9/28/21, 4:48 AM Evernote shared notebook: society

Women issues - Gender Parity/Gender Gap

Wednesday, September 9 2015, 3:31 PM

Issue - Report on Gender gap by World Bank

  The World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report ranked India at 139 out of 145 countries on the economic participation and opportunity gap.

Concerns
  India’s overall female labour force participation (FLFP) rate has dropped from 35% in 1991 to 27% in 2014 while the world average is around 50%.

  India is ranked among the worst of 48 countries in terms of female leadership as per a nonprofit researcher, the Conference Board’s extensive survey.

Measures to Increase Female Employees

  Diversity targets to push organizations to identify women with potential and employ them.
  Extending maternity leave from the grossly insufficient legally sanctioned three months.
  Deep organizational belief in the benefit of increasing women’s participation.
  Questioning the ‘ideal worker’ definition which mostly subscribes to the male stereotypes in terms of twentyfour-seven responsiveness and long work hours.
  Creating and celebrating female role models, encouraging women employees to do better.
  Encouraging flexibility across workplace like sabbaticals and option of working from home.
  Creating awareness against unconscious and conscious gender biases.

Way forward
Without deep organisational beleif, the effect of all policy measures will remain superficial and even counter-productive
  A widely covered IMF estimate points out that shrinking the gender differences in employment could expand India’s GDP by 27%.
. Societal change will be the largest needle mover, but a constant push through the government, organizations and individualsis critical to bend societal norms for the
better.

Issue - Gender Pay Gap

Recently released Salary Index Report of online service provider Monster highlights gender pay gap in India.
Gender Pay gap is as high as 27%.
Men earned a median gross hourly salary of Rs. 288.68, while women earned Rs. 207.85.
Sector-wise analysis
Gender pay gap was highest in manufacturing sector (34.9 per cent)
Lowest in the BFSI and Transport, logistics, communication, equally standing at 17.7%

Reasons Behind Gender Pay Gap

Preference for male employees over female employees
Preference for promotion of male employees to supervisory positions
Career breaks of women due to parenthood duties and other socio-cultural factors.

Reasons for economic inequality

Daughterly guilts haunts many women as they don’t want to leaver elderly parents in others care
Affluence of male breadwinners has gone up in the last two decades or so

Impact of economic inequality

gender wage gaps directly contribute to income inequality
higher gaps in labor force participation rates between men and women result in inequality of earnings between sexes.
Women are more likely to work in the informal economy, in which earnings are lower, which widens the gender earnings gap and exacerbates income inequality.
inequality of opportunities, such as unequal access to education, health services, and finance are prevalent between men and women, and are strongly associated with
income inequality.
lack of gender equity imposes large economic costs as it hampers productivity and weighs on growth.

Issue - Maharasthra allows women to work in night shifts

Maharashtra will join other States like Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh who are making efforts to allow women to work in night shifts
Bill also allows employees to get paid leave after working for 90 days instead of the earlier 240 days or more.

Issue - gender Parity

SOCIAL BENEFITS
Workforce parity creates an atmosphere of equality for women. Their presence in public life ensure that their issues are not neglected and the male dominated society
pays due attention to it.
Women presence at large give them peer backing and strength to raise voice. This helps break the culture of silence responsible for their oppression.
Moreover it sensitises the society towards women. This results in a healthy atmosphere for women to develop to their full potential.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS
In terms of abilities and skills women are second to none. Their addition into workforce raises the quality of workforce. It also brings in competition necessary for
efficiency and effectiveness in economic sphere.
Women participation also need some pre-established infrastructure like roads, transportation facility, electricity and security. All these have direct impact in boosting the
economy

Analysis
Because of criticality of women's role in family, the system of gender parity has to be evolved through its own pace and not in dictated terms. Otherwise, there could be
unforeseen implications of gender parity, such as - breakdown of family, improper parenting, are few to name.
When we look at west and appreciate the gender parity, we also have to appreciate the way it was evolved through time, They have been modernised and democratised
2 or 3 centuries before us.
We also have to look at the fragility of institution of family, especially in USA. Rates of divorces and cases of single parenting are rampant.
Thus, it is prudent to facilitate gender parity in Indian society through a steering mechanism and adding fuel wherever it requires. It will require a judicious mix of pro-
women legislations, such as Hindu Marriage Act, Succession Act, Anti-Dowry Act, Protection of Women at Workplace Act, etc

Conclusion for mains answer

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9/28/21, 4:48 AM Evernote shared notebook: society
 it is not just the moral or the constitutional requirement but also the necessity of time to stop neglecting this tremendous reservoir of potential and assimilate them whole
heartily into the socio-economic setup of the nation.

Women in banking
In India, only one in 10 companies across all sectors have a woman at the helm, but more than half of these are from the financial services sector

Reasons:
Women tend to be more conservative, more structured, more careful about money, good leaders and better team players
Banking requires sound instinct and intellectual capability to analyse businesses.Women are better at it.
Banking requires a lot of reliance on external network and research suggests women are very strong in external networking and more objective and performance-
oriented in their roles within the organisation
banking does not present women with the challenges and stereotypes other sectors such as manufacturing pose. Unlike in manufacturing, banking in a way, did not have
a shop-floor (and therefore no problem of women having to do night shifts)
banks started to intentionally build diversity much earlier than other sectors.
Banking as a career offers women the opportunity to better balance their family and professional careers,

Other sectors has to do many things to create enabling environment for women to reach top posts and promoting women empowerment-
Flexible benefits like during maternity, work from home options, providing child care centres at work places.
Majority of women being in unorganized sector, proper facilities like rest rooms, full pay, benefits like health and life insurance etc are denied. Sectors like MSMEs can
thrive if these facilities are provided.
Strict Implementation of laws like Prevention of Sexual harrassment at work place, 2012 etc would help in creating a positive environment. Creating special women cells
to handle such problems would help in empowering women and curbing such issues.
Equality in areas of pay, perks, assignment of work, career opportunities etc can help in better and quicker development of their career profiles on par with men.
In public sector areas like law and order maintenance etc it is creating of reservations in jobs and new women wings can help in both capacity building along with
bringing gender parity.

Gender parity in schools

the gender parity index has gone from 0.6 to 0.9 for secondary schools and from 0.54 to 0.8 for higher education.
The gender parity index which was 0.76 in 1991 is 1 now for primary schooling.

Gender gap at work

At 33%, India’s female labour force participation rate is among the lowest in the world. The global average is 50% and in East Asia, 63%.
The gap between male and female participation rates stands at 52% in India—the widest in the Group of 20 nations.
To top it all, the female labour force participation rate has been declining since 2005.
One reason for this low level of participation may be the increased time spent in educational institutions by women.
But entry barriers to the labour market are certainly part of this story.
There is, probably, an insider-outsider effect at work for women in labour markets.
Incumbent workers (males) have an advantage in holding existing jobs.

Human development report

Gender equality - India’s rank 127/148 (Gender development index)
Countries ranked on absolute deviation from Gender parity on the HDI
Penalised for the gaps that disfavour men too.
Afghanistan is most unequal

Mckinsey Report  - ‘The Power of Parity’

India’s gross domestic product (GDP) could see a jump of about 60% by 2025 if the gender inequality issue in society is resolved and more women are
allowed to join the workforce.
According to the analysis of 95 countries, female workers currently generate about 37% of the world’s GDP, considerably lower than their 50% share of the global
working-age population suggests is possible.
In India, the share of regional GDP generated by women is only 17%.

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