Background: Women and Work

Abstract

Women’s work has undergone an evolutionary process over long years of history and examined under different feminist framework. Especially, there have been sea changes in the women’s work paradigm since the 1990s. The globalisation with the opening of economies, technological progress and improvement in communications facilities has made perceptible impact women’s pattern of work, particularly in the South Asian countries. Their pattern of work in the Indian labour market also has also changed over the years. Women’s employment has shifted from farm to non-farm sectors—modern services or industries—in the past two–three decades. In particular, women’s participation in regular paid non-farm modern services and industry such as information and communication technology, electronics and domestic workers in urban areas have increased significantly. Women’s participation in Indian labour market has shown a declining trend in the recent decade at overall level with the existing traditional role of society or patriarchy, unfavourable workplace environment, job insecurity, high educated youth unemployment, feminisation of farm sector and emerging new technologies are posing serious policy challenge. The recent PLFS survey of 2017–18 reveals the continuum of declining women’s participation in the labour market with high unemployment rate among both male and female youth in rural as well as urban areas. The survey report also confirms that there has been an acceleration in the quality of employment for female regular workers in urban areas but the employment conditions are deteriorating over the years.