A brain. A central nervous system. A skeleton and a body. Believe it or not, we’re not talking about the human body here; electronics, too, have them. And chances are that a woman in a factory in one of the many industrial belts of the country is bringing them to life.

Take the ubiquitous smartphone, for instance. The printed circuit board (PCB), a tiny but complex network of circuits that allows parts of the phone to talk to each other, is its brain. Rows of women hunched over their workstations in the assembly lines of mobile phone factories hook up the PCB with other parts of the phone. 

Or take a car. The wiring harness that powers everything from the head lamp to the tail lamp when the engine is brought to ignition is its central nervous system. It’s not unusual anymore for a group of women to have braided it into the beast. Or look at the TV, refrigerator, washing machine, AC or any of the sundry electronics at your home. It’s very possible that a woman put together its parts to build up its body.

More and more women are finding their way into the factories of these significant sub-sectors of India’s $75-billion electronics manufacturing industry as they solder fine components together, fit small parts, assemble equipment, test, interpret, troubleshoot, run quality checks and okay products before they hit the showrooms. “We find that women possess certain natural skill sets that we don’t find in men, with all due respect to the men. Dexterity, doing things neatly, [higher] learning quotient, being focussed, and consistency of output are a boon for assembly jobs, and electronics requires exactly these kinds of skills,” says Godrej & Boyce CEO & Executive Director Anil G. Verma. These very skills make women favourable employees both at its consumer appliances as well as locks divisions, he adds. Women make up 10 per cent of the workforce at its Shirwal and Mohali factories that produce appliances, while the locks division across three factories has 40 per cent women.

Women are better available and employing them gives us a competitive advantage because we operate at scale

Josh Foulger
Managing Director
Bharat FIH

“Electronics manufacturing needs finger dexterity for fine component assembly, precision work and pinpoint focus. In all these, women perform better than men on the shop floors,” says Chennai-based electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company Syrma Technology’s CEO Sreeram Sreenivasan. The listed firm, which makes components for other electronics and consumer companies, has 5,000 people on its shop floor, of which 85 per cent are women.

Bharat FIH, a Foxconn Technology Group company, only has women on its assembly lines. More than 18,000 women across its three factories in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh make smartphones, electric vehicles (EVs) and consumer durables for other brands. The vertically integrated company, which opened its first factory in Sri City near Andhra Pradesh nearly eight years ago, found that it could hire women from nearby areas and train them instead of competing with rivals for talent. “Women are better available and employing them gives us a competitive advantage because we operate at scale. With focussed efforts, we see that the quality of the product and delivery is high and this translates to high productivity,” says its MD Josh Foulger. 

The reason was similar for carmaker MG Motor India when it set up its Halol factory in Gujarat five years ago. Yeshwinder Patial, its Head HR, says it is tough to find qualified technicians such as fitters, diesel mechanics and automotive electricians for the shop floor. “This is a trainable job. So, we decided to hire women from nearby areas who have finished Class 12 or are college dropouts or graduates and train them in basics.” Its 700-plus women account for 37 per cent of MG Motor India’s shop floor strength.

Today, a good 70-75 per cent of an EV comprises electronic parts. With emission control, vehicle control and engine control units, and infotainment LED displays, 40-50 per cent of even conventional ICE automobiles and hybrid models are made up of electronics, by some estimates. This is only set to increase and women are starting to play a big role there as well. For instance, auto major Tata Motors’ Trim, Chassis and Final-2 (TCF-2) production line at its factory in the Pimpri-Chinchwad Industrial Belt near Pune has 1,500 women producing its flagship SUVs Harrier and Safari. “For the past three years, these women—hailing from some of the remotest parts of Maharashtra—have been busy assembling these premium models. They plan, execute and manage every activity on the line end-to-end, including assembly of all mechanical, electric, and electronic parts and components,” says Ravindra Kumar G.P., CHRO of Tata Motors. He adds that all its manufacturing plants, including EVs, have women working on the shop floors. 

A big part of electronics also involves testing, interpreting, troubleshooting, quality checking and assurance, which require a discerning eye and a fair bit of multi-tasking—again areas where women excel, the experts say. “It’s a misconception that quality checking is only an inspection agency, but they actually have to test the most minute of parts to ensure no error goes out,” says Patial of MG Motor.

The biggest barrier we face [in hiring women employees] is the mental block families have about women working in factories

Yeshwinder Patial
Head HR
MG Motor India

To be sure, India is far from becoming a manufacturing hub yet. Women’s participation in formal manufacturing jobs has stagnated at 20 per cent for the past two decades, according to the Annual Survey of Industries 2019-20. Besides, the 1.6 million women of the eight million people employed in formal factory jobs are also likely to be working in a handful of industries such as textiles, apparel, tobacco, leather and food products. However, the data only looks at formal and permanent jobs, while a lot of factory jobs are largely contractual. 

But India’s electronics manufacturing industry is proving to be a silver lining. Recruiters say there is an increasing demand for women at EMS factories and consumer electronic brands, with several upcoming factories specifically asking to hire women for assembly roles. “We have a mandate to hire 40,000 female employees for the electronics sector (for 2023). A lot of electronics manufacturing is shifting from China and Taiwan to Indian cities after the pandemic. Looking at the success of leading electronics manufacturing companies in hiring women factory workers in India, others are also looking to do the same,” says Alok Kumar, Senior Director-Global Accounts and Sales, Manpower, a subsidiary of workforce solutions company ManpowerGroup. 

Apart from EMS players such as Foxconn, Flextronics, Salcomp and Wistron, companies such as Bharat FIH, Dixon Technologies, Schneider Electric India, Godrej & Boyce, Voltas, Tata Motors, Ather, Ola, TVS Motor and Hero Electric are among some of the well-known brands where women handle factory operations, including the assembly of electronic parts. Ola Electric Mobility last year announced the launch of its all-women factory near Chennai to employ 10,000 women in the manufacture of electric scooters. For its iPhone parts making factory near Hosur, Tata Electronics reportedly plans to employ 45,000 women workers.

For the past three years, these women—hailing from some of the remotest parts of Maharashtra— have been busy assembling [our] premium models

Ravindra Kumar G.P.
Chief Human Resources Officer
Tata Motors

Although a narrow area today, it has a number of factors working in its favour. For one, everything from toothbrush to footwear is turning smarter. “In recent years, mechanical and electric things are becoming more electronic. In another five years, everything we touch in our daily lives will have some elements of electronics and smartness in them,” says Syrma’s Sreenivasan. The government has also outlined electronics manufacturing as one of the three pillars of the digital economy. It plans to boost it into a $300-billion industry by 2025-26, up from the $10 billion it was in 2014, through various schemes. Besides, the educational and aspirational levels of women are also rising, making them a great fit at these jobs which require some level of technical knowledge. 

The PCMC General Industrial Training Institute at Morwadi in Maharashtra, close to the Tata Motors factory, has 40 women students in its batch of 500 students this year. Every year, its computer course sees the highest enrolment of 15 women, while electronics and electrical courses get 10-12 girls each. “About five years ago, only 1-2 women used to enrol for the latter,” says Principal Shashikant Patil. The ITI counts Tata Motors, LG, Videocon, Voltas, Honda, TVS, Bosch, JCB and Godrej among its recruiters. Patil says there’s a lot of demand for its women students at wiring harness and consumer durables companies and they get paid up to `17,000 a month.

He admits that the numbers could be much better, but many companies also hire people directly from areas around their factories and train them in-house. Says Manpower’s Kumar: “We are mobilising people from the villages and panchayats near the factories saying, ‘Send your daughters to work with us. There will be pickup-drop and canteen facilities’.”  Many also offer hostel facilities.

Most of the women are good to go with 15-45 days of classroom and on-the-job training, the experts say. “A lot of them are first-time employees. So, working in a production environment is new to them—down to the technical knowledge of the electronics industry such as what electrostatic discharge is and why you should be careful about the placement of a certain component. We start with simple things and do job rotations that give them other skills,” says Bharat FIH’s Foulger. After two years of working at Bharat FIH, they can pick up about 100 technical skills across the verticals of consumer durables, EVs, mobiles, as well as managerial skills, he adds.

We find that women possess certain natural skill sets that we don’t find in men. Dexterity, doing things neatly, [higher] learning quotient... electronics requires these skills

Anil Verma
CEO and Executive Director
Godrej & Boyce

The trend is crystallising particularly in regions within Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra as the states have set their sights on becoming trillion-dollar economies each and are positioning themselves as electronics manufacturing hubs.

Yet, challenges in hiring women persist on both sides of the table. MG Motor’s Patial says the biggest barrier they face is the mental block families have about women working in factories. “We hold sessions for parents and family members to show them examples of the work they do and ask them, ‘Do you think the women can’t do this?’” The companies agree that women generally pose a lower attrition risk than men—a crucial factor in a labour-intensive sector where skilled labour is hard to find and retain. But naturally occurring life stages of marriage and childbirth are big triggers for churn, and offering flexibility around these life stages are a challenge in manufacturing, they say. 

On the part of the women, most of them are hired as contractual workers. Annual Survey of Industries data shows serious pay disparity between men and women in manufacturing, while individual electronics factories say they pay equally for men and women doing the same job. The creases around safety, health and hygiene at the workplace and hostels also need to be ironed out as shown by some of the recent women workers’ protests at EMS factories. 

Nevertheless, shop floors involved in electronics are waking up to the advantages of hiring more women. Says Godrej & Boyce CHRO Harpreet Kaur: “The biggest business case women bring to the factories is their sincerity, commitment and focus. You probably pay them the same salaries [as men] but you get better outcomes and higher productivity. So, why not?”