Debunking myths about women and the workplace

For years, the topic of the declining rate of female participation in the labor force has been a point of discussion. Though it appears that post-pandemic, this participation is increasing, it’s not clear if this pattern will continue to hold.

This piece explores the reasons and challenges women face in labor force participation through a study by non-government organization Pratham Education Foundation. Among other things, we found women may enter the workforce on equal terms with men, but their likelihood of remaining in the workforce long-term tends to be lower.

The post-placement journey of the 12,000 youth trained by Pratham sheds light on significant aspects of workforce integration and retention. 

This entire cohort had been through the organization's training programme and these youth had accepted a placement offer from an employer in the industry for which they received training. We have narrowed down two junctures of their journey–three months are placement, followed by one year after placement.

In each stage, we enquired about their current activity status, and classified them as employed, studying, or unemployed based on their response.

At the three-month mark, when we compared the employment journey of women and men, it appears that there are no significant differences in their employment status. But when we look at the data at the 12-month mark, women have experienced significantly higher attrition than men.

What could have happened in the span of one year that led to the drop-out of so many women from the workforce? We decided to look closer at some indicators to determine the answer.

Let’s start with education qualifications.

From the data, it doesn’t appear that higher education qualifications have any effect on retention, except to suggest that those with lower education qualifications have a higher probability of sustaining in the workforce. That seems to raise more questions than it answers.

The next variable on the list was age. Here we started to see some clear and troubling trends.

While unemployment levels for men seem to decrease as age increases, for women the unemployment levels rapidly increase with age. Younger women have indicated a stronger preference for higher education than men, but it is unclear if this higher education will translate into employment.

There is a hidden story of marriage, childcare, and other family responsibilities that can be woven into this table, but let’s look a little closer before we draw our conclusions.

The last parameter on the list is migration. The table below shows how youth who migrated for their placements faired compared to their counterparts who didn’t migrate for placements. Our hypothesis was that women who migrated would have dropped out of the workforce fairly early on, and men are unlikely to be affected by migration. Boy, were we wrong.

One can clearly see that at the three-month stage there is hardly any gap between migrant women and non-migrant women but there is higher attrition for men who migrated compared to the non-migrant men. 

While at the 12-month mark, it appears that women have experienced higher levels of attrition, it doesn’t appear that migration has anything to do with this tale. While for men, even at the 12-month mark non-migrant men demonstrate a higher probability of surviving in the workplace.

We cannot view the success of either gender purely on the basis of their educational qualification, training, or technical skills. There are some findings that need deeper investigation but some pieces of the puzzle can be immediately solved:

> Once women have crossed the immediate barriers of access and taken the decision to migrate, there is no evidence to suggest that they can’t thrive in the workplace.

> Women are at greater risk of dropping out of the workforce the older they get.

> While women might be able to enter the workforce at the same footing as men, the probability of them lasting longer in the workforce is lower

These vulnerabilities are largely exacerbated by the current laws of the workplace which view social responsibilities as distinct from someone’s ability to thrive in the workforce. 

What we are seeing here is the story of thousands of young women who jumped several hurdles to get trained, to get placed, to enter the workforce, and then were forced to leave. If the leaders of the workforce don’t course-correct right now, then it is bound to lose out on the benefits of its female labour force participating effectively.

Annette Francis Parakkal has been working with the skill development & youth training arm of Pratham Education Foundation since 2018.