Gender Statistics and Development Policy: Women

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Gender Statistics and Development Policy
Womens Work in India

• Ratna M. Sudarshan
• Director, Institute of Social Studies Trust, New
  Delhi

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Presentation Outline

• Data
• Policy
• Evaluations
• Indicators

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Table 3 Characteristics of Workers 2004-05
Indicator (NCEUS 2007) Male Female
Percentage of Unorganised Workers in Total Workforce 90.7 95.9
Percentage of Unorganised Sector Workers in Total Workforce 84 91.3
Percentage of Workers in Agriculture and Allied activities 48.9 72.8
Time spent on care and household maintenance per week 4 hours 35 hours
Percentage of unorganised non agricultural workers , working from own home 15.7 54.7
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Diagram 1 Work participation rates All India
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Gender Gaps in Wages received per day by Casual
Labourers in India(Rs) Rural
Ministry of Women and Child Development 2007
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Gender Gaps in wages received per day by casual
labourers in India(Rs)Urban
Ministry of Women and Child
Development 2007
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Disparities in Agricultural Wages(Rs per Man
day)
Ministry of Women and Child Development 2007
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INFLUENCING POLICY

• Data and research findings
• Womens movement demands
• Constitutional Commitments
• Regional agreements UNIFEM Regional Ministerial
  Conferences tracking progress on Beijing
  commitments
• International Agreements BPFA, CEDAW

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CEDAW Concluding Comments

• Need for more gender, minority and caste
  disaggregated data to monitor fulfillment of
  convention and provisioning for
  ST/SCs/OBCs/Minority Groups.
• Recommended impact assessment of legislative
  reforms
• Gender disaggregated data for domestic violence
• Study impact of mega projects on tribal and rural
  women
• In addition, there were several recommendations
  made regarding reform for personal laws, communal
  violence, child marriage, child labour and female
  infanticide.
• The committee also made the following suggestions
  regarding women and employment.
• Ensure rural women benefit from the NREGA
• Proactive measures with credit and financial
  institutions for women

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Official Responses

• Poverty Eradication
• Micro Credit/SHGs
• Skills Training
• Support Services Including child care
  facilities, including crèches at work places and
  educational institutions, homes for the aged and
  the disabled women-friendly personnel policies

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EVALUATIONS STEP Economic empowerment as a
route to all round empowerment

• Support for Training and Employment Programme
  (1986)
• Influenced by ShramShakti report, women activists
• Programme strategies were to
• Provide skill training
• Mobilize women into small groups, provide
  training, access to credit
• Enable groups to take up employment and income
  generation activity
• Provide services to improve working conditions
• ISST evaluation Most of the project reports
  contained data on the number of women who joined
  the group and details regarding operationalities
  of credit and training.
• However, tracking of members post grant
  completion was not thorough.
• Authorities - particularly dairy sector used
  milk collection and total output as primary
  indicators mainstreaming womens empowerment
  indicators difficult

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ISST Evaluation 2006-7

• Work and the household
• All beneficiaries women.
• Poorest risks of self employment high, no
  credit without collateral.
• Family support needed to increase time on income
  earning activity
• Mens role Uttarakhand - men managing payments,
  records, milk delivery. Women feeling safer
• Andhra Pradesh- men help with buying cattle,
  fodder, pouring milk, going to the vet,
  collecting money, attending meetings....but
  rarely with giving water to the animals, bathing
  animals, cleaning the shed
• Karnataka - only 4 of those who had received
  training started commercial cultivation of
  medicinal plants. Men take land use decisions?
• Sensitising implementing agencies
• Holistic conception Technical training relating
  to animal care usually provided not so legal
  literacy, awareness, nutrition etc
• Examine institutions implementing programme
  cannot achieve more than their understanding of
  objectives of the programme.

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NREGA

• Rural, wage work, 100 days at minimum wage one
  third to be women
• Range of participation 6 to over 80
• Managing care work
• No creches in most places, despite the stated
  intentions of the Act.
• In the absence of well functioning crèches or
  other institutional solution, families seek
  private solutions, which at times means that
  older girls stay home.
• Choice of works
• Gender sensitivity of the programme needs also to
  find reflection in the choice of works.

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INDICATORS

• There is a need for qualitative data to
  understand what is actually happening.
• Also, it needs to be always kept in mind that in
  a country as large and diverse as India, the
  situation varies greatly from one village to
  another, leave alone state to state and region to
  region. It is not possible to design a programme
  that will be the best fit in all situations.
  Equally, therefore, the evaluation methods and
  process has to be adapted to the situation
• therefore, evaluations need to pay enough heed to
  
• a. context
• b. mediating institutions
• c. assess outcomes in the light of these so as to
  make useful and relevant recommendations.

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REFERENCES

• Ministry of Women and Child 2007,
• A Handbook of Statistical Indicators on Indian
  Women 2007, available at  http//wcd.nic.in/stat.p
  df , accessed on 29th October 2008  
• National Commission for Enterprises in the
  Unorganised Sector, Report on Conditions of Work
  and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised
  Sector, Government of India, August 2007