India Discrimination Report 2022: Oxfam India

In News

• Recently, Oxfam India Report stated that discrimination in India causes 100 percent of employment inequality faced by women in rural areas in the labour market and 98 percent in urban areas. 
  • Report’s findings are based on Government’s data on employment and labour from 2004-05 to 2019-20.

Key Highlights 

• Declining Women Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR):
  • It is the proportion of the working-age population that engages actively in the labour market, either by working or looking for work.
  • For women in India, it declined from 42.7% in 2004-05 to 25.1% in 2021, showing withdrawal of women from the workforce despite rapid economic growth during the same period.
• Male-Female Pay Gap: 
  • In 2019-20, 60% of all males aged 15 and above had regular salaried or self-employed jobs; the rate for females was 19%.
• Discrimination in Labour:
  • Female casual workers earn about Rs 3,000 less than their male counterparts.
• Increased discrimination for SC/ST:
  • Self-employed SC/STs earn Rs 5,000 less than non-SC/STs and discrimination accounts for 41% of this gap
• Gender Discrimination in rural and urban areas:
  • Gender discrimination in India is structural which results in great disparities between earnings of men and women under ‘normal circumstances’. 
  • This can be inferred from the data for 2004-05, 2018-19 and 2019- 20. The earning gaps are large, both in rural and urban areas for casual workers ranging between 50 percent and 70 percent. 

Image Courtesy: Quint 

Reasons for Discrimination

• Societal and Employers prejudices are responsible for women’s lower wages.
• Poor access to the education system and work experience.
• A large segment of the well qualified women want to join the workforce because of household responsibilities or social status.
• A massive drop in casual employment for women in urban areas during the first quarter of the pandemic.

Recommendations/ Way Ahead

• Actively enforce legislation for the protection of the right to equal wages and work.
• Work to actively incentivise the participation of women in the workforce, including enhancements in pay, upskilling, job reservations, easy return-to-work options, particularly after maternity leave, and the option to work from home, wherever possible.
• Need to ensure a more equitable distribution of household work and childcare duties between women and men.
• Implementing “living wages” as opposed to minimum wages, particularly for all informal workers, and formalise contractual, temporary, and casual labour as much as possible.

Source: IE