Where are India’s informal women workers?
Gendering employment debates around the digital economy
Ira Anjali Anwar
The irony of women’s work has always been that- paid or unpaid, formally employed or not, ‘women are never not working’ (Dewan, 2019).¹ This is particularly true in a country like ours where women’s work is increasingly invisibilized by formal measurements of labor force participation and erased within the folds of informality.² Even as official statistics attempt to grapple with women’s plummeting economic participation rates, noted to be one of the lowest in the world at 27.2%, women who do engage with the masculinized world of work are flocked in India’s notorious informal sector.
As the UN consultation ‘Taking Action Towards Transformative Change for Women in the Informal Sector in India’ reflected, women face a sea of challenges in accessing the labor market, let alone decent work opportunities in the scarcity defining India’s formal sector. They are embraced by layers of social, cultural and economic obstacles- from precarity, pay discrimination, and the threat of harassment, to the constant burden of domesticity (Kaur, 2019).³ Crowded in the crisis ridden agricultural sector, women are rarely recognized as farmers, neither do they own the land they work on (Soma, 2019).⁴
Similarly, urban employment offers little solace, particularly for domestic workers in the service sector, with bare to non existent social protection safeguards such as minimum wages, safety provisions, saving and pension plans (Christy, 2019).⁵
In this context digital technologies have been applauded for their potential to leapfrog the wicked problems faced by women in the workforce. This is an extremely relevant conversation in the Indian context, with projections claiming the worth of the digital economy to reach USD 1 trillion by 2025.
But when we speak of the digital economy, we are not only referring to the production of ICT goods and services and digital commerce. Rather, the digital economy refers to ways in which data and digital intelligence are becoming the main economic resources, restructuring all sectors, from agriculture and industry, to services. This movement is constantly invoked in the mantra ‘data is the new oil’. Think ‘farm to fork’-the ways in which agricultural technologies and platforms are reorganizing the agricultural value chain, capturing markets and profits. Consider how the gig economy impacts service workers, with location based apps recasting informality. As platforms are not employers, workers are elevated to the category of ‘independent contractors’, eroding all possibility of accessing hard won labor rights- from social security, work guarantee, to mechanisms of grievance redressal.
So if we are saying that the digital will transform everything, what happens to those outside the network economy; those already invisibilised by the veil of informality?
How do e-commerce platforms, rushing to capture the grocery e-tail market with their deep discounts and deeper pockets, impact women micro entrepreneurs- your corner street vendors pushing carts to find the ideal selling spot in an already male dominated market (Alila, Nagaland, SEWA)?⁶
Unfortunate as it may be, we have hoisted an economy which thrives on this irony of women’s labor- invisible, yet endless. So how do we make the digital economy work for women in India’s informal sector?
GENDERING POLICY
I. Guaranteeing basic resources and rights- There is a critical urgency to strengthen institutional frameworks for women worker rights- such as land ownership and access to credit. Furthermore, India needs to get on board with international standards of gender parity- for instance, we must ratify ILO’s Domestic Workers Convention №189 that guarantees the fundamental rights of domestic workers to decent and secure work.
II. The celebration of the digital economy in enabling women’s participation needs to be tempered with the unfolding risks it brings for women in informality.
Towards this end, the digital economy needs to be regulated to prevent hyper- exploitative arrangements. A portable social security fund can be created for gig workers, with mandatory contributions from platforms, while monopolistic practices should be regulated in the e-commerce segment, along with the maintenance of low commission rates.
III. Simultaneously, investments in public goods targeting women are required. Reskilling and capacity building is critical, especially for women workers threatened by technology led job displacement. Beyond these efforts, digital public goods, such as public agricultural and ecommerce platforms and cooperative gig platforms, with preferential terms for women, can create formal decent work opportunities for women workers.
The RBI’s suggestion around the public credit registry, brings credit scoring mechanism under the public eye, potentially ‘democratizing access to formal credit systems’ for women in the informal sector. Such a public credit registry can be used to identify and provide credit access for marginalized women, through positive discrimination.
The success of these efforts is contingent on addressing socio- cultural barriers to women’s economic engagement and digital access; recognizing women’s unpaid labor and gendering the employment debate; and identifying the impact of transnational developments around trade, commerce and labor practices on issues of gender equality.
Please refer to the policy brief, for a detailed policy discussion- Making the digital economy work for informal sector women in India https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/add/Making%20the%20digital%20economy%20work%20for%20informal%20sector%20women%20in%20India_20thFeb.pdf
(This blog post is based on the discussion in the Consultation on Accelerating Economic Empowerment of Women Workers in the Informal Sector presided by Madame Phumzile Mlambo- Ngcuka, United Nations Under Secretary General and Executive Director, UN Women, held on the 21st of Feburary, 2019)
1 As the UN Women’s 2016 analysis of the labour force in India reflects- 99% of women employed in agriculture, 95% of women employed in manufacturing, and about 75% of women in the service sector are in informal employment. See Raveendran, G. (2016).The Indian Labour Market: A Gender Perspective. UN Women discussion paper series. UN Women, p.30. Available at: http://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2016/indianlabourforceanalysis.pdf?la=en&vs=3510
2 Prof Ritu Dewan, Indian Association for Women’s Studies
3 Ms. Amarjeet Kaur, All India Trade Union Congress
4 Ms. Soma Parthasarthy, Mahila Kisaan Adhikar Manch (MAKAAM)
5 Sister Christy, National Domestic Workers Alliance
6 Ms,Tsuponglila Pongen, SEWA Nagaland
