Gendered Sustainable Development:Issues and Challenges Faced by Women Workers in Call Centers

Abstract

The business process outsourcing and call centre industry in India has a high prospect in present and coming future. As women are an essential part of this industry, presently, women workers comprise of nearly one-third of all the call centers and BPO’s Indian labor force. Nevertheless, regardless of such an important economic input of women to this industry, quite a few issues and challenges are encountered by women. From having suffered some form of workplace sexual harassment during the course of their work to challenging social dogmas and taboos related to the women in India. Women within the age group of 30’s encompasses a mass of the BPO labor force. It is so because call centers prefer women for dealing straightforwardly with the people. Women workers working with BPO's are pulled towards it due to the flexible hours of work which make rooms for meeting their child care requirements. Nevertheless, episodes of crime and dodges in safety reveal stringent measures which are of utmost priority and that government and NGOs both have integral role to play to make work place gender inclusive. In our paper we want to highlight the challenges and measures of call centre workers in India. These call centres are the front runners taking advantage of the dynamically changing social, economic and cultural set up yet at the same time are also marred by the closed box thinking of the stereotype roles that are assigned to them by the makers of the society who want them to walk on the dotted lines set by them. Dogmas are meant to be broken and that is what women of today’s India are doing.