GATI Interview: Indrani Mazumdar
Expert:
Ms. Indrani Mazumdar
Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi
Q: Can you shed some light on the employment trends and labour market situation with respect to women in India in the post liberalization phase? What are the emerging issues and concerns?
In much of the international literature regarding women’s employment under liberalization, there has been a common assumption of feminization of labour. This was premised on the marked tendency to hire female workers in export oriented industry in some developing countries, particularly in manufacturing sectors such as garments, textiles and electronics. In India, however, there is no evidence of feminization of labour even as the need for paid employment/wage work among women has become increasingly more acute. In fact, in the years following the formal introduction of the liberalization policy paradigm (1991), work participation rates among women have been fluctuating indicative of the problems women are facing in the labour market. The quinquennial employment surveys by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) show that between 1993-94 and 1999-2000, female work participation rates (FWPR) fell sharply from 44.4 per cent to 41.7 per cent and a seeming recovery in the FWPR between 1999-2000 and 2004-05 to 43.9 per cent has actually been based on increased numbers and proportions of women performing unpaid work in what is called the ‘self employed’ category of workers. Between 1999-2000 and 2004-05 the proportions of the ‘self employed’ rose from 57.3 per cent of the rural female workforce to 63.7 per cent and from 45.3 per cent of the urban women workers to 47.7 per cent. Who are these self employed women workers? In 2004-05, 77 per cent of the rural self employed women and 45 per cent of the urban were unpaid family helpers.
So, far from expanding independent opportunities for women in the labour market, what we have witnessed is a socially regressive concentration of women workers in dependent forms of labour without independent incomes. Secondly and perhaps of greater concern in matters of sheer survival, it must be realized that this increase has accompanied a sharp and absolute decline in availability of employment for landless agricultural labour. Close to 8 million women who found employment as agricultural labour in 1999-2000, no longer had access to such employment by 2004-05 even as some 16.7 million women workers were added to the agricultural workforce. While these figures may appear to be puzzling for many, the picture becomes clear when it is placed against the reality of the deep and pervasive agrarian crisis that has been the result of neo-liberal policies. Declining public investment in agriculture - a hallmark of the liberalization era, cutbacks in rural development expenditures, increased exposure to global markets with their price fluctuations, delays in procurement by the state at remunerative prices, etc. have all contributed to the mass scale peasant experience of increased indebtedness and a deficit between input costs and returns in agriculture. In the face of falling incomes, peasant households have resorted to mobilization of their family members (unpaid workers) – women, the aged and children - and cut back on hired help. Where earlier incomes were able to cover the costs of the peasant family and perhaps pay for a few hired workers at peak times, now despite mobilization of unpaid family workers, peasant families are absorbing less per capita foodgrain reflected in sharp falls in calorie intake and increasing levels of malnutrition. Declining incomes has also meant declining demand for a range of goods and services provided by non-agricultural workers negatively affecting their employment conditions. It is in such a situation that the need for women’s employment is rising much faster than the limited opportunities that may be found in some sectors.
It may be argued that even if rural women are taking a beating, opportunites for employment in urban areas have increased. But here too, even as some new types of jobs for women can be seen to have emerged and expanded somewhat, at an aggregate level the highest unemployment rates (open unemployment) can also be seen among urban women. Even the much touted capacity of the informal sector to absorb female labour has become a questionable proposition, with women’s share in non-agricultural informal sector employment showing a decline from a 21.5 per cent in 1993-94 to 20.3 per cent in 2004-05. As far as the significance of service sector growth is concerned, there is a clear mismatch between the high share of services in the country’s Gross Domestic Product (54 per cent in 2005-2006) and its low share in employment (24 per cent in 2004-2005), particularly among women. In fact between 1999-2000 and 2004-2005, in urban areas (where IT services are concentrated), the share of service sector employment (for both male and female workers) declined - much more sharply for female workers, among whom service employment dropped from 52.95 to 49.45 per cent. It bears mention here that urban female work participation rates dropped from 15.5 per cent in 1993-1994 to 13.9 in 1999-2000 and then rose to 16.6 in 2004-2005, but the principal area of expansion for women workers was domestic service, which is hardly a great leap forward.
Q: How do you see the evolution of the T&C sector in the post MFA phase? What are the main challenges in the new global textile environment for the industry and how do you think the government has responded in this context?
You must understand that it is difficult for me to reflect on the interests of the textile industry as a whole. What I can say is that many export oriented clothing/garment units have been expanding their operations, becoming larger, and bringing several functions that were earlier outsourced to fabricators inhouse, i.e., under one roof. This is clearly because they have established close links with importing companies (clothing brand names as well as retailing companies), particularly in the US and Europe and would like to show compliance with the standards demanded by buyers. Buyers located in US and Europe are actually more able to call all the shots in the post MFA phase. You see, under the quota system of the MFA, the net of supplier countries had been widened because any one country supplier meant limited supplies because of restrictive quotas. Now, although the lifting of quota restrictions apparently opens up opportunities to expand exports beyond quotas, the competition between all the supplier countries has become more acute. This in turn has enabled buyers to dictate prices putting pressure on the manufacturing areas. Even when the volume of exports in garments increases, it is not matched in terms of value and in fact the unit prices seem to be falling.
It is important to recognize that world trade in garments is buyer driven and they corner the lion’s share in profits. These buyers, whether they are just brand names of former manufacturers or large scale retailers, are located in the importing countries (US and Europe) and control the markets. A calculation made a few years ago (during the phaseout of the MFA) showed that corporate retailers and brand names in the importing countries accounted for 75% of the final price of apparel at one extreme while the share of factory workers’ wages (in developing countries) was just 1%. Material costs and factory profits stood at 13 per cent. Exporters in India (manufacturers as well as merchants) are, of course, unwilling to lower their profit margins in this period of buyer pressures to lower their prices. Many of them have also pushed up investments and imports for plant and machinery to meet the post MFA situation. The result is that the pressure on workers’ wages has become even more acute from several ends. Their working conditions have also been adversely affected with the relative share of the core workforce declining and the proportions of casual/contract workers increasing. Geared to buyer driven ‘just in time’ production to avoid pile up inventories, what has become normal is a lean and mean management of the industry, with intensification of the labour process (in terms of output per day as well as longer working days) when orders come in and loss of employment during times of lean demand. Casual/contract workers are not only deprived of employment during business downturns or periods of lean demand, but are also denied benefits such as health insurance, provident fund, etc. What we are witnessing is a period when garment exporters are aggressively objecting to any form of regulation of working conditions including minimum wage notifications. Recently a number of exporters have been involved in court cases against the minimum wage notification in Gurgaon, which has become an important industrial centre for some of the larger apparel manufacturers. Exporters have also been aggressively demanding changes in labour laws towards extension of the working day to 12 hours, for legalizing use of contract labour for perennial work, for restrictions on union membership, etc. The developments in the post MFA situation are thus veering to larger and organized forms of manufacture at one end which is also in line with the Government policy towards the sector. At the other end, more unorganized and unregulated forms of labour and erosion of labour rights are being built in, which is again receiving tacit support from the Government.
To add to this there are some new influences at work in the wake of changes in the exchange value of Indian currency. As is known, the rupee’s value has been increasing in terms of international exchange rates (even as internal inflation reduces its value for Indian consumers). What this means is that in dollar terms the prices of Indian exports has been increasing making them either uncompetitive or requiring cuts in prices. Either way, Indian profits and jobs are being eroded. Why the rupee is rising is inextricably linked with the operations of global finance and the inflow of foreign exchange into the Indian financial markets. The effects of all this on the export oriented garment industry is yet to play out fully, but the present situation of volatility can only be harmful to Indian manufacturing and workers’ interests. Manufacturers are responding in various ways – some are cutting back on costs, retrenching workers or reducing wage costs by lowering wages through a variety of mechanisms. Others are moving out of the industry, some are shifting their manufacturing to other countries, and at least one of the largest manufacturer exporters – Gokaldas Exports has even sold out to an American private equity player – Blackstone Group. Workers of course do not have any such choices, and present Government policy has nothing to offer them except more erosion of employment and labour rights. It is difficult to look towards any solution or policy approach at an isolated or sectoral level. What is required is a radical rethinking on the whole neo-liberal policy package and moving towards a different strategy of growth.
Q: What in your opinion is the status of women workers in the Indian garment industry in post Multi Fibre Arrangement (MFA) regime?
Despite being a large employer of women, the proportions of women workers in India’s garment export industry are, even today, far below the international average. Tailors or stitching operators constitute close to 80 per cent of the work-force in the garment industry. In unorganized manufacturing of garments which had dominated the industry for the last three decades of the 20th century, women were largely excluded from tailoring in both Delhi and Mumbai which were also the largest centres of garment manufacture. Women were checkers, helpers, threadcutters, etc. but rarely tailors. There is of course some regional variation in this pattern. Garment manufacturing units in the southern states tended to have more women and women tailor operators as well.
It is true that in the post MFA phase (in fact from the phaseout period), the establishment of very large manufacturing units has seen an increase in the numbers of women being recruited. Nevertheless, taking the industry as a whole, women still constitute less than 30 per cent of the workforce.
Secondly, and as I have shown earlier in my research work through analysis of occupational wage data in apparel manufacture, there is a clear correlation between proportions of women workers and inequality in wages. Where women’s wages are substantially lower than men’s, the proportions of women workers are higher. Where wages are more equal, the proportions of women are lower. This phenomenon is only likely to have increased in the post MFA period.
Thirdly, an observable phenomenon is that there remains an internal social hierarchy of skills and occupations. More skilled tailors/pattern makers/cutters tend to be men with women occupying the less skilled occupations of threadcutter/helper. In between are the checkers of whom a large proportion may be women.
I should however point out that looking for mechanical connections between MFA, post MFA and women’s status in the industry is to my mind not a particularly useful exercise. Women’s status and role in any given industry is more connected with the social dynamics of the labour market as a whole, which is affected by loss of employment due to the effects of import liberalization too. Within the broader labour market dynamics, the garment industry of course plays a special role for women. Perhaps since Victorian times, stitching, tailoring etc. has been perceived as more suitable for women and vice versa, and this imbued many of the training and welfare programmes for women since independence. Further, such skills were seen to be particularly useful for women as part of their housewifely functions, particularly with the housewifization of large numbers of former peasant women workers in the urbanization process of the immediate post independence era. It is also true that many garment manufacturers view women as particularly suitable for the industry, both because of the ideology of women’s suitability for forms of work that fit easily into housewifely functions as well as their supposedly more docile, obedient and industrious (and therefore less troublemaking) nature. Women are also seen as easy for short term casual work – the ideally flexible workforce - easy to get rid off when required. It is perhaps a combination of these reasons that makes the garment industry less hostile to women’s entry (in comparison to for example the engineering industries) and has enabled the entry of significant numbers of women workers. The fate of the garment industry therefore remains of great importance for women. Presently, the trend seems to be of great instability and volatility. Macro-employment data shows that women’s share of employment in the sector has been fluctuating. Reports from the ground show that a very large number of women garment workers (and also men) are more insecure in their employment than before, living out a constant process of finding and then losing employment. In such a process, some elements of traditional sexual divisions of labour and internal gender based hierarchies of employment in the industry may be disturbed, but to little positive effect in the long term.
Q: Another group which occupies primary position in all discourses on women workers in India is the home-based workers. What are the major industries and processes wherein such workers are dependent? Could you throw some light on the Indian policies that address their rights?
Recently one of the central trade unions conducted a survey of homebased workers across ten states in the country. One third (34 per cent) of the surveyed workers were found to be involved in textile + products manufacture. 14 per cent were involved in food processing and 11 per cent in beedi manufacture. Surprisingly less than 1 per cent were involved in leather based work. Apart from the big three – i.e., textiles, food processing and beedi, there were a range of miscellaneous products difficult to classify. The exact percentages are cannot of course be taken to completely accurately reflect macro-level proportions, but they do reflect the broad trends in homebased work.
What may appear surprising for those who have viewed homebased workers as being primarily involved in globalized industries, is the fact that only 5 per cent of these workers were involved in production destined for export markets. Of this 5 per cent, textiles was of course the most prominent item and within textiles, embroidery was the most significant work. Actually what is happening to homebased embroidery work is a somewhat contradictory as a process. On the one hand, with the larger units using embroidery machines now, many homebased embroiderers have lost their occupation. However, sequin embroidery which perhaps cannot be replaced by machines, has remained firmly in the homebased sector. Some zardosi type work is also still often based in the homebased sector. But the general experience coming from all parts of the country is that the nominal piece rates for homebased embroidery has been on a downward slide.
As far as government policies are concerned, you might know that the ministry of labour (MOL) had brought out a discussion document on homebased workers, pursuant to their commitments in relation to the ILO’s Convention on Home work. While the ILO convention clearly defines home workers as piece rated/wage workers, the MOL paper defines home based workers as “workers within the confines of their respective homes and could be termed ‘self-employed’ as well.” It goes on to state, “It is a collective self-employment effort and strictly speaking, there is neither an employee nor an employer. In fact all these home-based workers are workers, materials managers, production managers, finance managers, personnel managers, marketing managers and chief executives of their businesses – all rolled into one.” This is quite shockingly far from the reality, so you can understand that the Govt. is not really interested in addressing the problems of piece rated home workers who constitute the overwhelming majority of homebased workers.
The National Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) has of course paid special attention to home workers in its various reports. The social security bill that they proposed for unorganized sector workers includes home workers within its ambit as does their proposed bill on regulation of working conditions. While a truncated version of the social security bill is pending before parliament, the bill on regulation of working conditions is yet to be tabled.
Q: How would you describe the response of the Indian trade unions to address the concerns of the women workers in particular during the post liberalization regime?
A positive development has been a significant increase in the proportions o women workers in trade unions. By 2002, women constituted some 30 per cent of registered trade union membership, having risen from around 13 per cent at the beginning of the 1990s.
Nevertheless, trade unions have a long way to go in terms of bringing women into the leadership at all levels. Further, the ability of the trade unions to actually and effectively address the concerns of women workers such as their concentration in the lowest paid and most unorganized segments of industry and services, the insecurity of their employment, inequalities in share of employment and wages along with the issues of childcare facilities, maternity rights and other special rights of women workers, most crucially depends on how they are able to confront and effect changes in neo-liberal macro-policies.
There can be little doubt that strident and aggressive propaganda against labour rights as well as informalization of employment relations even in the organized sector has been a negative force against trade union organization. It is my belief that women workers are going to emerge as an important force in workers’ movements in the immediate future, and rather than be a mere subsidiary target, women are likely to become more necessary for the trade union movement than ever before.
