Abstract:
In this paper we have attempted to raise an issue which has always
concerned feminist scholars- the sex segregation of jobs and its
perpetuation over time to the disadvantage of women workers, in the
context of the nineties, the period of globalisation in India. Our data
show that horizontal segregation indicated by the index of dissimilarity
has declined during the period 1987-88 and 1993-94 in urban areas but
has increased slightly in rural areas. Given the aggregate nature of the
data, the indices are very low. Women are more mobile between
establishments while hardly achieving any upward mobility in terms of
status/occupation. More importantly, we emphasise the need to include
women’s domestic work as a category of work in such an economic
analysis, arguing that a growing proportion of women (or ‘working’
days of women) moving into the activity ‘not in the labour force’ whether
voluntary or involuntary, reduces their mobility. It tends to enhance
women’s dependence, making them economically vulnerable and hence
weakens their ‘bargaining position’ within the household and outside
it. Unlike men, for whom the need to find employment is clearly central,
for women full time domesticity is not regarded as ‘unnatural’. Our
attention was drawn sharply in this direction based on recent female
work participation data for Kerala, macro and micro, suggesting a
‘voluntary’ withdrawal of women from the labour force. The state boasts
of the high(est) female literacy rates among all states of India; yet as
recent studies have shown it scores poorly in terms of what are termed as
non-conventional indicators attempting to capture power and
subordination.
