It’s a fact. Based on data. Fewer and fewer women in India seem to be choosing to work. Even in rural areas – where economic necessity would drive women to step out of the home to work – the numbers seem alarming to say the least.

The data about women at work speaks or does it?

While the Indian Census estimates male workers to be above 50 % of the male population, similar numbers of estimates of female workers as a percentage of India’s female population are very low. The numbers grew from 14 % in 1971 to 25 % by 2011.

Data collected by NSS shows that while around 54 % of the male population in both rural and urban areas was working – similar percentages for women were only 24.8 % in rural and 14.7 % in urban areas.

As per NSSO data – India’s Female Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR)— which is basically the share of women of working age – who report either being employed or being available for work—has fallen to a low of 23.3% in 2017-18.

This means that more than three out of every four women in India are neither working nor seeking work. They are obviously running the house and taking care of their children.

Where are women in India working?

As expected, – rural women seem to be employed almost exclusively in the agriculture sector – while in urban areas – they seem to be garment workers, domestic cleaners and directors, and chief executives. The highly visible woman worker in IT, finance or even the media – seems to be non-existent with no numbers being reported in these categories.

The surprising presence of women ‘directors and chief executives’ – could possibly be accounted for by women running their own small-medium businesses or by women involved in family businesses.

So, while the data paints its own dark picture – that the percentage of women in the workforce is extremely low – one can safely say that women are very much a part of the workforce – it is just that the work they do is not recognized – hence not accounted for or remunerated at all.

The problem with the data and the conclusions from it

No set of economic data – calculates the role of the women who take care of their homes and bring up the next generation of our working population. Their contribution is seen to be zero – but it’s just that either this contribution is not seen as significant or there is no yardstick or principle by which this effort can be measured and added to our GDP.

The calculation of other forms of the contribution made by women in supporting roles is also fundamentally flawed. What about the woman who cooks food at home for her husband to sell at a roadside stall? Her work is not accounted for – because it is within the home or seen as part of the work done by her husband.

A woman’s contribution in agriculture, animal husbandry, collection and processing of forest material – gets zero recognition – both on the ground as well as in the numbers – even though a significant percentage of effort and production on a farm is delivered by women.

And what about those women who are unskilled workers – especially those working on construction sites? Those who run home businesses creating craft and food products for sale? The social workers who almost exclusively are responsible for and are driving change at the grassroots level?

Along with the lack of recognition of the effort put in by women who work in our economy, flawed definitions of what constitutes that work, lack of metrics to estimate the effort being delivered by women as valuable contributors to the economy – there seems to be another problem – that founder estimation of women workers in Census and NSS estimates.

So where are women today in terms of the workplace?

Women simply do not seem to exist. Or they do not seem to matter – when it comes to their role in the workforce. This is despite the fact that women seem to be doing better than men in exams for higher studies and even in work performance.

And yet –the latest NSSO data on youth (15-29 years) shows that participation of women in the workforce has dropped from 37.1 percent in 2004-05 and 24.4 percent in 2011-12 to just 16.4 percent in 2017-18. This is also a function of the fact that the very definition of women’s work in surveys is flawed or does not adhere to standard definitions of benchmarks.

I see that a younger urban woman is today a lot more picky about picking up a job – or open to, even leaving an existing one – if it is not up to her liking or does not meet the criteria of a salary package, work profile, internal work environment and more.

Also – with maternity leave increasing to 26 weeks – the possibility of women choosing not to return to the workforce is possibly increasing. Contributing factors could be the desire to put a child’s needs also triggered by lack of trusted childcare or a support system that would otherwise empower a woman to return to the workforce.

Experts put forward their analyses

Expert opinions such as the one shared by Bina Agarwal, professor of development economics and environment, University of Manchester are noteworthy in the context of the falling numbers of urban working women “. Women want to work, but lack jobs.

The 2011-12 NSS found that 32 percent of rural women engaged in domestic activities were willing to work if they found suitable jobs. The much-discussed low labor force participation among Indian women is not due to cultural norms, dom¬estic work burdens and undercounting. It’s increasingly due to lack of jobs.”

While there continue to be challenged with regard to the definition of the kind of data that needs to be collected and on the collection of data itself Renana Jhabvala, economist and social worker – associated with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), says there is no dearth of women seeking gainful employment.

The problem happens that when women enter the workforce, they don’t necessarily find the jobs they are seeking, they are not allowed to progress in the same way as men would, they most often don’t even have parity in pay, she feels.

Hence – many more women are opting to continue education, many are deterred by unsuitable jobs, the bias in pay and work conditions vis-a-vis male workers and not by the work itself. Indeed, once women take up jobs, factors like work atmosphere, safety, family support, etc influence their duration in the workforce.

My take on women at work

I have seen that women do begin their work lives with a lot of enthusiasm – but somewhere along the line that peters out. This could be due to the underlying feeling a woman is working to support the family’s main (and male) bread earner and possess equally if not more important caretaking responsibilities.

In their role as secondary earner – their job is mostly on the line when it comes to family welfare – triggered by their inherent compassion and willingness to sacrifice their own ambitions for family good.

Also, re-entry into the wor¬kforce after a break is often difficult, which partly explains the drop in par¬¬tici¬pation. From a lack of family support to the easy availability of labor for low value-¬added jobs—many are the factors that impede a return to work.

Going up the hierarchy – the informal “boys club” – tends to exclude women from their circle, mistakenly assuming that they don’t belong, or are different or not good enough – perceiving them to lacking in competence, ability to take responsibility and to deliver performance as per organization goals.

While there now conversations about “Diversity” – after the rules on Corporate Governance put down by the Companies Act of 2013 – merit-based on-ground implementation leaves much to be desired, as one sees family members being brought on board as directors to fulfill mandatory requirements.

This is the case not only in India but elsewhere in the world. The spirit of diversity also takes a beating every time a male candidate is considered more suitable versus a woman applying for the same job or even when being considered for a promotion.

In purely economic terms, if the more women work, the more they have to spend, and that would energize the economy but that is something that can happen only via changes at both the macro and micro level.

While the micro-level effort can only be a function of individual realization, effort and action, on the macro level there is the larger need to remove socio-economic barriers for women.

There is also an urgent need to the need to empower women in India through quality education and re-skilling – especially since automation will take over the templated, repetitive tasks in an organization, a lot of which is being done by women currently.

According to a Deloitte report titled ‘Empowering Women & Girls in India’ for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the recommendation for taking women ahead in the workforce is as follows

“In an urban workspace focus on complex problem solving, creativity, people management, and emotional intelligence are possible opportunities for gender-inclusive work cultures to emerge.

In addition, mentoring adolescent girls on vocational training and apprenticeship avenues can build a strong linkage towards considering technology linked training and employment options.”

The realization that women are adding incredible value by whatever it is that they do – is something that needs to happen sooner than later. The fight for that recognition, its measurement, and inclusion in the economic parameters of our growth, is something that will have to be driven by women themselves, I believe.

That’s where effort by and every woman on an ongoing, everyday basis will make the difference.

Only then will thereby action on the ground to ensure working conditions for women are conducive enough for them to not just want to work – but that they actually look forward to making it happen – every single day.