Married women and employment: Not a 'match made in heaven'?
The budget for 2024-25 highlights the urgency of job creation and skilling, and emphasizes the need to get more women into India’s labour force. As the government prepares to roll out employment-linked incentives and other schemes aimed at first-time workers that may increase the participation of women in the workforce, we must also think about women who have exited. Our research with low-skilled workers in the manufacturing sector clearly shows that manufacturers face a huge turnover among women working on the shop-floor.
At the same time, our conversations with highly-skilled women from premier business schools in India show that they too are quitting the workforce at a far higher rate than their male counterparts. India’s labour force and employment numbers suggest that when a woman gets married, she is likely to drop out of the workforce. Married women and employment, it seems, are not a match made in heaven.
On the face of it, this appears to be an issue of cultural norms, with married women being encouraged by their families not to continue working. Or about lost motivation to work after marriage. However, the phenomenon is more complex than that.
Women, married or unmarried, are interested in being financially independent and have an identity that goes beyond being a daughter, wife, sister or mother. Then why do women leave the workforce after getting married? To understand this, we conducted focus group discussions with MBA women graduates of premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) in the country. Some of them had taken a career break and either returned to the industry they’d quit or were pursuing their dreams in new fields.
Read more on livemint.com
