Better education is not leading to better job opportunities, marriage prospects or freedom of movement

• As last year’s #MeToo movement and Sabarimala protests showed, perhaps Indian women are ready to foment a rebellion.

Education and employment

• What fuels these movements could it be that the very success of India’s economic transformation brings with it a stark realisation that it has not paid particular care and attention to women.
• The most promising sign of the improving conditions of Indian women lies in declining inequality in education.
• Data from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) and the IHDS show that education and employment have a U-shaped relationship.
• Illiterate women are most likely to participate in the workforce.
• Work participation drops sharply for women with primary and secondary education and rises only with college education.
• Employment opportunities that are open to their mothers, including farm labour and non-farm manual work in construction, hold little appeal to secondary school graduates who have invested their hopes in education.
• However, white-collar jobs are either not available or demand long hours and offer little job security in this time of a gig economy.
• NSSO data for 25- to 59-year-old workers in 2011-12 show that among farmers, farm labourers and service workers, nearly one-third are women, while the proportion of women among professionals, managers and clerical workers is only about 15%.
• Educated women’s main employment options lie in qualifying as a nurse or a teacher or looking for office jobs.

The importance of marriage

• If barriers to work participation are not enough, young women’s lives are also circumscribed by social norms that shape their family situation.
• Marriage remains the only acceptable fate for young women in India.
• Based on recent National Family Health Survey data, there seems to be little evidence that a moderate level of education offers women a greater say in household decisions or freedom of movement outside the home.

Women’s vote

• If women were a caste, their cause would be championed by political parties now trying to mobilise caste-based vote banks.
• However, our political process sees women as an extension of the men in their households and assumes that no special effort is needed to win their hearts and minds.
• As we head into an election season, perhaps it would be wise for political parties to remember that women form half the voting population.

The Hindu