THE LONG ROAD AHEAD

Women are entering several less-ventured spaces today. But with dwindling female labour force participation and a 37.5 per cent gender gap, Asia’s third-largest economy has miles to go before gender equality even appears in sight

- VIDYA S.

THE YEAR 2021 has been witness to Soma Mondal taking the reins at the ₹70,000-crore steel PSU SAIL as its first woman chairman, Falguni Nayar ringing the NSE bell as she steered her decade-old start-up to a ₹5,000-crore-plus IPO, and Ola Electric announcing a 10,000-strong all-women workforce for its two-wheeler factory near Chennai. All good tidings.

That these are significant moments even in 2021, however, says a lot about the state of affairs for working women in India. Asia’s third-largest economy has one of the lowest rates of female labour participation in the world at 21 per cent. Smaller and less developed neighbours Bangladesh (30.5 per cent) and Sri Lanka (33.7 per cent) fare much better. Worse, India’s performance has declined over the past decade. A widened gender gap of 37.5 per cent has accorded the country an ignominious 140th rank out of 156 countries in the WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2021. And the pandemic has made matters worse as more women than men lost their jobs.