Background – The government is coming up with a report which is likely to endorse giving all Indian citizens a guaranteed Universal Basic Income (UBI). The said report will be released this month. Business Insider talked to Prof Guy Standing, one of the leading advocates of UBI, and he says the report by the government will term the idea as feasible and “basically the way forward.”
Is the Indian government really serious about implementing UBI? We don’t know for sure but it seems to be weighing the pros and cons of the idea. In an interview to Rediff in September last year, the chief economic advisor (CEA) to the government of India, Arvind Subramanian, had said that UBI would be one of the exciting themes of the next Economic Survey. This is due on 31 January. So, we will know the Finance Ministry’s assessment of the proposal by the end of the month.
Subramanian has said that “this is an idea that has a lot of promise, but also challenges. It will be an extension of JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhar, Mobile Money) in that it will be based on cash transfers.” What the CEA is saying is that universal basic income is essentially a form of cash transfer. It doesn’t matter what you name it, but it is an alternative to providing subsidies in kind, are subject to leakages and corruption. In the Indian version of UBI, basic income may be a migration of subsidies to cash in the first instance. Between major subsidies and payments for the MGNREGA employment guarantee scheme, the government spends nearly Rs 3,00,000 crore per annum – roughly two percent of GDP.
Many people oppose UBI because they are against the idea of government giving doles. But the choice is not between giving subsidies and not giving. It is about picking between efficient cash transfers and an inefficient subsidy regime. UBI should be seen as redistribution of currently paid subsidies to enable people to eliminate market distortions and giving citizens a choice on what they will spend their subsidy money on.
With the JAM trio – Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile money – we have the system in place for providing everyone with a universal basic cash transfer.
The Pilot Project:-
A pilot project in eight villages of Madhya Pradesh that Standing was closely associated with provided every person with a guaranteed basic income for 18 months. “The most striking thing which we hadn’t actually anticipated is that the emancipatory effect was greater than the monetary effect. It enabled people to have a sense of control. They pooled some of the money to pay down their debts, (and) they increased decisions on escaping from debt bondage. The women developed their own capacity to make their own decisions about their own lives,” BI quoted Standing saying.
How do we finance UBI?
If we accept a ceiling of two percent of GDP on central subsidies, in 2016-17 some Rs 3,00,000 crore will be available for cash transfers. Assuming around 25 crore households (there is a similar number of Jan Dhan accounts) in the country, this money is enough to deliver an annual income of Rs 12,000 per household, or Rs 1,000 per month.
The government’s Economic Survey for 2014-15 estimates that subsidies for the following items amount to 4.2 percent of GDP (Gross Domestic Product): cereals, pulses, sugar, oil-related products, iron ore, fertilisers, electricity, water, and rail services. Now, if we increase the ceiling to say four percent of GDP, every household will get Rs 2,000 per month. If we halve the number of households to be targeted, the figure rises to Rs 4,000 per month. This is a very substantial amount for people living in abject poverty and can greatly impact their lives in a way that a leaky subsidy system can never do.
Apart from this there are government subsidy schemes too. A desirable thing for them to do would be to divert most of the spending from inefficient subsidies to areas like education and healthcare. While the latter is a state subject, the former is in the concurrent list and hence the joint responsibility of centre and states. In this way, both can complement each other in social spending.
A UBI – or an Indian variant of it – the universal subsidy cash transfer – is an idea whose time has come. All the necessary ingredients (JAM) to implement it are in place. However, a lot of groundwork is required before implementation. And once implemented,, it may take years before it can be made near perfect. But a start needs to be made.
The case for a universal basic income (UBI) in India is best approached indirectly by noting that one of the main requirements of inclusive growth is ‘deep fiscal adjustment’, in other words, a radical re-orientation of government expenditure and taxation. India spends far too much on dysfunctional price subsidies in the name of helping the poor. Some of the subsidies, for example those on food, fertilisers and oil-related products, are explicitly in the budget. Others, such as the subsidies on electricity, water, and rail travel, are implicit, and take the form of losses or low profits by government departments and enterprises.
There are many reasons why these subsidies are counterproductive. They raise fiscal deficits and crowd-out essential public spending. They distort resource allocation by cutting the link between prices and costs. They discourage investment in supply capacity for producing the subsidised items, and encourage over-consumption of them.
At the same time, the subsidies do not achieve their putative goal of poverty alleviation. They are badly targeted and regressive: though a small part of the benefits does percolate down to the poor, most of it goes to the well-off. (This is not surprising, since a price subsidy per unit consumed gives a larger benefit to those who consume more.) Moreover, they are accompanied by leakages and corruption on a large scale.
Setting the level of basic income
The primary purpose of UBI would be to provide an unconditional income floor/safety net that would prevent any citizen sinking below a basic minimum standard of living, irrespective of his or her earning capacity. To prevent possible untoward effects ,the minimum should be set at a relatively austere level, says the Tendulkar Poverty Line (TPL) . In 2011, 269 million people were below TPL, that is in extreme poverty. It is known that the average income of these people is about 80 per cent of TPL.
So an income supplement equal to 20 per cent of TPL, adjusted upwards suitably to compensate poor people for the subsidy elimination that would finance the programme, would go a long way towards abolishing ‘Tendulkar poverty’ . The requisite cash grant would amount to Rs. 3,500 per head per year (Rs. 17,500 per family per year) at 2014-15 prices, indexed to a relevant cost of living index.
If the ‘Tendulkar poor’ could be identified and accurately targeted, the fiscal cost of bringing them up to the poverty line would, on this basis, be less than one per cent of GDP. But perfect targeting is impossible. In practice, the basic income would have to be given to at least half the population, perhaps to two-thirds of the population, to be sure of reaching all poor people. (This would have to be done on the basis of rough justice, using criteria such as eligibility for income tax, ownership of land above five acres, ownership of houses with more than three rooms, and possession of relatively expensive consumer durables, bearing in mind that these categories overlap to an undetermined extent.)
However, there are several good reasons for going further and making the transfer a universal basic income that is paid to every citizen. Such a UBI would cost 3.5 per cent of GDP .As seen above, this would certainly be affordable, given ‘deep fiscal adjustment’. Note also that the technological means to make a universal income transfer are now available, or will be soon, because of the progress made in spreading Aadhaar and Aadhaar-seeded bank accounts.
Why should basic income be made universal?
Firstly, there is a huge bunching of people around the poverty line, with several hundred million people who are very poor (though not in extreme poverty) and continually in danger of falling below the poverty line due to misfortunes of one kind or another, such as ill health. A UBI would supplement their incomes. (But the income supplement would be a flat sum, so the proportionate benefit would fall progressively at higher incomes.)
Secondly, ‘deep fiscal adjustment’, especially abolition of ‘non-merit’ subsidies, is essential to improve economic efficiency as well as create the fiscal savings to pursue various desirable goals, as explained above. But this programme will imply real income losses for most of the population, at least for a time. UBI would cushion them wholly or partially against this damage, and thereby also prevent or dilute their resistance to both deep fiscal adjustment and the provision of a basic income for the poor. Importantly, it would also compensate people, wholly or partially, for adjustments that may be imposed on them by other desirable reforms (for example, liberalisation of the labour market, privatisation, and opening up agriculture to international trade.) UBI has been criticised as wasteful because it would give money to many people who are not poor. For the reason just given, this is a mistaken view. UBI would, instead, provide an essential underpinning for the acceptability of radical economic reform.
Thirdly, only a small proportion of the population is so well off as to make the above considerations irrelevant.
It is not worth the administrative trouble and expense to identify them and exclude them from the coverage of ‘basic income’. (Some of their basic incomes would in any case come back to the state in the form of income tax; and some well-off recipients would surely forego UBI voluntarily, if nudged by the government to do so.) Experience has shown that selection of deserving recipients brings a host of problems such as cheating and concealment to qualify for benefits, resentment on the part of those who are excluded, administrative high-handedness, and rampant politicisation. UBI would bypass these difficulties altogether.
Arguments against UBI
The arguments against a UBI are not convincing.
(i) ‘UBI would reduce the incentive to work and create dependence on doles’: Such an outcome is extremely unlikely given the modest level of the proposed income supplement. (Since UBI is a uniform, lump-sum income transfer, the substitution effect against work will be zero. And since the transfer is small, the income effect against work is likely to be negligible). Rather, UBI is likely to liberate poor people to achieve more than mere survival. A related argument is that UBI would lower the female labour force participation rate. But progress in this area depends mainly on advances in female education; and, in any case, would it be right to forego an opportunity to make a large dent in extreme poverty, and provide a robust safety net for all, in order to push more women into work outside the home, faster than otherwise?
(ii) ‘UBI would be frittered away on alcohol and gambling’: There is plenty of evidence from trials internationally, and in India (for example, see Davala et al. 2016), that this would not happen. Recipients of an income supplement tend to spend it on things such as food, clothing and footwear, education of children, healthcare, toilets, walls and roofs for houses, better seeds, and even investment of a rudimentary variety. Incidentally, a cash grant would also enable the poor to choose their consumption baskets (including spending on a more balanced diet than the cereals of inferior quality provided by the public distribution system (PDS)), which is surely a good thing.
(iii) ‘UBI would divert State spending from critical items such as infrastructure, education, and healthcare, which are essential requisites of long-run inclusive growth’: UBI is meant to complement desirable social spending, not replace it. The available fiscal potential is large enough to ensure that this kind of ‘crowding out’ is avoided. In practice, a programme of ‘deep fiscal adjustment’ would require careful sequencing and close Centre-state coordination (‘cooperative federalism’), and take several years to implement.
As extra resources become available, they could be divided between fiscal consolidation, extra public investment and enabling social expenditures, and UBI (which could be increased gradually in size until it reached the target level). The desirability of pursuing such a package requires only a weak value judgement that providing a safety net for the whole population quickly, and compensating them (at least partially) for real income losses imposed on them by liberalisation and reform, is as important as other social objectives. This principle would surely command wide support.
(iv) ‘UBI assumes that all benefits are best delivered in the form of unconditional cash grants that people are free to spend as they wish’: This is not so. It is true that paternalism may sometimes be justified, for example, it may be necessary to compel people to send children to school. In other cases, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) or conditional in-kind transfers may make sense. India has some good conditional programmes, for example, midday meals for schoolchildren, cash grants for pregnant women, conditional on attending health clinics and provision of income opportunities under the MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), conditional on work. As discussed in Joshi (2016), other areas where unconditional cash transfers may not be suitable are education and secondary healthcare.
UBI may not be a magic solution to all problems. But it is an essential component of a robust social protection framework. It does not in any way imply that the State should renege on its responsibility to finance, and where appropriate, produce and deliver, goods and services that the market would, for well-known reasons, fail to provide. It is true that while UBI will put purchasing power in the hands of people, it cannot guarantee that supplies will be forthcoming. But it is hard to see why supply would not respond, except in pockets of the country where markets are thin or non-existent. (For such areas, more conventional arrangements would have to continue for the time being.) For most of the country and for command over many ordinary goods and services, a UBI in cash would work well for poor people.
(v) The final argument against UBI is that ‘India’s political economy makes it infeasible or ruinous. Powerful lobbies and pressure groups will prevent dysfunctional subsidies being wound up. If UBI were introduced somehow, it would in practice be additional to existing subsidies. There would also be unstoppable demands to increase UBI year after year, a recipe for fiscal disaster’: This is a defeatist position that would negate any attempt at bold reform. Deep fiscal adjustment, in combination with UBI, has the potential to make a huge positive difference to people’s lives, present and future. It should not be taken for granted that India’s democracy is irremediably irresponsible. UBI could serve as a unifying and inspiring idea round which reformers, and the majority of the population, could coalesce to overcome vested interests .
In conclusion , UBI is politically rewarding, fiscally responsible and economically sensible.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.
On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]No need to remember all the data, only pick out few important ones to use in your answers.
The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.