What are the links between being a woman, working in the informal sector, and contributing to growth? At 17%, India has a lower share of women's contribution to GDP than the global average of 37%.

1. WOMEN AND INFORMAL SECTOR:
POVERTY AND GROWTH LINKAGES
Dr Amita Marwha
Faculty, department of Economics
Isabella Thobrun College

2. Introduction
• What are the links between being a woman,
working in the informal sector, and
contributing to growth?
• At 17%, India has a lower share of women's
contribution to GDP than the global average
of 37%.

3. According to an International Labour
Organization study, the participation of
women in informal employment and non-
standard forms of employment (for eg. part-
time jobs or jobs in the informal sector) is
higher than men.

4. METHODOLOGY
• In order to bring forth the objective picture of
women in informal sector we conducted a
study of female workers in
• labour force participation rate
• unpaid care work
• wage gap.

5. Indian labour market display three
striking features
Indian LabourMarket
Very Low rate
of female
labour force
participation
considerable
variance in
rates of female
labour force
participation
Large share of
female and
male working
in informal
sector

6. Growth and Employment
The impact of economic growth on productive
employment creation depends not only on the
rate of growth, but also on the efficiency by
which growth translates into productive jobs.
The latter depends on a range of factors, such
as the sector composition of growth and the
capital/labour intensity of growth within the
individual sectors.

7. Trends in Employment in India
• Employment growth has decelerated.
• Employment content of growth has shown a decline.
• Sectors with higher employment potential have registered
relatively slower growth.
• Agriculture despite a sharp decline in its importance in
gross domestic product continues to be the largest
employer as the non-agricultural sectors have not
generated enough employment to affect a shift of
workforce.
• Most of the employment growth has been contributed by
the unorganized, informal sector which is characterized by
poor income and condition of work.
• India’s workforce is masculinising rapidly.

8. India’s workforce is masculinising
rapidly
• Only nine countries have a lower labour female
participation rate than India
• Just nine countries around the world, including Syria
and Iraq, now have a fewer proportion of working
women than India, new official data confirms.
• If Bihar were a country, it would have the lowest share
of working women in the world. Among urban women
who do work, domestic cleaning work is the second
most common profession after textile-related jobs, the
periodic labour force survey (PLFS) data published by
the NSSO show.

9. 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
2004-2005 2009-2010 2011-2012 2017-2018
Rural
Urban

10. Women and Growth Linkage
• Female labour force participation in India fell
to 26% in 2018: Report
• Specifically in the India context, the female
labour force participation has had a decadal
fall from 36.7 per cent in 2005 to 26 per cent
in 2018, with 95% (195 million) women
employed in the unorganised sector or in
unpaid word,” the Deloitte report noted.
• The Hindu:8 March 2019

11. Female labour force participation
• Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) The
LFPR of females (rural: 25.3%, urban: 15.5%) is
lower than that of males (rural: 55.3%, urban:
56.3%) in both rural and urban areas (NSS
2011-12).
•

12. Unpaid care work in India
• The share of unpaid care work in India's GDP is
3.5%. Women account for 3.1% of it.
• A whopping of 11 million jobs could be generated
if unpaid work is recognised and there is public
investment of even 2% of GDP in
the care economy.
• Counting unpaid work would increase female
labour force participation to massive 81.7%.

14. Women do 10 times more unpaid
work than man

15. Wage Gap
• In rural areas, average wage earnings per day by
casual labour engaged in works other than public
works ranged between Rs. 253 to Rs. 282 among
males and nearly Rs. 166 to Rs. 179 among
females during July – September 2017, October-
December 2017, January – March 2018 and April
– June 2018. In urban areas, average wage
earnings per day by casual labour engaged in
works other than public works ranged between
Rs. 314 to Rs. 335 among males and nearly Rs.
186 to Rs. 201 among females during this period.

16. Wage share and Profit share
• Although gaps in workers’ wages have decreased contrary to traditional
perceptions about bimodal distributions, the large firm driven
employment growth has resulted in a divergence of wages and profits. In
2000-01 total wages accounted for 52 percent of net income and profits
accounted for 33 percent of it.
• The remaining 15 percent included other non-wage welfare payments
such as provident fund, social security etc.
• By 2005-06 wage shares in net income halved to 26 percent. In addition
share of non wage payments declined to 7 percent which was less than
half of its share in 2000-01.
• This was a direct result of substitution of direct workers by contract
workers who are often not entitled to any welfare benefits. Profit on the
other hand more than doubled and increased by 34 percentage points in
this period.
• Source-sarvekshana 107th issue sep,2017, Government of India Ministry
of Statistics and Programme Implementation National Statistical Office
New Delhi www.mospi.gov.in

17. solution
• The solutions can be categorized into three Rs:
recognition, reduction, and redistribution.

18. Thank you