Skilling women should be bottom-up and sustainable

(MainsGS2:Issues Relating to Development and Management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.)

Context:

• Amid economic growth, urbanisation, a steady increase in women’s literacy, and an overall decline in fertility rates, women in India have been dropping out or being pushed out of the workforce at an alarming rate.

Female participation:

• Data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) (2019-20) shows female labour force participation at 22.8 percent, compared to a far higher 56.8 percent for men.
• The survey was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, which since 2020 has caused the further shrinking of the country’s female workforce.
• Data from PLFS for the quarter of January-March 2021 shows that women’s presence in the workforce dropped to 16.9 percent following the first year of the pandemic, while for men it remained largely the same.

Skilling women:

• There is no single policy measure that can address the complex issue of women’s participation in the workforce.
• However, skilling can provide women with occupational choices and expand their work opportunities.
• Women in India who have attended skills training programmes, whether formal or informal, are more likely to be in the workforce, regardless of educational levels.
• Therefore, in 2015 the Union government launched the National Skill Development Mission, which in its policy document emphasises that women constitute half the demographic dividend and skilling could be the key to increasing their participation in the country’s labour force.

Working in informal sector:

• In India, the skilling of women is a far greater challenge than skilling men owing to the nature of women’s work as most women in India are employed in low-skill and low-paying work, with neither social protection nor job security.
• In India a higher percentage of women workers are part of the informal economy working as daily-wage agricultural labourers, at construction sites, as self-employed micro-entrepreneurs, or engaged in home-based work.
• Gender discrimination is more severe in the informal sector than in the formal sector, with women informal workers receiving less than half the male wage rate.

Trapped in a vicious cycle:

• According to a 2018 report by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), India is trapped in a vicious cycle when it comes to skilling its informal workforce.
• Greater informality leads to lower incentives to acquire new skills, while employers prefer machinery over labour when faced with inadequately skilled workers.
• Thus, few new jobs are created, driving India’s workforce further into informality and in the case of the female workforce, pervading informality is added to other challenges that keep them from participating in work – such as the burdens of family and caregiving, restrictive social norms, and limitations on mobility.

Possible way forward:

• A bottom-up approach to skilling could lead to better results which involves using local self-help group leaders to identify women workers with supportive families, and providing these women with relevant information to encourage them to take up skilling.
• Families of female trainees expressed concern for the women’s safety when they were offered jobs outside their district or state; thus, providing migration support to women could improve skilling and employment outcomes.
• The pandemic and the “new normal” have speeded up the adoption of digital technology, transformed the world of work, and upended the demands of the market; thus, skilling women through public-private partnerships could be the way forward for inclusive digital skilling, especially for women.