Kamal Ghorui
India’s richest civic body, BMC, has a woman boss. That is swag achievement, by far. Mumbai now has three women in the financial capital’s administrative leadership – municipal commissioner, mayor and BMC’s leader of opposition – a nod to working women everywhere. And yet, can the framework for equality be gilded by only the firsts? Much as every ‘first’ – from breaking into male dominated spheres to breaking out of stereotyped roles – is every bit worth celebrating, it is equal representation , in numbers and pay, via access, agency and accountability, that’s the real deal. Take Indian politics. So many women politicians in a variety of powerful firsts, yet, ‘33%’ is such a long haul, and still a distance away.
Take the world of work. Barely 32% of women in working-age population are even part of the labour force. Of these, 80% are in ‘vulnerable’ employment – informal, low-quality, unevenly paid. Just 15% are in regular, salaried jobs, wildly disproportionate to their college enrolment, that’s almost equal to men’s. Work life, for even this 15%, is precarious. Career growth, name any sector, is painful – judiciary, industry, tech, media, you name it. In private sector, women freshers earn 15% less than men with similar qualifications, in comparable roles. This gap widens to 25% in senior roles. Women, on average, earn 27% less than men in India (ILO 2023). There’s no real ‘ why ’ to this. It’s a mix of hardwired cultural attitudes, different roles, and some suggest, “negotiating skills”. Problem is, onus of minding/mending these gaps seems to lie on women. But, regulation has forced almost all large companies to have at least one woman director, even if for sake of compliance. Even if male directors earn three and a half times more than women counterparts. Further, IMF has long held “increasing women’s labour force participation…(results in) large gains in economic welfare…w omen’s complementary skills raise productivity, boosting wages for everyone.” It’s not a ‘women’s issue’, it’s a GDP issue.
Given the odds, patriarchy to policy, stacked against women, in reaching leadership positions, top performers do stand out, for better or worse. But there’s a certain irony in celebrating achievers, whether women, or from a demographic minority. For, what becomes vividly clear is that such achievement remains rare even in 21st century India. Limelight on the high-flyers only increases the glare on the hopelessly unequal work lives of women.
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