Bridging the Gender Gap at the Workplace

“Invest in women: Accelerate progress” is this year’s theme for International Women’s Day, which the United Nations has chosen. In order to build thriving economies and ensure a healthy planet, gender equality and women’s well-being are no longer options but imperatives. However, despite steady economic growth worldwide, women are largely under-tapped resources with respect to their contribution to GDP and socio-economic exclusion.

Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi once pointed out that paying women less than men was a “burning hole in our collective conscience.’’ Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Facebook articulated the same thought in her book, ‘Lean in: Women, Work and the Will to Lead’. Closer home, Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar Shaw faced bias and skepticism from investors. Kiran Bedi who was the first woman IPS officer, also had to face prejudice and resistance in the male dominated system.

According to a Union Labour Ministry survey, only 36.6 percent of women in India are a part of the labour force. If India wants to achieve its ambitious goal of becoming a US$ 5 trillion economy, the need of the hour is to encourage more women to join the workforce. Although their participation is higher in the unorganised sector, the same doesn’t reflect in the organised sectors.

Another issue that women face in the workforce around the world is the wage disparity between men and women. Globally, women are paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men for doing the same job. The situation is worse in Indian context where merely 70 cents are paid to a woman for every dollar that their male counterparts earn. This pay gap is universal across countries and sectors. The gap widens further for women of colour, immigrant women and care-giving mothers.

Also women tend to face the ‘motherhood penalty’ which pushes them either to take a career break or to explore casual and part time work. Motherhood demands a heavy penalty from women as they lose out on 60% of their income in the first ten years after childbirth. They are less likely to be re-hired for the same position which they left before bearing children. Worldwide, there is a common phenomenon wherein women volunteer to take career breaks for child care. Later, when they rejoin the workforce, they are paid less as they have lost out on their work experience. Thus, the motherhood penalty dis-incentivizes women from rejoining the labour force. A study conducted in 134 countries states, 24% mothers leave the workforce after the birth of their first child, 17% do not rejoin after 5 years, and 15% women still choose to remain out of the workforce after 10 years.

The World Economic Forum has ranked India 135 among 146 countries in its Global Gender Gap Index published in 2022. In India, 73% women leave the workforce after childbirth. Governments across the world are fighting this issue. Several countries, including Germany, Iceland, Spain, Netherlands, Japan and Austria have introduced measures to ensure gender equality at work, and India has also encouraged child care leave of absence and rewarding motherhood subsidies. It was the first emerging economy to assign quotas for women on corporate boards in 2013.? However, governments alone will not be able to enforce workplace equality until things change at the grass root level.

There has to be a total paradigm shift in the way women and their roles in society are perceived - from how parenting was seen in the past versus how it is perceived today. It ought to be seen as a shared responsibility between both the parents, but even today men spend only a third of their time on unpaid chores. In contrast, women are expected to strike the perfect work life balance. In this quest, they encounter various mental and physical problems like burnout, stress, depression and insomnia. To put it concisely, “We expect women to work like they don’t have children and raise children as if they don’t work.” Young women are seen as more aspiring and career oriented as compared to women belonging to older generations.

On a positive note, there is not much pay disparity in government organisations because of its transparent practices. Stereotypes are breaking everywhere - women are now assigned combat roles in the armed forces. Late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously said: “As soon as a woman is granted equality with man, she proves superior to him.” However, institutional and policy interventions are needed to ensure equal opportunity and equal pay.

This Women’s Day, please don't greet women with cheesy lines, or gift them chocolates or perfumes. Instead, in the true spirit of International Women’s Day, give them what they deserve – the promise of being treated as an equal.