Ishika Agarwal
India is a country with an inspiring political past and diverse thoughts. Everywhere you can see powerful ‘men’. No matter how strong a country, India has not had any iconic woman leader Despite very good socio-demographic indicators, a woman’s role in the development discourse is marred by increasing levels of misogyny. Women are looked down upon, even in this modern century, with contempt and unwanted pity. Only one woman, Indira Gandhi, has ever held office as Prime Minister, and the same history is repeated with Pratibha Patil as President. Why is it so that women are not trusted with such responsibilities, and are stereotyped as too emotional and unworthy of success? Let me give you the answer, it all starts in our own house, in our own body, in our own orthodox mind.
In every household of India, we are surrounded by patriarchy. With domination males controlling our household, a woman is rendered helpless and insulted. The latest surveys show that in 2021, only 36% of the working population in India is female. Even though the results have drastically shown an increase of 13%, it is still less than the global 58% (in 2021) of working women. Women are held back in India from harnessing their true potential. It is also seen that most women who engage in domestic work such as househelp are not counted as working women. They are stereotyped by the strong males of our society as poor housewives.
Another shocking revelation is that less urban women work than rural women. But, the number of working rural females has been decreasing quickly while the urbanized women count has been stagnant. The pandemic has only further pushed women to the margins of the workforce across the world, especially in India where, according to a World Bank report released in June 2020, India’s female labour force participation rate fell to 20.3 percent. Besides, the country has also fallen to the 140th position out of 156 countries by sliding down 28 places in the 2021 Gender Gap Index, which employs parameters such as economic participation, political empowerment, health, survival, and education to determine the positions of various countries on its list. With pressures of domestic work increasing exponentially for women in the past year due to lockdown, working from home provided them with the option to continue with their jobs while carving out time for household chores as well. However, easing back into an office setup meant disruption to the established work and home life balance, resulting in a large section of women dropping out of the workforce to continue shouldering their household responsibilities. Apprehensions about travelling to work and in turn, exposing their families to the risk of infection is an important cause behind dropping out of jobs too.
The trends in female participation rates are surprising because they do not trace out a U-shaped curve which is usually observed in economies. Female labour force participation initially declines with growth of the economy as women who were earlier working to make ends meet withdraw from the labour market with rising income. These statistics are concerning not only from the point of view of women’s liberation and autonomy but also from an economic angle. Studies suggest that improvements in female economic participation not only benefit women but also boost aggregate economic growth. At this stage, when the Indian economy has been derailed by the COVID pandemic, women can play a central role in defining the country’s future growth story. It, therefore, becomes crucial to explore the factors that are hindering women’s participation in the labour market.
Statistics point out how Indian social norms mediate the rate at which female labour supply will respond to economic opportunities. Women are not in a position to disregard their domestic duties and, despite their willingness to work, they can only take up opportunities that allow them to juggle between paid and unpaid work. Religion, caste, creed, etc. is what judges job aspirants in India. Why is that so? If a man is poor, does it mean that his children don’t have the right to dream higher and succeed? Or if a man is of what is known as low Dalit castes, his children have lost the right to not be identified by their skin? This mainly applies for women in our country because they are exploited in the name of work, and are forced to waste equity in unpaid work.
While most societies in the world developed social norms that dictate acceptable behaviour for women, structural transformation in societies played an important role in breaking those social barriers. However, in India, structural transformation led to a high share of the population working in the informal sector and setting up small enterprises. These informal jobs and their lack of social security make people highly dependent on caste and kin networks for economic support in times of crisis and conform to society’s traditional standards instead of challenging them. This acts as one of the main impediments to female participation.
Some women face a shortage of jobs, which are being handed out to favorable kin. Business owners hardly hire women in any other sector than HR, with the excuse of the labor intensive jobs not being suitable for women. The burden of the jobless growth of the Indian economy has been brunt by women more severely than men. During the period 2012-2018, 65 million men and 63 million women were added to the Indian working age population. The LFPR for men remained still while the LFPR for women observed a downward trend depicting the job market was able to absorb the growing number of male workers but it was not the case for female workers.
Employers favor men not because they are prejudiced against women, but because they have the perception that men perform better on average at certain tasks, according to the research paper When Gender Discrimination Is Not About Gender. Women earn 82 cents for every dollar a man earns. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, in 2020, women’s annual earnings were 82.3% of men’s, and the gap is even wider for many women of color.
Studies, over the years, have shown a direct link between times of crisis like these and interpersonal violence. Pandemics provide for an enabling environment of fear and uncertainty that may exacerbate diverse forms of violence against women. Moreover, economic insecurity, financial instability, and isolation are also some of the factors that contribute to making domestic violence even more prevalent. Unfortunately, domestic violence cases are underreported across the world, especially in times of global emergencies like COVID-19.
Women worldwide consider informal channels as their first point-of-reporting in the case of domestic violence. The first respondent is often the family and the police the last.1 In India, the National Family Health Survey-4, conducted in 2015-16, revealed that 33% of married women in the age group of 15-49 experienced physical, sexual, or emotional spousal violence. Of these women, only 14% sought help and 77% never spoke about it. Among those who sought help, 65% reported to the natal family and only 3% reported to the police. While 552 complaints were recorded in the month of May, June saw over 730 complaints. This data shows that while the concern of a rapid increase in the domestic violence cases during the lockdown was valid, the instances were not actively reported. According to the NCW data, 25,886 complaints of crime against women have been received from April, 2020 till now which includes 5,865 complaints of domestic violence. Also, the NCW received the highest number of complaints against women in six years in 2020 at 23,722 with nearly one-fourth of them of domestic violence.
The grasp of domestic violence perpetrators has tightened in times of the pandemic in India. Abuse victims are distanced from their regular support systems making it difficult for them to call out for help. On 24 March 2020, the Prime Minister of India announced a nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the Novel Coronavirus. Within a fortnight, the National Commission of Women (NCW) reported a 100% rise in complaints of domestic violence cases. A nationwide WhatsApp number was then launched by the NCW to provide an alternate method for women to report domestic abuse.
The machinery under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act had not been identified as an essential service during the lockdown. Hence, the protection officers were not able to visit households of victims, NGOs were not able to have physical interactions with them and the police officers being at the frontline in our effort to tackle COVID-19 were overstretched to help victims effectively.
The increase in violence against women must be dealt with urgently with measures embedded in economic support and stimulus packages that meet the gravity and scale of the challenge and reflect the needs of women who face multiple forms of discrimination.The Secretary-General has called for all governments to make the prevention and redress of violence against women a key part of their national response plans for COVID-19. Shelters and helplines for women must be considered an essential service for every country with specific funding and broad efforts made to increase awareness about their availability.
COVID-19 is already testing us in ways most of us have never previously experienced, providing emotional and economic shocks that we are struggling to rise above. The violence that is emerging now as a dark feature of this pandemic is a mirror and a challenge to our values, our resilience and shared humanity. We must not only survive the coronavirus, but emerge renewed, with women as a powerful force at the centre of recovery.
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