Do The New Labour Reforms Help Women?
There aren’t enough provisions in the labour reforms that address wage disparity by gender and female workforce upskilling.
India is currently on the brink of major legislative labour reforms. The Ministry of Labour and Employment is in the process of consolidating more than 40 labour laws that tackle several diverse and disparate labour issues into a set of four labour codes. These new codes will thus govern industrial relations, working conditions, remuneration, and social security. Given the unequal burdens of care work that fall on women and pressing questions of women’s safety, what does the state have in store to tackle the gender gap?
In 2018, India ranked 108 out of 149 countries in the Global Gender Gap Report published by the World Economic Forum. In order to arrive at the gender gap, four dimensions pertaining to economic opportunities, political participation, education attainment, and health and survival are measured with respect to both men and women. The gap, so as to say, are the adverse impacts of socio-economic and socio-cultural processes on women that act as barriers to the equitable access to education, health, employment, and political participation. Not surprisingly, the Indian female labour force participation stands at an unprecedented low of 23.3 percent.
The labour reforms have kickstarted conversations around minimum wages and social security. The Code of Wages 2019 tabled in the Lok Sabha consolidates the Payment of Wages Act 1936, Minimum Wages Act 1948, Payment of Bonus Act 1965 & Equal Remuneration Act of 1976. With minimum wages set to increase to Rs 176 per hour, the bulk of the country’s informal sector will benefit, albeit leaving room for better measures for labour welfare.
Upskilling Female Workforce: Need Of The Hour
Currently, men form 85 percent of the organized sector employment across manufacturing, transportation, and production while women comprise of more than 90 percent of the workforce of the unorganised sector, one that is characterised by lack of adequate regulation, low labour rights, low social security and lack of protectionism (such as protective labour laws and pension benefits) that the formal sector enjoys is.
The concentration of the female workforce in informal sectors continues to remain a cause of concern and while current labour reforms are aimed at higher minimum wages, the need of the hour is upskilling the female workforce so as to enable them to participate in the formal labour economy.
Wage Gaps Persist
Yet, the formal labour sector is not bereft of persisting gender inequities. Despite, forty-three years of legal protectionism, gender wage gaps continue to persist. According to an Oxfam study titled, ‘Mind the Gap – State of Employment in India,’ on average, women are paid 34 percent less than men for performing the same kind of workplace tasks. A study by the job portal Monster revealed that in the IT/ITES sector, women earn 26 percent less than men, while in the manufacturing sector women earn 24 percent less than men. The idea that men are the primary wage-earners while women’s income is the secondary source or the supplementary income continues to persist. Further, owing to various confidentiality clauses in job contracts, employers foster a culture of secrecy surrounding wage payments preventing employees to freely discuss disparities and address grievances collectively.
The labour reforms do not specifically address the question of these disparities and what corrective measures will be taken to equalise pay structures between the gender.
Women And Technology
In the post-liberalisation era, the labour ecosystem saw an influx of women in sectors such as garment manufacturing, primary and early childhood education, social work, hospitality, tobacco, and low-end retail jobs. However, women find themselves excluded from work that requires the use of high-end technology. This may be attributed to the fact that the boys outnumber girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics enrolments at the higher education level.
Owing to a direct association between educational attainment and dignified participation in the labour economy, labour reforms must adequately tackle the question of technological upskilling. However, there aren’t enough provisions in the current labour reforms that specifically confront the question of female upskilling with an aim to formalise informal sector labour participation.
Care Work
A driving cultural factor that keeps women out of the workforce is the disproportionate burden of care work that women perform in the familial sphere. The Maternity Benefit Act was amended in 2017 increasing paid maternity leave to a period of 26 weeks for all establishment. The amendment also made provisions for adoptive mothers or commissioning mothers (in the case of surrogacy) for a period of 12 weeks starting from the date the child is brought home. In the event of a miscarriage or medical termination of pregnancy, a leave not extending six weeks is permissible. The law is applicable to all institutions with 10 or more employees. Under the amendment Act, it is now mandatory for every organisation with 50 or more employees to have a crèche. Further, the employer is to allow at least four visits a day to the crèche.
The question of maternity benefit often serves as a disincentive for employers when it comes to hiring females.
The labour reforms must include provisions that recognise this androcentric view of maternity and criminalise all forms of discrimination. Further, labour reforms do not address the specific needs of women in the informal sector and remain outside the purview of legislative protections that exists for women. We need more ways and means to bring more women into the safety net of labour protection and welfare.
Going Beyond Transportation To Tackle Workplace Safety
Women’s health, safety, and protection against sexual harassment continue to remain key considerations that retain women in the workplace. In July 2019, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Labour Bill was tabled in the Lok Sabha. According to the proposed Bill, working hours for women are to be between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. The onus of safety including transportation to and from work is to be placed squarely on the employer for any time spent over and above this. Also, women employees may not be called to work on holidays. Although welcome initiatives, there needs to be qualitative recognition that workplace safety is something goes beyond transportation arrangements. Safety audits, a need-based safety survey to address women’s specific concerns are required. For instance, online gender-based violence and discrimination against women are on the rise, and this requires specialised interventions.
Inclusion Of Women In Formulating Laws That Protect And Govern Them
Currently, women comprise only 3 percent of the top management of influential and important corporations in the country. Gender diversity and affirmative action require long-term planning and nurture, without which labour reforms become incomplete.
An overhaul of labour laws to enhance the prospects of female labour in the labour market cannot be possible without involving women in key decision-making processes. The inclusion of women in formulating laws that will eventually protect and govern them are important considerations for both gender justice as well as for strengthening the labour environment to enable equitable female labour force participation.
Lavanya Shanbhogue Arvind teaches at the Centre of Disasters and Development at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She is an author, TEDx Speaker and a feminist research scholar.
The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.