It feels good to see Indian women leaving their homes and heading to their places of work. That they are contributing to the community and their families fills one with pride. Despite this achievement, the equality gap in the salary scale seems worrying. Indian women earn 20% less than Indian men, according to 2017 statistics. When it comes to wages in India, why does gender become an important parameter in determining wages? The latest Monster Salary Index shows that while men earned 231 rupees per hour, women were only paid 184 rupees. In recent years, the gap seems to have narrowed, but at a very slow pace.
In March 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a maternity leave of 26 weeks, instead of the previous 12 weeks, for working women. The move was to ensure proper care for future citizens of India. Although this measure was intended to give working women enough time to recover before resuming their jobs, it had unintended consequences. Small and medium industries chose to hire more men than women. Perhaps because they couldn’t afford to offer 6 months of paid vacation to their female employees.
Going back to Prime Minister Modi’s powerful announcement, some working women decide to go back to the countryside but have to fight hard to get another job due to the disruption of service time and experience that ensued. They may be successful in securing jobs again. However, after the long gap, these employees have no choice but to start from scratch.
Article 14 of the Indian Constitution deals with gender equality issues. It prohibits discrimination on any grounds, be it gender, class, religion, race or caste, it undoubtedly gives impetus to the fundamental rights of all Indian citizens. The law of the country states that these can be violated under any conditions. Even though the Indian Constitution was formed in 1949, the glaring gender pay gap, even in modern years, shows that the law has been poorly understood.
Article 14 guarantees equality – under the protection of the law. But the same protection of laws may not be afforded to all women, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Honor killings in India had been prevalent on a large scale in India before, and in many places still are. These were more common among the uneducated sect of society. Although cases may have been reduced, they are still prevalent even today. And these are not simply attacks on women in need. More than that, these attacks are assaults on the autonomy of every woman and girl. Unfortunately, India is one of the countries that has a high number of cases of female feticide.
That even today there is a cultural preference for the male child is more disconcerting. Practices like these have been damaging the equal protection of the laws for many Indian women, while at the same time spreading the wrong messages to young women. By their own choice, they decide not to pursue education or jobs when marriage is the only stage in their life. Is it then wrong to say that getting married in India is the end of a woman’s career? One does not realize that these women who are murdered every year or raised with restrictions on personal freedom can do so much for society. Perhaps the belief that educating women and putting more of them to work may be the greatest achievement of any nation is still far from being instilled in everyone. That is why they also generate hostility towards women and girls, creating more problems for them.
The patriarchal attitude, formed decades ago, still persists, expecting women to take on the burden of the main home and parenthood. The attitude is sustained not only when they are not working but also when they are employed. Thus, in a way, women are victims of wage or employment inequality either inside or outside the home, or in both domains. This duplicates discrimination on both a personal and professional level.
In the rural economy of India, women have always been the plunderers. The rural economy becomes more fluid with their involvement in farming, herding, dairying, and forest protection. While men migrate to the cities to make a living, women sincerely nurture families, even when they have few resources to begin with. With food being the main problem, rural women become vulnerable to malnutrition. That is why they take menial jobs like working in the fields. On rare occasions, they move into factories only to be discriminated against on a higher level. Getting an education in the hope of better job prospects becomes difficult for them when they already have ongoing problems in the family.
Beyond the realms of the imagination, it is devastating when rural women lose their jobs. That is why some women choose not to take jobs due to childcare, while others leave children as young as 8 years old alone at home. Do they have better options? Either they can work and put food on the table or not work and let there be no food. They become more distressed when job providers are also reluctant to accommodate their family needs, such as medical facilities or time to care for someone sick in the family. Women in urban areas have problems differently. They have to constantly juggle multiple family obligations and rigid job requirements. The lack of education and training does not favor them.
However, one should not be satisfied that salary corrections are taking place only in the educated segments. It cannot be known with certainty that the lives of educated women are better than those of uneducated women. But the realities on the ground dictate that the latter surely deserves better pay for both security and economic stability. Low-income women have to fulfill many obligations to keep their jobs. The Ekta Shakti Foundation understands the struggles of their lives. To make these struggles meaningful, they go one step further by empowering them with vocational skills.
The Ekta Shakti Foundation supports vocational skills that can prepare any woman for a job that earns respect, as well as a fulfilling livelihood. They equip them with the skills that will generate enough profit to sustain them. A large number of women lose their jobs even when they don’t want to. It is sad to see them fight for the basic rights to life. They develop a lot of trust in them to enable them to independently support economic security for themselves. By supporting them through every phase of life, they make them self-sufficient in their own right.