Female Worker Participation in India

Increasing worker participation ratio is a key feature of economies which move from the low income to the middle income level. However, in India the reverse is happening. The worker participation ratio is decreasing instead of increasing. This means that the country is seeing less output which means less prosperity. Productivity and worker participation ratio increase is the key to a growing GDP. But that is not happening in India. Female participation ratio is falling at a drastic rate, as higher income levels mean that females are getting out of low income jobs to become homemakers. The salary level for the average urban India is so pathetic, especially for females that it makes no sense for them to work. As soon as they go above the sustenance level, they stop working. While I don’t think the NSSO is capturing the output due to homemakers, it is still an alarming number.

For India to become even a middle income country, the female participation ratio needs to be 40-50%, as is the case with most other countries. However seeing across cities, you just see 10-20%. The reason is that the jobs available are quite bad and even security is a big problem. The horrendous rape in India’s capital brought out the problem the females face while working in mainstream jobs. It is a no-brainer to stay and tend the house rather than going and risking rapes for a 10k month job. You would save 3-4k by staying and doing home chores anyway.

India faces massive structural problems and the leaders/politicians don’t give 2 hoots. Half of them seem totally incompetent (a minister forced the archaeological agency to dig for gold after a saint saw a dream of buried treasure), while the competent ones are totally corrupt. Even if they are not corrupt, they have accepted the totally corrupt system for what it is – Live and Let Live.

Source Hindu