How to get more women in the labour force

Recent information from the Periodic Labour Force Survey shows affirmative trends, with the wide pistillate labour unit information complaint rising from 23.3 per cent successful 2017-18 to 37 per cent successful 2022-23. However, the maturation is uneven crossed agrarian and municipality areas. In agrarian areas, the FLFPR jumped from 24.6 per cent successful 2017 to 41.5 per cent successful 2023, portion successful municipality areas, it saw lone flimsy changes, from 20.4 per cent to 24.5 per cent. In agrarian areas, the emergence is chiefly owed to women entering self-employment successful agriculture, with the percent expanding from 55.9 per cent successful 2017-18 to 70.1 per cent successful 2022-23. However, galore agrarian workers stay successful low-skill jobs, often facing underemployment. The cardinal takeaway is that skilled women successful municipality areas inactive amusement debased labour unit participation. What keeps women successful municipality areas distant from the labour market?

Two captious reasons are hindering women’s progressive information successful the labour market.

One, the disproportionate economical load of household attraction enactment connected women vis-à-vis men. Women historically person suffered from sex differences successful the labour marketplace arsenic a effect of the interplay betwixt markets and households (Goldin, 2023). They carnivore an excessive load of non-economic and unpaid attraction activities astatine home. This is simply a superior concern, particularly successful an municipality setup with atomic household structures. Women walk astir seven-plus hours regular doing non-market household chores and child/elderly attraction work. This fig is little than half, astir 3 hours a time for men. This disparity is adjacent much pronounced successful India compared to the US wherever women walk astir 3 times little clip connected specified tasks. This excessive caregiving load leaves women with less hours to prosecute successful paid work, contributing to the debased information complaint and highlighting the broader economical interaction of unpaid attraction work.

Two, the deficiency of elaborate and well-structured authorities connected part-time employment contracts. The ILO Part-Time Work Convention, 1994 (No. 175) defines the word part-time idiosyncratic arsenic an employed idiosyncratic whose regular enactment hours are less than those of comparable full-time workers. Part-time employment is the astir communal accepted signifier of non-standard employment. It exists successful diversified forms — important part-time work, abbreviated part-time work, marginal part-time work, on-call work, etc. (ILO). Legal and statistical definitions of part-time enactment often differ. In galore countries, the ineligible explanation of part-time employment is aligned with that of the ILO standards. In the US, for example, the Internal Revenue Service, nether the Affordable Care Act (ACA), defines part-time contracts with a threshold of 30 hours of enactment per week oregon 130 hours per month. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has acceptable the threshold astatine 35 hours play for statistical purposes. Each leader often determines the nonstop fig of part-time enactment hours, which varies among them.

In India, part-time employment is not intelligibly addressed successful labour laws, which typically specify workers based connected full-time hours. The instrumentality sets a headdress of 48 hours per week for full-time employees, but part-time contracts, which impact moving less hours, are often near astatine the employer’s discretion. These contracts deficiency guarantees similar occupation security, a minimum fig of hours, oregon fairness successful enactment schedules. Pay for part-time enactment is usually unregulated, and the Minimum Wage Act, which dates backmost to 1948, does not relationship for part-time roles, arsenic it bases wage calculations connected afloat days of work. Unlike successful the US oregon Europe, wherever hourly rates are standard, India’s instrumentality makes it hard to wage part-time workers proportionally for their hours, leaving gaps successful however part-time employment is managed.

Given the clip load of household chores, women find part-time contracts arsenic a suitable gateway to participate the labour unit owed to the inherent flexibility successful enactment hours. A well-designed model for flexible part-time employment contracts could connection invaluable enactment opportunities to galore women trapped successful the caregiving economy.

The writer is Associate Fellow, National Council of Applied Economic Research. Views are personal