Invest in women. Accelerate progress

In order to build thriving economies and ensure a healthy planet, gender equality and women’s well-being are no longer options but imperatives. However, despite steady economic growth worldwide, women are largely undertapped with respect to their contribution to GDP and socio-economic exclusion. 

Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi once pointed out that paying women less than men was a “burning hole in our collective conscience.’’ Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Facebook, articulated the same thought in her book, ‘Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead’. Closer home, Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar Shaw faced bias and scepticism from investors. Kiran Bedi, who was the first woman IPS officer, also had to face prejudice and resistance in the male-dominated system.

According to a Union Labour Ministry survey, only 36.6 per cent of women in India are part of the labour force. If India wants to achieve its ambitious goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy, more women must be encouraged to join the workforce. Although their participation is higher in the unorganised sector, the same doesn’t reflect in the organised sector.

Another issue that women face is the wage disparity between men and women. Globally, women are paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men for doing the same job; and in India, women get a mere 70 cents for every dollar that their male counterparts earn. The gap widens for women of colour, immigrants, and care-giving mothers.

Also, women tend to face the ‘motherhood penalty’ which pushes them either to take a career break or to explore casual and part-time work. Motherhood demands a heavy penalty from women, as they lose out on 60% of their income in the first 10 years after childbirth. They are less likely to be rehired for the same position that they left before bearing children. Worldwide, there is a common phenomenon wherein women volunteer to take career breaks for child care. Later, when they rejoin the workforce, they are paid less as they have lost out on their work experience. Thus, the motherhood penalty disincentivizes women from rejoining the labour force. A study conducted in 134 countries states that 24 per cent of mothers leave the workforce after the birth of their first child, 17 per cent do not rejoin after five years, and 15 per cent still choose to remain out of the workforce after 10 years.

The World Economic Forum has ranked India 135 among 146 countries in its Global Gender Gap Index, published in 2022. In India, 73 per cent of women leave the workforce after childbirth.

Governments across the world are fighting this issue. Several countries, including Germany, Iceland, Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, and Austria, have introduced measures to ensure gender equality at work, and India has also encouraged child care leave of absence and rewarding motherhood subsidies. It was the first emerging economy to assign quotas for women on corporate boards in 2013. However, governments alone will not be able to enforce workplace equality until things change at the grass-roots level.

A paradigm shift is needed in the way women and their roles in society are perceived—from how parenting was seen in the past to how it is perceived today. It ought to be seen as a shared responsibility between both parents, but even today, men spend only a third of their time on unpaid chores. In contrast, women are expected to strike the perfect work-life balance. In this quest, they encounter various mental and physical problems like burnout, stress, depression, and insomnia. To put it concisely, “We expect women to work like they don’t have children and raise children as if they don’t work.” Young women are seen as more aspiring and career-oriented as compared to women belonging to older generations.

On a positive note, pay disparity is lower in government organisations because of their transparent practices. Stereotypes are breaking everywhere; women are now assigned combat roles in the armed forces. However, institutional and policy interventions are needed to ensure equal opportunity and equal pay. The UN fittingly chose this year’s International Women’s Day theme to be “Invest in women: Accelerate progress.” 

(The writer is an associate professor, School of Commerce, Finance & Accountancy, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru)