Employment and Poverty: A gender perspective


The Women’s Study Centre of Jesus and Mary College started its certificate course classes on 6th September 2019, Friday. One of the two courses was ‘Employment and Poverty: A gender perspective’. It was conducted by Dr Jessy Phillips, from the Sociology Department.
The class started with discussions on how India is a gendered state and how most of its policies are not gender neutral. Taking the example of ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’, it was observed that giving the title of ‘beti’ (daughter) to the average Indian girl, by the government is wrong to the basic foundations. Doesn’t the government get agency over every Indian girl by giving her the title of ‘beti’? And should the government have agency over any citizen, irrespective of their gender? Many other reflections were made on the gender underpinnings of government policy.
The next discussion was about how the idea of market fundamentalism has an effect on gender. A recession, for instance, would have a direct effect on women. They would get into the ‘waiting list’ of their families for accessing even basic facilities, like education and health. And the fact that this happens on the basis of gender alone, is not surprising at all.
With the onset of globalization, the employment policy structures in the market have changed to a very large extent. With job security gone and labour laws relaxed, women find themselves at the wrong side of the tracks- again. Women already face wage gap issues as the labour market is a segmented one. In the case of an informal economy, the lower wage gap combined with the ‘hire and fire’ policies of the firms, places women at a higher risk of being fired during a recession.
The next discussion was based on the biases of macroeconomic policy making. The first one is the Bread Winner Bias, wherein, a woman is not considered the primary breadwinner and a women’s job is not as important as a man’s. In the Indian context, this is quite visible in how the Census is conducted. The first question that is asked is about the head of the house, which is clearly reserved for a male member, even if he is not earning at the moment. Even in the agricultural sector, a woman’s work is not considered. The participation rate of women in agriculture was found to be 20% in Haryana and 70% in Meghalaya. Do these extreme numbers signify that women in Haryana work much less than their counterparts in Meghalaya? Or is it that a woman’s work is not acknowledged in Haryana? That is not a very difficult question to answer. The other two biases that were discussed were the deflationary bias and the community bias.
In conclusion, it was observed that economic policies need to be connected with social and political problems too. The need for feminist policies was also focused upon.


REPORT BY- -        Arpita Mary Abraham

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