Counting of women workers improves, yet many remain invisible in government surveys

There were an estimated 119.8 million female workers compared to 306.95 million male workers and the female LFPR had increased to 30% from 24.5% in 2018-19, per a survey.

The 2019-20 edition of the periodic labour force survey (PLFS) has reported a 5.5 percentage point jump in the labour force participation rate for females aged 15 years and above from a year ago. In a report of survey findings published recently, the number of female workers in the country was estimated to have grown by an impressive 29%.

Significantly, this increase in female workers was recorded as growth in the Indian economy was rapidly decelerating and employment generation was under pressure. The PLFS follows the July-June cycle for data collection and so the last batch of data was collected in June 2020, when the unlock process began after a nationwide lockdown.

The survey reported that there were an estimated 119.8 million female workers compared to 306.95 million male workers and that the female LFPR had increased to 30% from 24.5% in 2018-19. In contrast, the LFPR for male workers had increased only marginally - from 75.5% to 76.8% during the same period.

Given the economic conditions in the country, it is apparent that the jump in the number of female workers was not entirely an outcome of more women getting employed but mostly a result of a relatively better recording of data on female workers in the 2019-20 round.

Undercounting of female workers has been a common feature in employment-unemployment surveys. It has become more accentuated since the 2009-10 quinquennial survey when a sharp drop in female LFPR was seen from the levels recorded in the 2004-05 survey.

Economists had initially suggested that the decline may be attributed to women opting out of the labour force due to the nuclearisation of families. It was also felt the younger women were spending more years in education and thus delaying their entry into the labour market. However, the decline was too sharp to be explained as such. Feminist economists flagged undercounting as the primary cause for low LFPR.

How undercounting happens

Under-counting of women workers happens mostly when they work in small family-run units including kirana shops and other informal set-ups as also on the farms along with the male members of the family. The work they do in the backrooms to support the primary economic activity of male family members is rarely acknowledged.

Economist Aasha Mehta Kapur who is the chairperson of the Centre for Gender Studies at the Institute for Human Development uses an example of a pani-puri vendor to explain this conundrum surrounding low female LFPR. The vendor is usually a male worker who sets up a stall at a street corner or vends using a pushcart.

He depends on the female members of his household to prepare the puris or golgappas and other accompaniments such as the chutneys. Without the support of the female members of his household, the vendor will not be able to ply his business.

The female members, who usually stay at home, do other chores also such as cooking and cleaning. During an employment survey, the man will be counted as a worker while the woman’s status would be mostly recorded as not working. As a result, work done by women becomes invisible in official records.

Likewise, on a small farm, male and female members of a household work together, dividing work between themselves. The female members also keep house. In other instances, female members rear livestock – cattle, goat, pigs and poultry - to supplement household income besides doing all the chores in a house. But the work that these women do may not get recorded.

It is also common to find women tending to a farm when the male members migrate to towns and cities to earn a livelihood between sowing and harvesting. Again, the role played by women in such circumstances could get undercounted.

Undercounting varies across states

The extent of undercounting varies across states, as can be seen from the wide variation in the reported female LFPR. The undercounting is lower in states such as Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and most of the states in the peninsula and the northeast, the 2019-20 edition of the PLFS show.

Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh reported the highest female LFPR while Bihar, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh reported the lowest. Significantly, a sizeable proportion of the female population of these states was engaged in agriculture but the survey does not capture that fully.

Therefore, the female LFPR was as low as 9.5% in Bihar, 15.7% in Haryana and 17.7% in Uttar Pradesh in 2019-20. The LFPR for Bihar and Uttar Pradesh had improved from 4.3% and 13.6%, respectively, reported a year ago.  The female LFPR for Haryana was mostly unchanged from 15.3% reported in 2018-19.

In contrast, the female LFPR of 53.1% in Chhattisgarh and 65% in Himachal Pradesh was a marked improvement from 48.4% and 59.2%, respectively, recorded in the 2018-19 annual survey.

An LFPR of 9.5% for the female population in Bihar, aged 15 years and above, is equivalent to saying that 9.5 females in every 100 were either working or seeking work. That cannot be true as many more women are involved in economic activities, particularly in rural areas.

The NSO has certainly improved the quality of labour force data in the 2019-20 version of the survey, but the abysmally low numbers from Bihar, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh highlights the need for further improvement in capturing the contribution of women in various economic activities.