Indian women increasingly opting for school over work, says WB report

More and more women in India are opting for school over work these days. This may have contributed to a decline of women's participation at the workforce. Yet, more women in India are going to schools than ever before.

According to World Bank's 'India Development Report', released on May 30, at 27 per cent, India's participation rate of women in the workplace is abysmally low. Standing at 120 among 131 countries, India's participation of women in the workforce is behind Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Yet, one of the reasons the report attributes to the decline is that more young women in India are choosing education over work. As per the numbers of the National Sample Survey (NSS) and calculations by the World Bank, between 2004-05 and 2011-12, there was a jump of over 13.2 per cent in rural areas and of 9.1 per cent in urban areas of the number of women in secondary and post-secondary education in the age group of 15 to 25. This jump, the report adds, contributes to a fall of over 3 percentage points (pp) of the total decline of over 10 pp.

This also means that not only there were more young women in schools in 2011-12, but women in the labour force were more educated than they were earlier. The decline of women from the labour force between 2004-05 and 2011-12 fell by 15pp to 36 per cent. The report adds that the decline in the number of working women between 15 to 25 years is almost as same as the jump in the number women in the same age group who are going to school.

Yet, the report also adds that education is not the only factor. Lack of viable and safe opportunities for women, increasing levels of income, early retirement ages, etc., have all contributed to this decline. The participation rate for women with no schooling declined the most at 12pp, when compared to women with a complete secondary education (7pp), or those with a college degree or diploma (8pp).

Economist Reetika Khera says that if more women are going to school today, it is a good development, provided women are simply delaying their entry into the labour force as opposed to their permanent withdrawal. "What one finds is the correlation between caste and class usually plays out with a woman's agency to decide whether she wants to work or not. When the income of a upper caste family increases, the woman is more likely to withdraw from the workforce, owing to social pressures," says Khera.

Strong patriarchal norms in India dictate women's participation rates. In some cases, this mean that qualified and equipped women give up their jobs owing to social pressures. The IIT Delhi scholar who committed suicide in her hostel room last week is a case in point. It turned out that her in-laws' demands for dowry, and the pressure on her to opt out of studies played a factor in her taking her life.

"What has happened in the last decade is that there is a significant improvement of the number of women in education. But if we look closer, most of it is limited to the age group of 15 to 25 years," says economist Abhijit Sen.

The study also says that while women are entering the workforce at later ages, they are also retiring early. Unlike developed countries like Korea, where the participation of women increases, then declines when women drop out to raise children, and then increases again, in India the participation rate curve is 'single-peaked'. In India, the participation of women peaks at a only 37 per cent between the ages of 35 and 39 years, and then starts to decline.

Khera says that if one looks at the caste and income groups of these drop outs, it is likely that most belong to an upper caste. "In adivasi communities, gender norms are fluid, and they also are from economically disadvantageous groups. This is not the case in upper class families, where the need for a woman's earnings are diminished," says Khera.

Sona Mitra and Happy Pant of the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) say that there is a strong need to look into the reasons behind women opting out of the work force so early. "The report mentions that the lack of support for child care at places of work deter women from working in factories, thereby forcing them to take up home-based manufacturing work, unlike in our neighbouring countries. It should be noted that sectors like agriculture or domestic work that engage a large number of women involves a lot of physical labour and hence the 'retirement' is early. There is a need to recognise that women need better employment opportunities in white collar services and better facilities within factories to take up remunerative manufacturing work," they say.