summary of insights gained from recent research and conversations around women’s empowerment collectives (WECs) and how women are dealing with the pandemic and lockdown in India. The report attempts to summarise the challenges women and their collectives are facing during the lockdown and concludes with a series of recommendations.

Women’s Workforce Participation In India: Statewise Trends

Madhya Pradesh (MP) is the only state in India to have witnessed a rise in workforce participation rates (WPRs) of women in both rural and urban areas between 2011-12 and 2017-18. The increase in women’s WPR in MP was driven largely by increase in self-employment in the rural areas and regular employment in the urban areas. According to the Periodic Labourforce Survey in 2017-18, more than half of the female workforce in the state is self-employed, with a higher incidence of self-employment in rural areas. While approximately 88 percent of the rural self-employed women in MP are engaged in unpaid work, the share of women in own account enterprises is substantially high in urban MP. The distribution of casual women workers suggests very few women engaged under MGNREGA and other public works as 96 percent women in casual employment were engaged in non-public works, with very little security or guarantee of payment

Generating Female Employment through Public Employment: A Scoping Paper

The employment generating potential of growth in India has been on the decline with unemployment and the lack of new job opportunities at their peak. According to the data put together by the State of Working India 2018, the relationship between growth and employment generation in India has weakened over time. A related puzzle is that of declining female workforce participation rates in the country, despite increasing education levels as well as economic growth. A major concern for the direction and pace of economic growth is how work and labour force participation rates of women can be improved. Employment in the government, especially in public services delivery, is a potential area where jobs can be created. An emphasis on creating work opportunities for women in public administration and frontline public services can serve the dual purpose of providing universal access to quality public services and reviving demand in the economy.

IWWAGE study, Generating Female Employment through Public Employment aims to estimate the impact of creating and regularising jobs for women within the system of public administration, especially in frontline public services delivery. It considers questions on the activities and working conditions of women workers in frontline public services, assesses the number of such workers, and compares them with international estimates. The study also evaluates whether there is gender stereotyping in certain public sector jobs. Additionally, the study captures women’s perceptions of the benefits and constraints of being employed in such jobs. This scoping paper presents the current status of women employed in various levels by the government, based on data from the National Sample Survey (NSS), analysis of government reports, publications, and responses to queries raised using the Right to Information (RTI).

 

 

Women in Manufacturing

This factsheet is drawn from an ongoing IWWAGE-ISI study that seeks to examine the profile and background of women workers in contemporary industrial and urban landscapes – the kinds of opportunities available, barriers to participation, and aspirations and expectations from industrial employment. The study uses data collected from a survey of garment factory workers in Delhi NCR.The data is supplemented with more detailed information on current or aspiring women workers obtained through focus group discussions and interviews with women workers, and interviews with factory owners/managers, labour contractors, and so on.

Female Labour Force Participation Rate and Earnings Gap in India

Despite high economic growth, decline in fertility, and rise in schooling of girls, the Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR) in India has declined in rural areas and stagnated in urban areas since the late 1980s. This is contrary to the global experience, where similar factors resulted substantial increase in the FLFPR. The recently released Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18 confirms the declining trend and shows FLFPR declined in all states with the exception of Madhya Pradesh and Goa. Women’s engagement in unpaid work is high in rural areas and while a majority of women are employed in regular wage work in urban areas, there are substantial wage differentials between men and women, most of the regular work of women is in the informal sector, and non-wage benefits are poor.  

Testing Approaches to Strengthen Gender within NRLM

With over 60 million women mobilised to be part of one of India’s largest livelihoods programme, the Deendayal Antayodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), holds great promise for advancing women’s socio-economic empowerment by organising them into self-help groups (SHGs) and institutions of the rural poor. These platforms are facilitating financial opportunities and livelihood support services for women.  The livelihoods programme works exclusively with rural women, and a critical element for its success has been the mission’s commitment towards prioritising women’s perspectives and being responsive to their needs and aspirations. This approach has been embedded across all DAY-NRLM activities with the goal of strengthening women’s agency, identity, well-being, and solidarity, through women’s collectivisation. NRLM believes that gender sensitisation and social action should be mainstreamed in its framework, systems, institutions and processes. To this end, it devised a Gender Operational Strategy in financial year 2019-20 committing actions that recognise women’s heterogeneity and the unique socio-economic barriers faced by them. Through Swayam, IWWAGE is partnering with DAY-NRLM to provide technical assistance to support this strategy and institutionalise gender across all levels of the Mission. The note gives a snapshot on the approaches to strengthen gender interventions by NRLM.

Empowering Women Collectives through Digital Initiatives in Chhattisgarh

Digital tools hold the promise of accelerating women’s empowerment, enhancing the effectiveness and efficacy of existing initiatives, providing new tools to improve knowledge, and creating new opportunities for women to connect and share information. Over the past year, the Initiative of What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE), an initiative of LEAD at Krea University, has been working with the Government of Chhattisgarh and other partners to map the current digitisation initiatives for women’s empowerment in the state, understand their effectiveness, and identify potential opportunities for improvement. Most of these initiatives revolve around Self-Help Groups (SHG), which are social support groups known for empowering women through social mobilisation and financial inclusion.

The SHG ecosystem in Chhattisgarh is managed by the state chapter of the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), Chhattisgarh’s State Rural Livelihood Mission (SRLM or CGRLM), also known as Bihan. Bihan has led initiatives to empower women collectives by improving their financial and market linkages, promoting access to entitlements, and providing capacity development support. IWWAGE aims to assist Bihan in its efforts to strengthen the SHG ecosystem, promoting and testing digital solutions that will allow women’s collectives to leverage their skills to access markets and services more effectively. This document serves to capture IWWAGE’s efforts with respect to summarising and understanding these digitisation initiatives, identifying gaps and barriers, and proposing potential use cases.

 

 

Women and Unpaid Work

The methodology involves assessing the causal effect of switching to LPG on women’s outcomes by construction of a comparison group of households that are not eligible for or did not participate in PMUY. The study uses self-reported health status, and a time-use survey of women to measure the effect of LPG usage on time released for other activities. The results from this exercise would be used to design an experiment wherein information on long-term health benefits of LPG usage and the financial incentive under PMUY would be disseminated in randomly selected villages. This would be conducted by Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers by visiting randomly sampled households in ‘treatment’ villages on a monthly basis, and responses of women in targeted villages would be compared with those of other women at the end of a year. The study is being conducted in Indore region of Madhya Pradesh.

Women and Unpaid Work

This study builds and tests a structural model that explains observed changes in FLFP using data on urban, married women from the Time Use Survey (1998) and various rounds of the National Sample Survey (NSS). The model focuses on women’s work participation, educational attainment, other characteristics, and time spent in the labour market, home production, and leisure.

Identifying Gaps in Gender Statistics In India

Women are key agents of change, and a move towards gender equality translates into increased economic empowerment for women; it also brings greater benefits for the society at large. As pointed out by McKinsey Global Institute, the economic impact of achieving gender equality in India is estimated to be US$700 billion of added Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2025. But achieving gender equality necessitates measures to correct for existing disadvantages that prevent women from accessing productive opportunities. Gender data play an important role in this regard.

This study is an attempt to outline the existing gaps in available official data sources in India. The study has identified data gaps in key domains of women’s empowerment, namely, employment and wages, ownership of assets, access to basic amenities, financial inclusion, health, education, access to digital platforms, participation in decision making, and crime and violence, etc. The study highlights the need for more regular surveys on employment and wages, and time use surveys to better capture women’s paid and unpaid work, and also time spent on different unpaid activities. A multi-causal approach to data collection on migration, on earnings of the self-employed as well as on ownership and management of assets and businesses, at the individual level, is also recommended. Besides, a cohort study of young women, behavioural aspects, norms and opinions around women’s work, as well as data on mental health, learning outcomes, violence and individual access to digital resources, would provide a range of measures to investigate the issue of women’s empowerment.