Abstract:
Reported as ‘Missing labour force in India’ the recent fluctuations
in the labour participation are probably due to the short-term shifts in
activities of women responding to favorable economic conditions. Such
fluctuations need to be placed in the context of structural change in
labour participation wherein the share of women in labour force, as well
as labour participation rate of women had been declining for the last
quarter of a century; while women had been increasingly confined to
unpaid household domestic activities with improvement in economic
well being of the household. Apparently, the gendered division of
household labour, stigma attached to paid labour and status production
has precipitated withdrawal from paid work as a strategy to reduce the
double burden of women. Upward social mobility in the Indian
patriarchal society in the wake of growing incomes is probably
symbolized by women’s withdrawal from paid labour. Female
participation in school education has increased substantially, yet
women’s withdrawal from the labour market is positively associated
with levels of education. This may indicate that patriarchal norms are
probably modernized, internalized and mediated through women
themselves. It also signals discouraged worker effect probably
attributable to gender discrimination in the labour market and gendered
progression in education. Even under such adverse conditions
employment growth of women is not stagnant. Those who do enter and
remain in the labour market are women from the most vulnerable
households, as marginalized informal paid labour, thus feminizing the
most precarious forms of labour in the country.
