Assignment Code: MGSE-009/AST-01/TMA/2022-23

Course Code: MGSE-009

Assignment Name: Gender Issues in Work, Employment and Productivity

Year: 2022-2023

Verification Status: Verified by Professor

SECTION A

Write short notes on the following in 400 words each:

1. Name labour laws dealing with women's occupational health and safety in India. (10 marks)

Ans) The idea of occupational health and safety was developed in response to illnesses, disabilities, and injuries suffered by workers while they were at work. According to reports, about 125 million workers globally suffer from occupational illnesses and accidents each year. The health and safety of workers in hazardous jobs in particular, as well as that of vulnerable individuals including migrant workers, women, and young people, is of utmost concern. Workers in hazardous occupations in India are exposed to materials including asbestos, chromium, and silica dust and are at risk for cancer and respiratory illnesses.

The protection of a person's life and personal liberty is guaranteed by Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The guarantee of the right to life has been extended to the right to the health of employees in a number of Supreme Court decisions.

For instance, the Supreme Court ruled as follows in Consumer Education Research Centre v. Union of India:

"The most horrific human tragedy in modern business continues to be occupational accidents and sickness, which also represent one of the most severe types of economic waste. Therefore, we believe that the right to health care and medical assistance to preserve a worker's health and vitality while they are employed or beyond retirement is a fundamental right... to give a worker's life meaning and purpose and to uphold their human dignity."

Additionally, the Constitution commands the state to:

1. Ensure the strength and health of employees, both men and women.

2. Make sure that children are not mistreated when still very young.

3. Make sure that people aren't pushed into occupations that aren't appropriate for their age or strength out of necessity for a living.

4. Ensure fair and compassionate working conditions and maternity leave.

5. Take action to ensure that employees are included in the administration of businesses, enterprises, or other organisations operating in any industry, either by passing appropriate legislation or in another manner.

Examples of labour laws with obligations relating to occupational health and safety include the Factories Act of 1948, the Mines Act of 1952, and the Dock Workers Act of 1986. The Factories Act mandates that safety precautions be taken to ensure employee protection and that they are able to operate in a sanitary and healthy environment. Additionally, the rule contains detailed instructions for hygienic practises, artificial humidification, cleanliness, ventilation, dust and fume removal, and machine fencing.

There are also laws that prohibit women and minors from working in certain professions. The 1948 Employees State Insurance Act provides a range of monetary and medical benefits to those who are injured as well as to the loved ones of those who pass away due to workplace accidents. The Workmen's Compensation Act of 1923 mandates that, in the event of a work-related illness or injury, the employer must pay compensation to the worker's family. One the one hand, India doesn't have a comprehensive law governing occupational health and safety. However, because the laws are rarely upheld, the workers are exposed.

2. What is the gig economy? Write about positive and negative aspects of the gig economy in India with appropriate data and examples. (10 marks)

Ans) A gig economy is based on flexible, temporary, or freelance jobs, involving connecting with clients or customers through an online platform. Industrial Revolution 4.0 has changed the way business used to function, as more and more people are moving towards technology. Technology is helping them grow better, and many a times a small apartment which was left unused for a long time is suddenly becoming the interacting place of cloud based company employees.

Newer technology has thus paved the way for a gig economy in the Indian Economic space. The often tightly regulated environment of the formal jobs have loosened a bit. People are selling their skills and getting gigs according to what they demand, instead of them being a part of the very formal process of coming to office daily. According to the Boston Consulting Group’s report, in India, over 15 million workers are employed as gig workers across the industries. The number is projected to rise by over 24 million in the near-medium term and to 90 million in the long term.

An ASSOCHAM report reveals, that the gig sector has the potential to grow to the US $455 billion at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17% by 2024. The Indian gig economy has the potential to add 1.25% to the Indian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and provide over 90 million jobs in the non-farm sectors of India.

Positive Aspects of the Gig Economy in India

The gig economy has various driving factors including work flexibility and the choice to work remotely from anywhere in the world. Further, the gig workers work on the fixed-fee (while doing a contract) model, time & effort model etc. and start-up culture has also promoted the idea of freelancing and contractual work.  The labour contract is usually shorter and more specific to the task or job assigned, and the nature of payment against the work is more of a piece rate, negotiable and flexible time with a choice on when and where to work.

Negative Aspects of the Gig Economy in India

The problem with this kind of employment is the lack of social security, working conditions and working rights etc. It is largely unregulated which results in less job security and nominal benefits. In another word, it is an extension of India’s informal or unorganised labour, which is yet to be reformed by the government.  A gig-economy employee will have to upgrade his skills on his own at his own cost While companies routinely invest in training employees.

Example of Gig Economy in India

A gig economy is a free market system in which organisations hire or contract workers for a short span of time. Simply put, the positions are temporary to meet the company’s requirements by having short-term engagements. Start-ups like Ola, Uber, Zomato, and Swiggy have established themselves as the main source of the gig economy in India.

3. Explain dual labour market models/ approaches with suitable examples (10 marks)

Ans) Theories of a dual labour market initially developed as a result of several haphazard quantitative observations of local marketplaces. In the United States, four distinct research organisations were working on related projects at the same time. The Boston ghetto labour market was researched by the first group. The examinations of the other researchers were centred in Chicago, Detroit; and Harlem. Some of these scholars made an effort to emphasise the traits of ghetto employees as labourers. Numerous of the employment were low-paying, and the system supported and encouraged worker instability.

Poor working conditions, low pay, and a lack of opportunities for advancement for the working poor were all present. According to Bibb and Form, occupations in the primary labour market are "good" jobs because they pay well, while those in the secondary labour market are "bad" because they pay less and have worse working conditions. According to Piore, every market has unique characteristics. Doeringer and Piore demonstrated that there is little mobility between the primary and secondary labour markets in their formal analysis of the dichotomy. The degree of employment stability, in their opinion, makes a crucial distinction between the primary and secondary labour markets.

The labour market could be split into a secondary and a primary section, according to the labour market segmentation (LMS) theory's initial formulation. The main part of the economy is made up of a number of highly developed "internal labour markets" (ILMs), which are characterised by high wages, returns on human capital, big businesses, and job security. Contrarily, the secondary sector is characterised by low-paying jobs, a lack of human capital returns, and a high level of job insecurity. Jobs in the primary segment are rationed, and mobility between the segments is highly constrained. The key reason segmentation may arise, according to the LMS theory, is that the primary market replaces market processes with institutional regulations.

Such structures are introduced by businesses to protect their employees from risk in a market with a unique factor of production. In a somewhat different way, corporate regulations take the place of the market's competitive pressures. As a result, one implication of LMS is that the price mechanism does not work as well, or at least not as well as it does in the secondary segment, in the primary segment. The primary challenge in applying the dual labour market strategy is that it focuses all of its analytical attention on organised labour markets that are concentrated in metropolitan regions. 92% of the labour force in emerging nations like India has been employed in the unorganised sector, both in rural and urban areas.

4. Explain Sustainable Employment in India. (10marks)

Ans) Sustainable Development is the process of development whereby development does not lead to destruction of the environment but ensures sustainability of the environment in a manner that it will be also available for future use. Sustainable development in employment has given us concepts like green jobs and decent work.

Decent Work

Decent work is the availability of employment in conditions of freedom, equity, human security and dignity. According to the International labour Organization(ILO), Decent work involves opportunity for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men. It also encompasses economic, social and cultural Rights as per the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

The ILO Decent work Agenda is the balanced and integrated programmatic approach to pursue the objectives of full and productive employment and decent work for all at global, regional, national, sectoral and local levels. It has four pillars:

1. Standards and rights at work

2. Employment creation and enterprise development

3. Social Protection

4. Social Dialogue.

Green Jobs

A green job also called a green collar job is according to the United Nations Environment Programme “work in agricultural, manufacturing, research, and development (R& D) administrative and service activities that contribute substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality. Specifically, it means jobs that help to protect ecosystems and biodiversity; reduce energy, materials and water consumption through high efficiency strategies; decarbonize the economy and minimize or altogether avoid generation of all forms of waste and pollution. Economic sustainability envisages employment sustainability. Several steps have been taken in India to ensure sustainable development.

Attention must be given to the employment and social dimensions of a move towards greener economy. There can be some effective labour market and social policies along with education policies that will be crucial to smooth the transition for workers.

1. Reinforcing and tailoring existing active and passive labour market policies.

2. Skills Training and Education

3. Need to ensure that education systems are responsive to the development of new technologies and changing skill requirements.

4. Social Dialogue

Dialogue between government employers and workers representatives on issue of common interest relating to economic and social policy can help and show the way forward towards greener economy jobs. Processes such as negotiations, consultations and exchange of information are used in social dialogue. Tripartite and Bipartite agreements may be binding or advisory depending upon the systems. But they can influence policy making and legislation. Collective bargaining can also be used to settle the terms and conditions.

SECTION B

Answer any two of the questions given below in 1000 words each.

1. Describe Economic status, private property and participation of women in Pre-industrial and Industrial societies with examples. (30 marks)

Ans) One of the major impacts of the Industrial Revolution was the effect it had on the lives of women.  Before the advent of industrialization, women were often tasked with traditional jobs such as making and repairing clothing.  They were also commonly involved with helping manage the affairs of the farm and raising children.  However, the traditional role for women began to change as the Industrial Revolution unfolded.  For example, the impacts of the Agricultural Revolution and Enclosure Movement forced many small farmers off of their land.  This caused many people to migrate from rural areas to urban centres in search of work in the newly established factories and mines.

For instance, the textile industry benefitted greatly from the numerous inventions that were created during the time period, and many textile mills emerged across Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.  This meant that clothing shifted from being traditionally a role of women to a mass produced good in factories.  As a result of the impacts of the Industrial Revolution, women entered the workforce in textile mills and coal mines in large numbers.  Also, women entered the workforce in order to help support the family.  A common feature of the Industrial Revolution, for working-class people, was the low level of pay that they received.  As a result, women and children often worked in the factories and mines in order to help pay for the families cost of living.

Women were not valued the same as men in the workplace and were often paid much less than men. For example, while male British industrial workers were often paid about 10 shillings per week, women were paid half that.  Along with poor pay, women were also subjected to horrible conditions in the workplace.  While women were often used as domestic workers in the homes of the wealthy, they also worked in the factories and mines.  For example, a common job for women in a coal mine was to haul carts of coal up mine shafts.  The woman would have the cart full of coal attached to her waist by a strap and she would be expected to haul it through the narrow space.  The work was tiring and dangerous.

At the same time that women were entering the workforce, socialist values were emerging in the Industrial Revolution, as workers began to protest and fight for more equal rights.  For example, the labour movement emerged out of the ideas surrounding ideologies, such as Marxism and utopian socialism.  The early feminist movements also emerged out of this time period, as women began to organize and protest for more equality in society.  Feminism is the name for the movement of women’s rights that sought equality with men.  During the Industrial Revolution, the early feminist movements particularly fought for workplace equality, but first needed to achieve equal voting rights.

Both the changing historical relations between human work and in nature, and the relations humans to each other in the production and distribution of goods to meet material needs construct human nature differently in different historical period : nomadic human are different than agrarian or industrial humans. Marxism as a philosophy of history and social change highlights the social relations of work in different economic modes of production in its analysis of social inequalities and explanation, including relations of domination such as racism and sexism.

Within capitalism, the system they most analysed, the logic of profit drives the bourgeois class into developing the productive forces of land, labour and capital by expanding markets, turning land into a commodity and forcing the working classes from feudal and independence agrarian production into wage labour. Marx and Engel’s argue that turning all labour into a commodity to be bought and sold not only alienates workers by taking the power of production away from them, but it also collectivizes workers into factories and mass assembly lines. This provides the opportunity for workers to unite against the capitalists and to demand the collectivization of property, i.e., socialism, or communism.

According to Engels’s famous analysis of women’s situation in the history of different economic modes production in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1942), women are originally equal to, if not more powerful than, men in communal forms of production with matrilineal family organizations. Women lose power when private property comes into existence as a mode of production. Men’s control of private property, and the ability thereby to generate a surplus, changes the family form to a patriarchal one where women, and often slaves, become the property of the father and husband.

The rise of capitalism, in separating the family household from commodity production, further solidifies this control of men over women in the family when the latter become economic dependents of the former in the male breadwinner-female housewife nuclear family form. Importantly, capitalism also creates the possibility of women’s liberation from family-based patriarchy by creating possibilities for women to work in wage labour and become economically independent of husbands and fathers.

Engel’s stresses, however, that because of the problem of unpaid housework, a private task allocated to women in the sexual division of labour of capitalism, full women’s liberation can only be achieved with the development of socialism and the socialization of housework and childrearing in social services provides by the state. For this reason, most contemporary Marxists have argued that women’s liberation requires feminists to join the working class struggle against capitalism   Many Marxist-feminists thinkers, prominent among them sociologists and anthropologists, have done cross-culture and historical studies of earlier forms of kinship and economy the role of the sexual or gender division of labour in supporting or undermining women’s social power.

They have also attempted to assess the world economic development of capitalism as a contradictory force for the liberation of women and to argue that universal women’s liberation requires attention to the worse off : poor women workers in poor post-colonial countries. Other feminist anthropologists have argued that other variables in women’s role in production are key to understanding women’s social status and power. Yet other feminist economic historians have done historical studies of the ways that race, class and ethnicity have situated women differently in relation to production, for example in the history of the United States. Finally, some Marxist feminists have argued that women’s work in biological and social reproduction in a necessary element of all modes of production and one often ignored by Marxist economists.

2. Do you agree that social protection brings gender equity? Substantiate your arguments with suitable examples. (30 marks)

Ans) Our analysis also highlighted the significance of social protection measures in addressing some of the gender relations asymmetries that underlie women's sense of vulnerability. These asymmetries are what contribute to women's perception of vulnerability. At the very least, providing women with well-designed social protection can boost their confidence in their capacity to handle adversity and their sense of assurance about the future.

It is important to keep in mind the conclusion from a study of the RMP in Bangladesh, which provided destitute women with opportunities for manual labour in the public sector in a culture where households strive to be able to keep their women at home as a sign of their status: Wage employment remains a crucial component of RMP. Despite the physical challenges of the daily labour, the ladies enjoy this component of the RMP experience more than any other. It is the true indicator of their departure from reliance and squalor. Although it is debatable whether it would take two, three, four, or even more years to establish this platform, wage work is the foundation on which they would build a better life.

In the literature, the EGS in Maharashtra, India, has been cited as an early example of a public works programme that incorporated a rights viewpoint into its design. Numerous aspects of it have also made sure that it was successful in reaching disadvantaged women. The idea that everyone who wanted it would be given a job has served as the foundation for organising around the right to work while also raising the reservation wage and enhancing the negotiating power of wage workers in the rest of the local economy. As we have mentioned, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has included and strengthened this rights viewpoint, but it has only recently been implemented, making it impossible to draw more than the most rudimentary conclusions about its success.

Even while early assessments of social funds' potential to advance gender parity were unimpressive, the flexibility of their form has allowed for ongoing testing. Experience-based lessons have sparked the development of novel elements such community-driven development projects in Indonesia, participatory needs assessment in the Jamaican Social Investment Fund, and outreach and informational operations in the Eritrean Social Fund. Additionally, recent studies provide examples of efforts made to secure women's inclusion in schemes' design and management as well as in the employment they produce through various quotas and recommendations. Even though they are frequently insufficient to eliminate biases, strong government directives and the application of gender quotas do serve as a reminder of the objectives of policy.

Many studies of microfinance programmes, but especially in South Asia where there are cultural limitations on the ability of women to engage in paid work, report an increased sense of self-esteem and confidence among women as a result of their improved access to financial and other services as well as their increased decision-making power in the household. We also cited instances of more socially conscious microfinance institutions that used the supply of credit and savings as a way to empower women by encouraging the creation of associations and organisations. Members of such organisations tend to meet with local leaders and elected officials in their villages more frequently and engage in more political activity. Some of the more serious challenges to patriarchal restraints may arise as a result of social protection measures that support women's ability to organise for their rights and take part in collective action.

However, it appeared that only organisations that went beyond the minimalist approach to service providing were able to strengthen the collective voice. It was not present in the Latin American conditional cash transfer programmes. There was no indication of changes in women's negotiating power or decision-making roles, and even less evidence of increased voice within the community, even though the financial transfers gave women and their families a greater sense of stability and they enjoyed the enhanced social recognition. This may have been due to the extremely tiny sums of money involved or the fact that the transfers helped to support women's traditional duties as mothers.

As a matter of fact, we discovered that women's prior work experience had a much bigger impact on their decision-making role than did Progress transfers. If their present employment history had been taken into account for the analysis, it is likely that it would have also had an impact. Social pensions also seem to strengthen the standing of the elderly within the family and can be utilised to help other family members, while there is no proof that they might have given the recipients more political clout.

The organisations that most directly addressed the issue of power were those that were working to strengthen the voice, capacities, and associational resources of informal workers through the creation of unions, co-ops, networks, and other structures. These organisations helped vulnerable and marginalised workers participate in setting their own agendas and attempt to persuade a variety of influential people in society to address their needs and priorities through a combination of training, confidence-building, advocacy, mobilisation, networking, and international campaigns.

They were most likely to seek solutions that crossed institutional borders because they were more likely to be sensitive to the interconnected constraints that underlie woomera's disadvantage in several realms of society. Additionally, they were most likely to raise the public's awareness of worker groups who frequently contradict conventional wisdom about labour markets. We included instances of migrant workers, waste pickers, slum and pavement residents, and domestic employees; however, other attempts to organise have also included sex workers, bonded labour, home-based workers, street vendors, and other groups.

Questions of male support and male resistance must be taken into consideration in any efforts to change fundamental power dynamics. Responses have included leaving male-dominated trade unions and founding organisations run by and primarily for women; persuading policy makers and employers through argument, lobbying, demonstrations, and threats to "name and shame" them; and engaging in more difficult negotiations when the involved men are members of closer-knit families and kinship groups. Sensitizing spouses or other male authority figures within the family could be essential for long-term success in increasing women's capacity to access social safety measures, especially when these contain valuable resources. When asked for suggestions on how to increase women's engagement in project activities, males are more likely to be in favour of it. The Progress case study also serves as a reminder that men could benefit from further training in caring and reproductive techniques.