By Bhagirathi Panda
When it comes to women and their status in the North Eastern Region (NER) of the country, the commonly held perception is that they are relatively better empowered vis-à-vis their counterparts in rest of India. In the situation and process of overall women empowerment, economic dimension of empowerment is an important component. Further, within the economic dimension of empowerment, employment aspect constitutes a vital element in it. When we analyse this aspect with available credible data, the situation speaks contrary to the commonly held perception about women’s empowerment in NER.
A sub characteristic of an evolving economy in general and its rural economy in particular is the process of structural transformation in its income and employment space. In the literature of development economics this is called as ‘employment diversification’. To be specific, as forces of development get consolidated, more and more people leave agricultural sector and join the non-farm/non-agricultural sector in the rural economy as source of livelihood and employment. In the context of the NER this is happening because of, (a) the waning land-man ratio (read this with the very high magnitude of landlessness in NER and Meghalaya that Patricia Mukhim brings out in her article in ST dated 28th August 2015), (b) the inevitably declining elasticity of job creation in agriculture sector because of mechanization and modernization, and (c) the high rate of population growth in the NER during the last four decades.
Dissecting the rural employment space with respect to gender is an important way of understanding this structural transformation process. Analyzing this situation in NER with the help of National Sample Survey(NSS) data for four periods of time i.e. 1993-94, 1999-00, 2004-05 and 2009-10 shows the declining gender gap (calculated as the differences in the percentage shares of rural non-farm employment for both the genders at a given year/ NSS round). A striking feature of NER is that this gap over the period 2004-05 to 2009-10 has abruptly been reduced to 1.9 percentage points from a high of 10.9 percentage points. One of the reasons for this, is the remarkable increase and growth in female employment in the construction sector of rural non-farm employment (RNFE) resulting in a situation that could be termed as feminization of employment in construction sector of RNFE in NER. During this period of five years, female employment in the construction sector in NER has increased from 7.8 percent to 47.7 percent, a phenomenal increase of almost 40 percentage points. For the country as a whole this has increased by 18.7 percentage points. In terms of annual growth rate over the period 1993-93 to 2009-10, female employment in construction sector in NER has experienced the highest growth rate of 18.2 percent as against the national annual growth rate of 11.6 per cent. Employment through MGNREGA and other public works programmes of central and state governments could be one of the important reasons for such a staggering rise in female employment in construction segment of RNFE. As the jobs created through MGNREGA and other public employment programmes are casual in nature, this also means that the construction sector has experienced increased casualisation of female employment. This finding of ours when read with another important finding based on the works of Lahoti and Swaminathan(2013), adds further credibility to the above explanation. For the purpose of their study, Lahoti and Swaminathan , divide the country in to six regions i.e. the North, the North East, the Central, the East, the west and the South. Their study reveal a positive 133.4 per cent increase in female casual employment in non-agricultural sector in NER over the period 1983-84 to 2009-10 against 84.5 per cent for the males. This extent of increase in casual employment for the women workforce in NER is the second highest among all these six regions of the country for which the data are analysed.
Additionally, for the year 2009-10, the percentage of female casual employment in NER was highest at 11.6 per cent among all these six regions of the country. Data also reveal that during the period 1983-84 to 2009-10, female employment under self-employment category both in farm and non-farm sectors in NER has experienced high negative percent falls ( -59.5 and -32.8 percents respectively ) , where as female employment under contributing family work both in farm and non-farm sectors has undergone highest positive per cent rise(95.5 and 125.9 per cents respectively) among all these six regions. Conversely, male workforce employment under self employment category in the non-farm sector in NER has undergone highest increase by 56 per cent. This trend is indicative of a situation of distress push and helplessness for the women workforce.
Again, NER is the only region where during the period under discussion female employment in the regular wage/salary category has experienced a negative per cent fall. The implications of a significant per cent rise in contributing family women workforce in farm and non-farm sectors and a fall in the regular wage/salary employment category is that the distress factors are more at play when it comes to women’s employment diversification in NER vis-a-vis the other regions of the country.
When we decompose the sectoral space of rural non-farm employment in NER with respect to gender we get insightful results. The males continue to be employed dominantly in the subsector of public administration, education and community service (i.e. the services sector) all through the period 1993-94 to 2009-10. Share of male employment in this sub-sector was as high as at 32 per cent in 2009-10. However, during the same period, female employment in this sector fell to 17.1 percent from a high of 41.5 per cent in 2004-05. Another revealing trend seen with respect to female employment in rural non-farm employment space is that excluding the construction and trade & hotel sectors, the other five sectors i.e. mining & quarrying, manufacturing, electricity & water, transport, storage and communication, finance, interest & business. etc. have witnessed negative annual growth during the period 1993-94 to 2009-10.
From these entire developments one thing that emerges clearly is that when it comes to women’s employment in NER, they have been driven out of relatively high-end remunerative jobs in the services and manufacturing sub-sectors and pushed into relatively low- end and less remunerative casual jobs predominantly in the construction sector. It can also be inferred from these developments that although the gender gap in the region in non-farm employment space has almost disappeared, the gender exploitation or deprivation is very much present and poignant. This gender exploitation or deprivation is reflected when increased percentage of women workforce are pushed to undertake residual, casual, non-remunerative and supportive works vis-à-vis male workforce in the region. When we analyse the reasons for such a push- to-the-margin situation of women in the rural employment space with the help of micro level field studies, distress factors such as poverty and unemployment emerge as strong causal factors.
This depressing situation in NER with respect to women’s employment when analyzed along with other gloomy statistics of increasing rural landlessness and rise in income inequality especially post 2000( the entropy index in income distribution has risen from 0.01 to 0.34 over the period 2000-01 to 2010-11) does not augur well for the region’s development. The political space in NER does not reflect much of empowerment of women. Our analysis here with respect to women’s employment space also shows a regressive situation. This plodding disempowerment has every potential to gradually destroy whatever empowerment does exist in the social space for women. This has also the potential to aggravate the situation of rent seeking and make it slowly but surely acceptable for women. Hence, there is an urgent need to improve the quality and productivity of women’s employment in the region through measures of intervention and inducement.
(The author is a faculty in the department of Economics, NEHU)