15 Women and Work

Priyanka Gupta

epgp books

 

 

 

Introduction

 

According to the latest, 2015 Human Development Report, Rethinking Work for Human Development, work is the means for unleashing human potential, creativity, innovation and spirits. It is essential to make human lives productive, worthwhile and meaningful. It enables people to earn a living, gives them a means to participate in society, provides them with security and gives them a sense of dignity. Work is thus inherently and intrinsically linked to human development. However, this very understanding of work gets problematical when it‘s understood in relation to women‘s work or labour. Predominantly, in most societies both men and women work, however they perform different chores and tasks which has different impact and outcomes in general. In addition, cultural embeddings play a very crucial role in shaping the very definition of work locally and globally. The social and cultural conditions accorded to women, superstitious beliefs and religious sanctions and most importantly overriding patriarchal value system ensures that women continue to remain as ‗dependents‘ for both sustenance and financial support. Men and women have historically been seen as having different tasks in the household and in the paid labor market. Women have been held responsible for taking care of the household chores, causing them to work mainly within the confines of their homes. Men, on the other hand, have been more likely to work outside the household for monetary compensation. In the course of the 20th century, these differences have begun to disappear. In recent times, changes are visible, but only in those parts of the world where there have been remarkable changes in attitude and thoughts as far as women‘s labour and her contribution to the growth of the economy is concerned. These changes involve the way resources like education, employment, equal pay for equal work and most importantly safe and secure working conditions are made available to women.

 

Keeping this in mind, in this module we will explore the gendered nature of work that women do. It will begin with understanding ways and reasons for gender stereotyping of jobs globally. Then, we try and understand how women‘s work remains to be predominantly under-paid as well as unpaid. Further, it will in detail explore the new kinds of gender gaps that exist in the global labor market with special reference to India. Following which, we will discuss the gendered nature of the labour force participation. We will then dwell at length on the concept of feminization of labour and its impact on society at large. Next, the module proceeds to look at women‘s status in both in the formal and informal economy and how there are practices within these sectors where gender stereotyping is rampant and how women‘s role as primarily care takers and reproducers is further exploited globally. Lastly, we will look at the concept of glass ceiling effect that hinders women‘s chances of promotion and better job profiles in the corporate sector .

 

Gender stereotyping of Jobs in global economy

 

UN Women Deputy Director and Assistant Secretary-General Lakshmi Puri, in a speech, said: ―Stereotypes exist in all societies. How we perceive each other can be determined through oversimplified assumptions about people based on particular traits, such as race, sex, age, etc. They are based on socially constructed norms, practices and beliefs. They are often cultural, and religion-based and -fostered, and reflect underlying power relations. Negative stereotypes hinder peoples’ ability to fulfill their potential by limiting choices and opportunities. They translate into practical policies, laws and practices that cause harm to women on the ground. The effect of ―this on the mental and physical integrity of women is to deprive them of equal knowledge, exercise and enjoyment of rights and fundamental freedoms. Stereotypes justify gender discrimination more broadly and reinforce and perpetuate historical and structural patterns of discrimination. Such stereotypes thus lead to increasing gaps within the labour force and curtail women‘s full participation in global economy. According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2014, the gender gap for economic participation and opportunity stands at 60% worldwide – measured by the difference between women‘s labour force participation, wages, and incomes as compared to men. Globally, women are only 14.6 percent of executive officers, 8.1 percent of top earners, and 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.

 

On similar lines more examples of these include gender pay gap, occupational segregation, denial of promotions to leadership, glass ceiling in different professions, increased casualization of women workers and feminization of poverty, trafficking, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, honour killings, violence against women in domestic spheres, work place and public spaces, and lower levels of equation and work opportunities. In fact,, the paradox is that with better access to education for women the objective of equal economic opportunities for them hasn‘t been achieved yet. Reconciliation of family and work remains exclusively a female affair. This undermines the family and increases the discrimination of women in the labour market. No country in the world has managed to close the economic participation gap. Women continue to be underemployed, underpaid and underrepresented in top managerial and executive positions in business and politics. This results in continuous waste of the human talent and impedes economic growth. The common goals for global sustainable growth and poverty reduction are impossible to achieve without the greater involvement of women in economic and political life. Women are key to creating more jobs, boosting research and development, encouraging innovation, increasing competitiveness and fighting social exclusion. Gender equality is often viewed as a costly endeavor. But it is time to recognize that the cost of inequality is much higher.

 

Women’s work as unpaid work

 

With the dominant understanding of work as ‗productive‘, work participation rates for women have always remained low as compared to their men counterparts. Even at the ideological level women are considered as ‗non-working‘. Women are the bigger workforce as they are more likely than men to undertake ‗unpaid‘ activities, whether economic or non-economic, women are also more likely than men to be involved simultaneously in unpaid care work and in unpaid or low-paid economic activity. More generally, women are less likely than men to be engaged in full-time regular employment as ‗employees‘ in formal sector enterprises, which is the simplest form of work to capture in surveys. Often the work of women is unrecognized by society, their families and even themselves. They are instead regarded as homemakers, and thus not economically active, even though they are engaged in economic work.

 

Following are the areas in which women‘s contribution as ‗workers‘ is invisible and remains unpaid-

 

Care work- Care work involves nurturing members of the family by doing household work like cooking, washing clothes, cleaning, collecting of water and fuel and several other such domestic task. It simultaneously also involves the subsistence labour of women undertaken by her for the survival of the family and not for the market. Because care work is located within household it‘s considered as ‗labour of love‘ is essentialised and naturalised and remains unpaid a nd invisiblised. Feminists groups have argued that by making this care work within the household as unpaid, the capitalist market benefits the maximum as it enables rejuvenation of existing labour force and reproduction of future generations for free of cost. Women as care workers are mere nurturers, reproducers, homemakers and housewives solely dependent on the male bread winning partners. (Tambe, 2010)

 

Home-based production- This involves women‘s participation in home based occupations. These typically include occupations like farming, pottery, making of cloth and wool, pickles, and other domestic industries. These industries are extensively organised by the use of family labour as it involves flexibility of time and less costs of production. Women‘s work is productive as they consist of a large chunk of the labour force in these industries and their labour is unpaid as it is recognised not as work but as a part of their domestic duty. This unpaid family labour is also common in modern occupations like grocery shops, vegetable vendors etc. Its because of this subsidizing and crucial labour that women offer within home based productions that doemtic industries survive and sustain.(ibid)

 

Gender gap in labour work force participation

 

Economic empowerment are taken to be one of the indices of empowerment in the status of women. In fact, there are enough number of researches done to prove women‘s economic independence not only promotes her own self being but also that of the family, community and society. The World Bank Policy Paper on ‗Enhancing Women‘s Participation in Economic Development‘ (1994) has stated that investing proportionally more in women than in men – in education, heath family planning, access to land, inputs and extension-is an important part of developmental strategy as well as an act of social justice. It directly reduces poverty through substantial social and economic payoffs. Studies show how income controlled by women is more likely to be spent on household needs rather than income controlled by men. (p. 194)

 

Despite some progress made over the last few decades in increasing women‘s labour force participation and narrowing gender gaps in wages, gender equality in the world of work still remains an elusive goal. In particular, in the developing world, women continue to form a large majority of the world‘s working poor, earn less income, and are more often affected by long-term unemployment than men. This is due to women‘s socio-economic disadvantages caused by gender-based discrimination and their double roles of being a worker and a care taker for the society. Women often have less access to productive resources, education, and skills development and labour market opportunities than men in many societies. Largely, this is because of persistent social norms ascribing gender roles, which are often, slow to change. Furthermore, women continue to undertake most of unpaid care work, which has become an increasing challenge in their efforts to engage in productive work, both in subsistence agriculture and market economy. The segmentation in the labour market leads to two dominant types of gender discrimination (Sen : 2012)

  1. Wage differentials between men and women
  2. Discrimination in terms of concentration of women in particular sectors mainly primary which limits them to do certain kinds of jobs in the teaching and other care-work based industry like nursing and housekeeping.

 

Women make up a little over half the world‘s population, but their contribution to measured economic activity, growth, and well-being is far below its potential, with serious macroeconomic consequences. Despite significant progress in recent decades, where women‘s position in society has undergone perceptible yet gradual change and there is growing visibility of them in both organized and unorganized sector, labour markets across the world particularly in developing countries remain divided along gender lines, and progress toward gender equality seems to have stalled. According to an ILO report in 2014, Female labour force participation (FLFP) has remained lower than male participation, women account for most unpaid work, and when women are employed in paid work, they are overrepresented in the informal sector and are among the poor. They also face significant wage differentials vis-à-vis their male colleagues. In many countries, distortions and discrimination in the labor market restrict women‘s options for paid work, and female representation in senior positions and entrepreneurship remains low.

 

Some of the factors that affect women‘s full participation in the labour market are-(Sen, 2012 pp. 99)

  • Segmentation in the labour market which works against women.
  • Adverse impact of technological growth of women.
  • Lack of unionization for defending women‘s‘ rights as workers
  • Absence of purposeful human resource development policy aimed at improving women‘s employment and productivity through training.
  • Conceptual ambiguities about social and economic conditions of women in different parts of the globe.

 

The common argument of ‗equal pay for equal work‘ dominantly seems deceptive at many levels. Inherently marginalized groups like women, children, tribal communities, scheduled castes and the like continue to be exploited at the hands of the dominant groups. Occupational segregation is one way through which gender inequalities at the workplace is maintained both within the formal and informal economy. Occupational segregation refers to the distribution of people across and within occupations and jobs, based upon demographic characteristics, most often gender. This naturalization and desiring of occupational segregation at workplace further reduces women‘s chances as recognized workers. Occupational segregation operates both horizontally and vertically. Women are crowded in the bottom and are merely present as tokens on the top of in the occupation hierarchy. This kind of segregation prohibits women from moving upward leading to wage disparities.

 

Feminization of Labour

 

Kanji and Menon-Sen (2001) have explained the term ‗feminisation of labour‘ in two ways. Firstly, it is used to refer to the rapid and substantial increase in the proportions of women in paid work over the last two decades. At the global level, about 70% in the 20–54 age groups are members of the paid workforce. In developing countries as a group, the figure is lower at 60%. (United Nations, 1999). The problems is further complicated because these figures do not capture women‘s participation in rural and urban informal sectors in developing countries which is usually less visible and therefore undercounted. However, this low wage informal sector continues to be an important employer of poor women in developing and transition countries (Mehra and Gammaye, 1999). The trend in the feminisation of labour has been accompanied by a shift in employment from manufacturing to services in developed countries, and from agriculture to manufacturing and services in developing countries. Second, the term ‗feminisation of labour‘ is also used to describe the flexibilisation of labour for women and men, a fallout of the changing nature of employment where irregular conditions once thought to be the hallmark of women‘s ‗secondary‘ employment have become widespread for both sexes. Informal activities, subcontracting, part-time work and home-based work have proliferated while rates of unionisation have declined (Standing, 1999). In the South zone in particular, standard labour legislation has applied to fewer workers, because governments have either not enforced it or abolished it outright, or because existing legislation is weak and enterprises have been able to circumvent and bypass it. The deregulation of labour markets, fragmentation of production processes, de-industrialisation and emergence of new areas of export specialisation have all generated an increased demand for low-paid, flexible female labour.

 

Women workers in Formal/ organized sector

 

Ghosh and et.al (2014) have pointed out that with the introduction and advancement of education and changing mindset of ‗generation-Y‘ have compelled women to think differently maintaining social values and ethics. Besides, globalization and changes in economic and social condition act as positive catalyst for changing of the role and self perception (Stedham & Yamamura,2004). Women are participating in large numbers€ in the public domain and progressing towards managerial ranks or higher level of management of their participating organization. But the career path does not welcome women with red carpet. In spite of these positive changes, women still have to face intangible barriers in climbing up the corporate ladder.

 

The formal sector is an organized system of employment with clear written rules of recruitment, agreement and responsibilities. A standardized relationship between the employer and employee is maintained through a formal contract. According to ILO report 2014,over the past two decades, female labour force participation rates have globally fallen, from 57 to 55 per cent. Women and men tend to work in different sectors, occupations and firms. Women consistently earn less than men, mainly because of their concentration into low paid activities and lower access to productive inputs. Globally, women are paid less than men. Women in most countries on average only 60 to 75 per cent of men‘s wages. Adverse norms and overlapping constraints are major obstacles in the way of expansion of women‘s economic activities. As farmer and entrepreneurs, they do not enjoy equal access to credit, land or bank accounts. Biased norms restrict opportunities by establishing gender roles early in life that dictate the use of time and limiting girl‘s expectations. This helps to gain why progress in overcoming gender gaps in one area, such as school enrolment, may not expand a woman‘s economic opportunities if social norms or gender-biased regulations limit her activity. Legal barriers also remain a remarkably common barrier to women‘s work. Across 143 economies in 2013, 128 had at least one legal difference in how women and men are treated; 56 countries have more than five such barriers, and 28, more than ten. These barriers include restricting women‘s ability to access institutions (such as obtaining an ID card), own property, build credit, or get a job. 79 countries also posed a restriction to the types of jobs women can do. In 15 economies, husbands can prevent their wives from working.

 

Historically, participation in the formal economy has been probably the most important route to women‘s empowerment and increased gender equality. Formal employment can increase a woman‘s access to skills development, market information, credit, technology and other productive assets, social protection, pensions and social safety nets, and the means to acquire personal wealth in the form of land, housing and capital. The resulting enhancements to her human and economic resource base contribute to higher productivity, economic empowerment and increased economic status, which in turn can lead to higher social status; more equal power relations with men, as well as greater autonomy and negotiating power. Participation in paid work has also been associated with a reduced likelihood of domestic violence.

 

Within the formal sector women are seen in high numbers in the following professions-

  • Teaching
  • Human Resources
  • Air-hostess/Flight Attendants
  • Receptionists

 

Glass Ceiling Effect

 

The term glass ceiling was used in a 1984 book, The Working Woman Report, by Gay Bryant. Later it was used in a 1986 Wall Street Journal article on barriers to women in high corporate positions. As is a political term it describes describe “the unseen, yet unbreakable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.‖ Its understood as a metaphor for the hard-to-see informal barriers that keep minorities and women from getting promotions, pay raises and further opportunities. It is glass because it’s not usually a visible barrier, and a worker may not be aware of its existence until s/he “hits” the barrier. The glass ceiling is not simply a barrier for an individual, based on the person’s inability to handle a higher-level job. Rather, the glass ceiling applies to women as a group who are kept from advancing higher because they are women.

 

The invisible hurdles that lead to glass ceiling are as follows (Tambe. 2010)

  • Familial responsibilities of women which are deemed as their primary role even at the workplace.
  • Hostile workplace environment.
  • Sexual harassment at workplace as women are regarded as sexual objects.
  • Managerial and supervisory jobs seen as masculine and thus unsuitable for women as they are poor managers and decision makers.

 

According to Community Business, a Hong Kong-based non-profit organisation dedicated to the field of diversity and inclusion , of the 1,112 directorship positions among the Bombay Stock Exchange 100 companies, only 48 women have been appointed, according to. That constitutes only 5.3 per cent of such positions, significantly lower than Canada, 15 per cent, and the US, 14.5 per cent. While companies in the new sectors of India’s economy are attempting to change that trend, they are lagging the multinationals. India’s Women in Leadership Forum said last year that top businesses such as the IT company Tata Consultancy Services, the IT services company Zensar Technologies and JSW Steel have 5 per cent to 6 per cent of senior positions occupied by women. Two thirds of our top 500 companies belong to family business groups and their succession typically progresses with a strong male preference. Among general executives, too, family responsibilities often hurt career progressions of women in the early 30s and they lose ground to their male rivals who rise to the top.

 

The Case of Indra Nooyi

 

Indra Nooyi, a married mother of two from a modest middle-class background, was elected the chairman of PepsiCo in 2007 .”If you are a woman and especially a person of colour, there are two strikes against you,” Mrs Nooyi, 56, said at a lecture at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, a few years before she got the job. “Immigrant, person of colour and woman – that is three strikes against you. So I have to work extra hard. More hours, yes. More sacrifices and trade-offs, yes. That has been my journey.” Mrs Nooyi, who left India at 23 to study at Yale Management School, held various jobs at Johnson & Johnson, Boston Consulting Group and Motorola before she landed the job at PepsiCo. Her pay package last year was worth US$10.66 million . She was ranked number one on Fortune magazine’s list of the 50 most powerful women and number six on Forbes magazine’s list of the World’s 100 most powerful women last year. But while Mrs Nooyi breached the imaginary glass ceiling with poise, it is lonely at the top. Only a handful of Indian women have managed to ascend the highly competitive corporate ladders till date. (The National:2011)

 

Women workers in the informal/unorganized sector

 

On the other hand, the informal sector exists merely on verbal understanding, as it does not have any written rules or agreements. It does not have fixed wages or hours and mostly relies on daily earnings. Women are more likely than men to work in an informal environment. As per the ILO report (2014) in South Asia, over 80 of women in non-agricultural jobs are in informal employment, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 74 per cent, and in Latin America and the Caribbean, 54 per cent. In rural areas, many women derive their livelihoods from small-scale farming, almost always informal and often unpaid. Despite income earned from informal work, women are also the majority of the poor. Just as they earn less than men in the formal economy, so do they earn less in the informal sector.

 

The informal sector is the primary source of employment for unsalaried women, in the form of self-employment (selling directly to the consumer), contract labour (producing for another organization regularly), casual labour (working on and off for other organizations) or contributing family members. The most prevalent forms of work are as street vendors or home-based producers (that is, without leaving the confines of the home for production). According to a 2011 paper of the International Labour Organization, 83.8 % of South Asian women are engaged in so called ‗vulnerable employment‘. The work that these women are doing can in most cases be qualified as ‗casual labour‘, piece-work such as the manufacturing of garments and other small items, produced within the restraints of the workers‘ household. Informal labour is generally qualified by the absence of decent labour conditions as recommended by the ILO and a lack of any sort of secure and sufficient wages. Women workers present a considerable share of this so called informal workforce, a share that has in fact risen substantially over the last 20 years. Precisely this increase in the informal economy has to be critical because it mirrors the developments in the formal economy. Women in the informal sector usually occupy places as-

 

1.      Agricultural workers

2.      Rag pickers

3.      Beedi Industry

4.      Domestic helps/maids

5.      Street vendors

6.      Construction workers

7.      Sweat-shirt industry

 

Chen (2001) has outlined the following ways in which women get exploited in the informal economy.

  1. fewer women than men ‗hire‘ labour, that is, women are employees rather than employers;
  2. wages are lower in the informal sector than in the formal sector, and within the informal sector, women earn on average, a lower wage than men, with the gender-wage-gap being greater than in the formal sector;
  3. women are more visible in the ‗lower-value-added‘ activities of the informal economy;
  4. the most invisible informal workers, namely the home based producers, contribute the most to global trade as they form a significant share of the workforce in key export industries involving manual tasks or labour intensive operations, and;
  5. the outsourcing of goods and services of the formal sector to the informal economy is increasing.

 

Case study from India

 

SELF-EMPLOYED WOMEN’S ASSOCIATION (SEWA)

 

Informal workers‘ lack of power in the labor market stems in large part to their invisibility as a group. A pioneering Indian woman named Ela Bhatt found a solution when she formed the first ever women‘s trade union of self-employed women in 1972, and successfully registered a group of informal women workers as a union. SEWA was able to negotiate with textile manufacturers on behalf of these self-employed women who were doing piece work at home and in factories, while it developed at the same time services that improved the women‘s economic literacy, skills and bargaining power. It expanded to form other cooperatives, such as those of street vendors or vegetable sellers or craft producers. In time, it established a microenterprise loan program that became adopted by the Grameen bank. The success of this grass root organization in organizing and growing the economic capacity of informal women workers who form its membership has been such that India‘s government invited SEWA in 2006 to help formulate a national policy on home-based work. Now with its 1.2 million members nationwide, SEWA also succeeded in lobbying the government to pass a social security bill for informal sector workers. SEWA has been instrumental in forming global partnerships that resulted in the founding of HomeNet, an international alliance of home-based workers, and StreetNet, which is an alliance of street vendors. (Natividad: ____)

 

Conclusion

 

Gender inequalities in time use are still large and persistent in all countries. It is very important to acknowledge to understand how within the economy men workers are perceived as the norm and women as an oddness. Its crucial to understand that gendered division of labour that easily gets absorbed in the way economies function globally. The subordination of women in the economy is more out of the need to ensure patriarchal practices are kept intact within capitalist societies. When paid and unpaid work are combined, women in developing countries work more than men, with less time for education, leisure, political participation and self-care. Despite some improvements over the last 50 years, in virtually every country, men spend more time on leisure each day while women spend more time doing unpaid housework. When more women work, economies grow. An increase in female labour force participation—or a reduction in the gap between women‘s and men‘s labour force participation—results in faster economic growth.

you can view video on Women and Work

References