In the year 1991, under the larger rubric of economic reform, the Indian government initiated a set of policies based on the global tenets of liberalisation. The reform package consisted of four strategies, namely devaluation, liberalisation, privatization, and globalisation (Krishnaraj 1993). Their major manifestations were in the opening of trade barriers through reduction of import duties, loosening up of licensing systems, relaxing internal restrictions, rapid privatisation of government owned sectors and the deregulation of labour protection leading to growth of contractual labour and subcontracting. Given the heterogeneity of the population in India, there have been apprehensions by marginalized groups, including the women's movement regarding the impacts of globalisation on their position, concerns, and issues.
These policies affected the life of an average household in a number of ways. The notion of open competition and privatisation substantially permeated the social sector. The advocates of reform base many arguments on the assumption that ‘the really effective weapon for poverty alleviation is accelerated economic growth' (Vyas 1993). V. S. Vyas argued that this trickle-down theory is based on premises which may not hold true. For instance, a higher rate of growth needs to be substantiated by an equitable composition, and is not beneficial by its own virtue. On a similar line of argumentation, Maithreyi Krishnaraj points out the importance of critically analyzing terms such as output and growth. She argues that "structural adjustment may have limited impact in terms of augmenting growth” but is likely to “have disastrous social consequences on the long-term development of the nation". Evidence from other economies which went through such reforms substantiates this claim. The need to reduce fiscal deficits mandated certain Latin American countries to cut back on subsidies and social expenditures. A sudden rise in the cost of living has led to widespread unrest and protests in countries like the Dominican Republic, Zambia, and Brazil. Ajit Kumar Singh in that regard points out towards a fall in the living standards of working-class populations with the withdrawal of subsidies, rise in the price of public services and slowing down of employment opportunities owing to privatisation (Singh 1993). These facets will be of significance to our study in navigating the impact of national development in impacting marginalised actors including women. In the years before the concerned period of reform, there is ample evidence to support the idea that poverty alleviation measures were not structured comprehensively. Economist Pranab Bardhan has argued that while there was the achievement of some general progress in terms of welfare measures for the poor (Bardhan 1984), their impact and ambit remained inadequate. He identified the prevalence of low investments, inadequacy of the administrative machinery as well as managerial bottlenecks as responsible for the same. Investment and planning for the social sector had not been given the requisite attention for a country of India's dynamics. In that regard, any major reform program was deemed to have a major impact on the majority of this population, and should have been constructed in line with these issues.
While agreeing that structural adjustments have increased "burdens on poor women", economist Diane Elson points out that it is important to analyze whether the implementation of programmes themselves add to these burdens, or whether there is a need to focus on the economic crisis which emerged due to the initiation of certain policies. Poverty had been a major issue in India since the post-independence period. In 1991 itself, a third of the population lived below the poverty line. Thus, with the implementation of the economic reforms, an existent crisis was possibly exacerbated. This is evident by the fact that the percentage of those living below the poverty line in 1992-3 had gone up to 41.7% as opposed to 35% in the earlier years. Scholars including C.H. Hanumantha Rao and Hans Linneman (1996) have argued that absolute poverty increased in the immediate post-reform period, even as this period witnessed decent harvests, an increase in agricultural production as well as real wages. Their analysis concluded that this situation could have been avoided "if the policy measures adopted had taken account of the vulnerability of the prevailing socio economic structure, especially in rural areas, to the shock of adjustment” (Rao and Linneman, 1996). Essentially, their research proved that the lack of intersectional considerations led to the heightening of certain existing inequalities.
Female Employment Trends
The employment of women has generally been positively linked to the opening of economies, either through the expansion of women-oriented sectors or through the cost-differential dimension. The initial advocate of this argument was Standing, who argued that the deregulation of labour markets by global production systems would benefit women in terms of cost effectiveness. Empirical works undertaken in different national contexts suggest the occurrence of such a phenomenon for shorter periods, with varying rates of change (Standing, 1999; Cerruti, 2000; Ozler, 2000; Valodia, 2001). It is subsequently argued that changes such as industrial relocation, technological growth, and shift from subsistence production to market oriented production have pushed women to the extreme peripheries of the labour market. In this context, the effect on female employment in terms of marginalisation, segregation or feminisation has acquired major importance in discourses around economic reforms all over the world.
Women’s participation in the employment sector has traditionally been low, considerably due to their absence in conventionally recognised spheres of work. Such definitional issues determine the level of participation in an economic activity in a population, designating how work and workers are defined. According to frameworks followed by major statistical data systems, engagement in any “economically meaningful activity” makes a person a worker. This definitional frame excludes many women from the boundary of production due to their major concentration in the subsistence sector for household consumption. For the case of reforms, the comparative of statistics by the National Sample Survey Organization for various years, for rural and urban areas, for both sexes, as portrayed in Table 1, will be essential for our study.
The estimates for 2004-05 are compared with previous rounds for both principal status and usual status workers. The first evident and important change in the employment data relates to the aggregate workforce. In contrast to the 1990s, which witnessed a considerable decline of aggregate employment generation, the period between 1999-2000 and 2004-05 showed a distinct revival in the aggregate employment growth, with male-female workforce increasing sharply. This recovery is especially important from a gendered lens, as the earlier periods displayed a near stagnation in the number of female workers. The 2004- 05 figures show a considerable increase in the absolute number of women workers in both rural and urban areas.
Distinct findings exist within the literature on various aspects of globalisation. Consequently, diverse views exist on the impact of economic reforms on social groups, and their gendered dimensions.
In the analysis of globalisation on the employment and income of women workers, the impact of the following four trends will be examined and contextualized:
(i) Loss of existing employment
(ii) Impact of Mechanisation and Technologies
(iii) Informalisation of Work
(iv) Self-Employment
(v) Creation of New Employment Opportunities
A major chunk of the data employed for this analysis will be taken from the employment and unemployment surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), for the concerned period. Employment data sets can generally prove to be inadequate to comprehend the social and economic factors in the sphere of employment relations, especially in relation to marginalised groups such as women. However, they are essential for identifying major shifts at the macro level. The need to take in account cultural and social manifestations of such shifts will be done through regional instances and case studies.
1. Loss of Existing Employment without Creation of New Employment
Multiple sectors within the Indian economy witnessed a major loss of employment due to displacement by external imports in the market, post liberalisation. For instance, with the import of the 'China-Korea' silk yarn, thousands of women silk spinners of Bihar lost their employment. Consumers preferred the new product because of affordability, and convenient availability. The displacement of street vendors in India is another important manifestation that also had cultural impacts. It was estimated that during the period of reforms, approximately 10 million women and men depended their livelihood on vending commodities in India. Mumbai inhabited the largest number of street vendors, at around 200,000. Additionally, this sector was a major employment area for women in urban and rural areas alike. In the years following the implementation of reforms, there had been immense pressure on vendors to navigate through alternate options of employment. This can be attributed to the following factors: Owing to growing urbanization in metropolitan cities, vehicular traffic saw a tremendous increase along with changing developmental constructions. These changes caused immense pressure on existing infrastructural systems. The street vendor came to be perceived as a nuisance in the way of growth, and hence a dispensable commodity. With an aspiration of modelling Indian metros like Singapore and Dubai, the middle class also conformed with this developmental apparatus and reserved an apprehensive approach towards these vendors. In rural areas, increasing privatisation relegated pressure on rural “haats”, which were traditionally spaces that worked as local markets.
Amongst the indirect effects of globalisation, are instances where global cultural norms began to affect employment trends in India. An important example is the anti-tobacco campaign, which began to cause a reduction in the work available to bidi workers who had been employed in the indigenous vocation for multiple generations. Another similar effect has been the increasing body of concern about environmental degradation. As a rubric of this concern, employment and environment have often been counterposed to each other, and environmental issues have taken precedence over development, and thence employment, causing large scale job losses.
2. Impact of Mechanisation and Technologies
Women are amongst the most affected groups by the changes introduced due to mechanisation. Mechanisation leads to a reduction in the employment of manual workers, replaced by those who work through machines. Such cases witness a drastic reduction of the total manpower of a given workforce. Moreover, women are generally replaced by men, although the income earned may increase. The subsequent case studies of such sectors substantiate this argument.
Firstly, in the agricultural sector, men have replaced women in activities where machinery has been substituted by manual labor. Henceforth, the introduction of machines such tractors, harvesters, hormone accelerators, and mechanical cotton pickers has meant that such tasks as were traditionally performed by women, have been appropriated. Weeding in paddy producing areas, for instance, has been a female dominated task. When chemical spraying technologies replace weeding, the task is taken up by men.
Similarly, the introduction of rice mills has replaced hand pounding done by rural women. In certain sectors of the textile and garment industry, a similar trend is noticeable. For instance, the usage of power winders in place of hand wheels has displaced a major chunk of the female workforce. The disparity of mechanisation is such that a single worker employed with a power-operated winder is capable of winding five times more yarn than a woman worker, using a hand wheel. Such moves not only economically benefit the employers, but also saves the logistics of space and time. In the hosiery industry as well, female workers were typically engaged in stitching kinds of buttons which cannot be stitched by machine. Each machine operative displaces nearly six manual workers. Subsequently, in the textile sector, traditional handloom spinners and weavers were rapidly replaced by power looms. Handloom workers as both men and women were losing work, however, the jobs of power loom workers were mainly taken up by men.
The next significant sphere of work undergoing change is the construction sector. According to the NSSO Survey of 1993-94, 4.17% of all male workers and 1.27% of all female workers were engaged in the construction industry. Amongst female construction workers, 98% are casual workers, whereas the general proportion of female casual workers amongst other industries is significantly less, at about 75 per cent. Under the prevailing WTO regime, the mandate of global tendering has facilitated the entry of MNCs in the construction sphere. Their presence is increasingly visible through the expanding infrastructural and developmental projects being undertaken under government funding, or through bilateral or multilateral arrangements.
Increasing mechanisation and liberalisation led to a wide scale displacement of female labour from the operations in which they were traditionally deployed in. Activities such as soil digging and carrying, brick carrying and carrying inputs in concrete mixing constitute some of these. It is estimated that the overall deployment of labour was expected to substantially reduce in terms of the earlier numbers. Manual labour, and largely women workers were increasingly eliminated from construction sites. Simultaneously, such changes also facilitate an increase in factory production, leading to a greater need for jobs such as tile fitters, painters, plumbers, electricians, cement finishers, etc. Unfortunately, the gendered trends within these vocations have traditionally excluded women from their practice, meaning that only men have marginally benefitted from such an increased need.
3. Employment Changes due to Informalisation
One of the major debates regarding the impact of globalisation is on the ‘casualisation’ or informalisation of the workforce. It has caused increased employment opportunities for certain sections of the workforce and the loss of employment for others. Essentially, many companies including multinational corporations establish a vendor system of subcontracting for their production, under this phenomenon.
These larger companies give out work to their smaller units in the organised or the unorganised sector, which further outsources simpler operations to home-based workers. The company mediates with these units through contractors who get the production work done and deliver the output to the company. Examples of such work are sorting, packaging, and labelling. The manufacturers generally establish direct contacts with these workers and even act as contractors for bigger stakeholders of the market.
Subcontracting of work to home-based workers has been found to be extensive in the unorganised manufacturing sector, and seems to have expanded majorly over the past few decades. In almost 90% of the households surveyed by Jhabvala and Sinha (2002) in resettlement colonies and slum areas, at least one woman was reported to be employed in some sector of home-based work. However, the types of jobs that were created in this way were both irregular and low-paid. In the manufacturing trades, the average deployment period was less than 4 months a year. In the home-based sector, earnings of the women workers were found to be abysmally low, going far below the minimum wage. Another important extension of the casualisation of the workforce manifests itself through the phenomenon of self- employment.
4. Self Employment
The advocacy for self-employment is considered especially important in the context of development, and is frequently based on the supposition that it paves way for micro entrepreneurship, which is better than means of wage employment. According to the definition employed in the survey of the NSSO, self- employed refers to “persons who operate their own farm or non-farm enterprises or are engaged independently in a profession or trade on account or with one or few partners.” Furthermore, self- employed people are classified into three groups, i.e. own account workers, helpers in household enterprise, and employers. Additionally, Neo-Marxists understand this phenomenon as “petty commodity production,” in having the potential to gradually grow into bigger enterprises. One of the major discourses during the period of liberalisation regarding women had been directed at their position as self-employed workers, emerging from the perception that a major effect of liberalisation was to expand the relationship between female ‘entrepreneurs’ in the informal sector and larger markets.
Consequently, the importance of this sector became evident in the highlights of major policy documents on women. The post liberalisation period saw a rise in the programmes initiated by the government towards promoting self-employment for women. Organisation of micro-credit schemes, development of NGO-aids and organisation of self-help groups constituted some of the measures for lifting women out of poverty and striving for their economic empowerment. The organisation of this sector was such that self-employed workers belonged to a range of heterogeneous occupations and hence, all individuals did not share the notion of being the positive risk-taking entrepreneurs. Whether the move towards self- employment has been a thorough result of a “push” out of the formal economy, or because of a “pull” towards comparatively advantageous and better employment opportunities has been a topic of debate in the literature on labour economics.
Considering its heterogeneous nature, one needs to examine the impacts on various subcategories in order to analyse the overarching implications of the changes brought about by this phenomenon. One of the most striking features of self-employment in the post-liberalisation period is the extremely high share of unpaid work done by women in both rural and urban areas. In fact, barring the category of self-employment, the data shows that wage employment was the predominant form of paid work amongst women in India. The major increase in the quantum of self- employment amongst women in rural areas was accompanied by a significant decline in the number of own account workers and employers, along with a visible increase in the share of women’s unpaid labour.
As is displayed in Table 2, the share of employers and own account workers amongst self-employed rural women declined from 25.5% (1993-94) to 23.2% (2004-05), and the share of unpaid workers increased from 73.3% to 76%. This essentially meant that the increasing share of self-employment among rural women was in effect an expression of concentration of women in unpaid work, and did not conform to the aforementioned notions of independence of initiative at the grassroots, that the scheme aimed to achieve.
Table 2
5. Creation of New Employment Opportunities
Certain areas also witnessed the emergence of new employment opportunities for women. In the crafts sector for example, employment grew at a fast pace. The sector witnessed a significant increase in the total number of crafts persons, from 48.25 lakh during 1991-92 to 81.05 lakh in 1997-98. Trends continued to indicate that female participation was on the rise, particularly in the rural, home-based settings while male participation witnessed a gradual decline. Female artisans dominated in trades like embroidery and lace making, bamboo craft, dying and bleaching, earthenware, and weaving.
However, the average earnings of women workers in crafts remain low, nearly half of that paid to their male counterparts. Women engaged in hand printed textiles get the maximum wages, followed by those in the cane-bamboo making industry. The wage rates are extremely low in three women-dominated crafts, namely lace work, reed mat making and leatherware. Moreover, as is the case for other industries in the unorganised sector, the payment of wages to craft artisans is on a piece-rate basis. Hence, the major channel for marketing their produce becomes the vast network of middlemen or merchants, that adds to the increasing disparity in enhancing profits for women, considering the male-dominated composition of this sector.
Conclusion
The thematic analysis of the paper aims to suggest that a growing social and economic crisis, from the period of reforms, has seemingly sent certain sections of female workers into a spiral of a deepening of gender-based inequality in employment, while marginally employing others. This downward spiral has expressed itself in multiple ways. The growth of self-employment, during a period of rural and agrarian crisis points to the general lack of opportunities for sources of paid employment. The consequent increase in the number of female workers in certain subsidiary sectors points to the possibility of women workers being unable to garner employment throughout the year. The findings interrogate the assumptions concerning self-employment and its intended prospects for generating large scale, independent employment, in its current pattern of increase manifesting in an increase in the sector of unpaid work. The evidence of an increased concentration of women workers in low productivity and declining industries, refutes the impression that economic reforms result in employment opportunities for all sections of the society. Conclusively, one can clearly see a deepening of gender-based inequality in employment in the post liberalisation period. Gender becomes one of the primary axes of marginalization in employment, as is evident from the disproportionate wage gaps, growing disparity, and insecurity of long-term opportunities in women’s employment across sectors.
By Mimansa Bharti
Mimansa Bharti is a graduate of St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and possesses deep interest in the field of gender studies, and its intersection with other academic disciplines. She has authored an undergraduate dissertation on the women’s reform movement of the nineteenth century, and aims to further research upon the position of women in historical discourses in South Asia.
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Well written