MPW 2022: India's female labour force is plunging; can country's growing economy afford this?

The oldest millennial turns 42 this year, while the youngest will celebrate their 27th birthday soon. This means that millennials—those born between 1981 and 1996—are now well into the workforce. And GenZ (those born between 1997 and 2012) will start edging out GenX (those born between 1965 and 1980) from the workforce in a few years. That is, we have a largely different workforce today, most of whom are digital natives and have all gone through a habit-altering pandemic that has opened up newer ways of working.

“At the individual level, I find that there is a lot more confidence in the youth and a lot more confidence in the women now,” says Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-founder of Infosys and Chairman of Axilor Ventures.

The 300 million women of this millennial-GenZ cohort tend to come with more advantages and different priorities than their predecessors. As individuals, they are seen as being more educated, financially independent, digitally and financially savvier, and more career-oriented. “Two good things have happened recently. The younger women are a lot more aspirational, and now there is the advantage of a flexible work system or work-from-home,” says Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund, and a millennial.

Yet, despite India’s growing economic prosperity, the larger picture is very different. While the Indian economy has grown more than 10 times since 1990, its female workforce participation has fallen from 30 per cent in 1990 to 19 per cent as of 2021. The fall has been particularly steep in the past 15 years when female labour participation plunged from 32 per cent in 2005 to 19 per cent in 2021, shows World Bank data. During that time, the economy nearly quadrupled.

“When I started my career in 1991, for every two men who were educated, we had one woman who was educated. The percentage of women in the workforce was about 30 per cent and we thought that it was only a matter of time before it would become 50 per cent. But we know the results don’t justify that optimism today,” says Prasenjit Bhattacharya, Founder Director of Great Place to Work in India.

Interestingly, India offers its women educational attainment nearly equal to that of its men, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2022. But the chasm widens when it comes to economic participation. Sample this data from the report released in July 2022. Where 1 refers to parity between men and women, Indian women scored 0.961 in educational attainment, but the score plummeted to 0.350 for economic participation and opportunity.

The dichotomy between the patriarchal Indian society and its aspirational individual woman is stark where the pixels look way better than the painting. India ranks a lowly 135th of 146 countries in WEF’s Global Gender Gap Index for 2022, but a small consolation is that we have climbed up five spots compared to 2021.

It’s too big and deep a problem to be solved in the business context alone and requires larger societal changes, say thought leaders. Besides, just focussing on women without focussing on job creation is not a very good strategy, says Bhattacharya. “There have to be many, many more jobs,” he says.

The gig economy

But there is a silver lining in the form of the emergence of newer employment models such as gig work, which show that a person doesn’t have to be employed full-time for eight hours every day. “The gig economy is a new structure being created to meet the needs of the new economy. As we go along, we add new forms of employment models and organisational structures that will co-exist with the old models,” says Gopalakrishnan.

“Flexible work options, structured programmes that help women resume work after maternity leave or a career break, gender-neutral parental leaves, comprehensive medical insurance coverage, and programmes focussed on enabling caregivers in general are helping us achieve our goal of 50 per cent women’s representation in our workforce by 2025,” says Lakshmi C., Managing Director and Lead–HR of Accenture in India. Women account for 47 per cent of Accenture’s 300,000-strong workforce in the country.

As the new-age woman navigates the demands of her own aspirations both from work and life beyond it, maybe that is the way ahead to attract more of her tribe into the workforce and keep them in it—new structures and models that allow flexibility and factor in her increased caregiver duties especially after marriage and childbirth.

If it’s any indication of the changing profile of the workforce, Business Today’s own list of winners this year has three women graduating into the Hall of Fame compared to just one last year. They have won the award seven times and cannot be nominated again in the same role to make way for new achievers. Incidentally, all three of them belong to GenX.

Whether boomer, GenX, millennials, GenZ, Gen Alpha (those born in 2013 and later) or a member borrowing their nomenclature from subsequent letters of the Greek alphabet, age is no bar for achievement. And the 19th edition of the Business Today Most Powerful Women in Business celebrates 55 such achievers. As you flip through these pages, you will read about their journeys, milestones and significant contributions to a gamut of industries. Some have made their mark despite adversities, others because of it, but all are winners in their own right.

@SaysVidya