1. PHD Chamber of Commerce & Industry
Seminar on
Industry – Academia Linkages for Gainful Employment
with Reference to Women of Rajasthan State
February 19, 2013
Talk by
Prof BR Natarajan, President – Vice Chancellor
Sangam University Bhilwara Rajasthan 311001
http://www.sangamuniversity.ac.in
3. Ministry of Education, GOI (1978)
Draft National Policy on Education (1979)
AIEI (1980)
Nayudamma Review Committee (1980)
Challenge of Education – A Policy Perspective
Ministry of Education, GOI (1985)
IIT Review Report (1986)
PM Shri P V Narsimha Rao Convocation
Address at Visva Bharati University (1995)
4. Many more Committees, Commissions,
Seminars, Symposiums, Workshops, Round
Tables, …………………………………………… have
all unequivocally advocated and emphasized
on the need for strong Industry Academia
Linkages in India.
5. Employment trends of women workers in India
has been showing increasing magnitude in
numbers over time. In spite of some positive
changes in the educational attributes of women,
a majority of them remain illiterate.
Nearly 85 per cent of rural and 59 per cent of
urban women workers are illiterate or literate
only up to primary level, delimiting gains to the
few who have benefited from relatively higher
levels of education. These are mostly the better-
off sections of the population.
6. In spite of some gradual decline in the percentage
of women workers, their share compared to men
in agriculture remains significant and has in fact
risen due to the shift away from agriculture by
men.
In rural areas, women workers have shifted into
manufacturing; construction; trade, hotels and
restaurants; and community, social and personal
services, while urban women gained employment
in manufacturing and finance, insurance, real
estate and business industrial sectors.
7. Most of the gender stereotypes continue to
prevail with bulk of the women involved in
occupations such as maids, farmers, bidi makers,
nurses, primary school teachers, and so on. The
newer occupational avenues of computing
machine operators; transport conductors and
guards; village officials; elected and legislative
officials; engineering technicians; scientific,
medical and technical persons; other
professional workers not elsewhere classified
are among those which have had a higher
growth rate in recent times.
8. Since more women are likely to enter
the labour force in the years to come,
measures to ease the double burden
of work, with efforts to provide basic
amenities and support services for
their overwhelming domestic
responsibilities, need to be put in
place. Gender dimensions of work
necessarily require policy attention
9. • In India there are 354 million people whose
economic condition is poor. If women are
empowered then every family will be a happy
family. In India nearly 31 cr women in villages
live in poverty. If women in every village are
well educated and employed then poverty in
India can be eradicated.
• If government and private firms like banks
provide employment opportunity to rural
women, she can lead her family happily and
she can also overcome problems.
10. At present urban women get better
education and employment while the rural
women do not get proper education as
well as employment and hence she cannot
compete with the urban women. The
banks which started smaller units in
villages have helped the rural women by
saving both her time and money and have
also provided good employment
opportunities for them.
11. According to Sher Verick , ILO's senior
employment specialist
• The slowdown of the economy will add
to India's employment challenges in the
short term
• In the long term, India must create more
manufacturing jobs to take advantage of
its 'demographic dividend' and ensure
more job opportunities for women.
12. The United Nations Development Programme's
India representative Lise Grande says
“Even India's high growth years did not create
jobs, so a slowing economy would make matters
worse in the labour market. The combination of
policy uncertainty , the large current account
and fiscal deficits and the slowest growth in a
decade (in 2012) has brought bad news on the
employment front. If the economy grows at a
slower rate of around 6% over the next five
years, the news is going to get much worse.”
13. According to the International Labour
Organization (ILO) recent report, while
more than 80 percent of men in South
Asia are employed or looking for work,
only 32 percent of women have these
possibilities. These figures show that
females are far less likely than men to
work or be employed as a result of
cultural attitudes and social norms in
the region
14. According to the ILO's global employment trends
report 2013, in some parts of Asia, women's
participation in the labour market is dropping
further and is increasingly being seen as one of the
main causes behind the slow growth in
employment.
One such place is India, whose labour force
participation rate for women fell from just over 37
per cent in 2004-05 to 29 per cent in 2009-10,
according to the text.
Out of 131 countries with available data, India
ranks 11th in female labour force participation,
despite its rapid economic growth.
15. According to he ILO economist, Steven Kapsos,
• Strengthening anti-discrimination legislation in
employment in all occupations will be an essential
step to expand job opportunities for women.
• It is necessary to reduce the large differences in pay
and working conditions, which are often observed
between women and men, to increase the number
of women seeking work.
• South Asia economic growth weakened and did not
bring significant numbers of decent works, so
overall unemployment rate remained low at 3.8 %
during 2012, while youth unemployment was 9.6 %.
16. • Women need to move into areas such as food
processing, where employment is growing,
Plannning Commission Deputy Chairman, Dr
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said at an ILO event
organized by Labour Ministry at Delhi on
Thursday 14 Feb 2013.
• “Women are locked into activities that are
getting phased out,” he said, without
specifying the areas, but admitting that the
Government needed to do a lot more to create
more jobs for both men and women.
17. According to an ILO study, despite strong
economic growth, female labour force
participation was falling in India, while it had
increased in countries such as Bangladesh and
Pakistan.
While the ILO study cited the trend of girls
opting for education as one reason for this,
experts pointed at a grim scenario of no
quality jobs even when education was over.
18. • Labour Force Participation Rates LFPR is defined as
the number of ‘persons days’ in the labour force
per 1,000 persons days. According to the NSSO’s
66th round, during the period 2004-05 to 2009-10,
LFPR remained almost the same for rural males but
decreased by about 6 percentage points for rural
females (from 33 per cent to 26.5 per cent).
• It said during the period, the rate decreased by
about one percentage point for urban males and
declined by about 3 percentage points for the
urban females (from 17.8 per cent to 14.6 per
cent).
19. Women have great potential to be employed
in the four prominent sectors namely
Banking
Health
Education
Police.
20. BANKING
Banks have been given a mandate to reach out to the
un-reached by opening ultra small branches and
adopting the branchless banking model in villages
situated far from the existing bank branches. In most
of the cases, a local woman will be a business
correspondent to operate branchless banking units.
The scope for setting up such units is immense, as
there are 6.31 lakh villages in India. Even if banks
plan to extend this facility to one lakh villages, it
would require one lakh business correspondents.
Women are more suitable for this job, as they would
be rendering this service from their homes only.
21. HEALTH
The net profit of the top 25 pharmaceutical
companies in India is reported to be over Rs 10,000
crore. Such companies, under CSR can adopt some
of the primary health centres in the most backward
districts and fund the maintenances, including the
salaries of doctors and nurses.
Since there are 22,925 primary health centres and
1.39 lakh sub-centres, the feasibility of appointing
nurses in the sub-centres may be examined by
selecting them from the local areas.
22. EDUCATION
• Considering various reports on the decline
in the quality of primary education, it
emerges that shortage of teachers is one of
the prime reasons.
• Recruitment of female teachers from the
villages and semi-urban areas should given
preference and their postings may be
confined to such areas only.
23. Police
In India only 2% women work in
police sector.
Move for more women in police
force, would help prevent
atrocities on them
24. Unemployment among female diploma
holders is higher than their male counterparts,
with unemployment rates reaching 34.5 per
cent for women — much higher than the 18.9
per cent recorded for men during 2009-10.
This has costs for a developing economy,
particularly as an increase in the number of
women entering the workforce could be just
the low-hanging fruit needed to get growth
back on track.
25. Young people have been particularly affected
by the slowdown, with an unemployment rate
of over 10 per cent, much higher than the
average.
It is significant that young diploma holders
suffer more, implying that India is doing a
poor job of reaping its demographic dividend,
with most graduating individuals lacking the
skills sought by employers.
26. • In terms of regional concentration of women
workers, the states with relatively higher women's
work participation are the southern states of Andhra
Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; and the states
of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat
and Orissa. These states show slight variations across
rural and urban locations.
• In terms of National Classification of Occupations -
NCO categories, same states which have a larger
proportion of women workers are also the states
where there is a demand for women within these
occupations .
27. According to ILO Report, Spinners, weavers,
knitters, dyers and related workers (NCO 75)
also shows a large share of women workers in
non-agricultural activities. In actual numbers,
women workers in this group declined by
250,000 while the number of male workers in
this group shrunk by over 400,000.
The occupational category of tailors, dress
makers, sewers, upholsterers and related
workers (NCO 79) also reports significant
numbers of women workers increasing over
time.
28. While men predominate as merchants
and shopkeepers, women as working
proprietors, managers and directors in
wholesale and retail trading units (NCO
22) have increased over time, with over
200,000 UPS women workers in this
occupation. This category is prominent
for the additional employment in sheer
numbers of women workers both in rural
and urban areas.
29. Interestingly, women's share as working proprietors,
directors and managers in occupations such as mining,
construction, manufacturing concerns (NCO 24) as well as
other services (NCO 25) has also registered an increase
over time. This is reported both in rural and urban areas.
The segment of occupation in which women, especially
young girls, are most prominently visible in the
mushrooming urban retail units is that of salespersons,
shop assistants and related workers (NCO 43). Again, the
increase over time in actual numbers is much more in
urban areas (over 300,000), than in rural areas (which is
not unsubstantial at 100,000).
30. • Food and beverage processors is another category (NCO 77)
where substantial women are principal workers. The increase in
this occupational group is primarily in rural areas for grain
millers, food preservers, canners and bakers, confectioners,
sweetmeat makers and related food processors. Women UPS
workers in urban areas in this occupational group have declined
over the period 1993-94 to 2004-05.
• Another occupational segment where women have experienced
an increase in terms of net additional employment over time is
that of hotels and restaurant keepers (NCO 50), and as cooks,
waiters, bartenders and related domestic and international
workers (NCO 52). The increases in these categories have been
both in rural and urban areas. This would include all the self-
employed small eateries on pavements and highway roads as
well as those mushrooming in malls and shopping
complexes/multiplexes.
31. “Where Aspiration Meets Opportunity” motto
driven Sangam University Bhilwara envisages
launching of Cooperative programs
integrating work and study to simultaneously
address the issues of Developing appropriate
Human Resources for the Industry and
reinforce its commitment to providing
Purposeful education.
Thank You
