The biggest gender pay gap in Asia: why are Indian women so undervalued?
- Female participation in the workforce is lower in India than almost any other country on Earth, creating a lack of financial freedom
- Tackling the underlying societal and cultural reasons behind this absence of women in the workforce may prove to be an uphill battle
For as long as she can remember, Manasi Mridha has wanted nothing more than to be her own person – and own her own car.
Earlier this year, Mridha became one of only 10 women in the city to be handed the keys to a “pink cab” – female-only taxis driven by women that were introduced as part of a government-run scheme.
The reasons for this low level of female participation in the jobs market are many and varied, although one of the biggest is a lack of opportunity. Young Indian men need little more than a secondary school education to be able to find work as mechanics, drivers, sales representatives or postmen, but as Oxfam India points out in its second inequality report called “Mind the Gap”, released in March, “few of these opportunities are available to women”.
Indian girls frequently outperform boys in their secondary school exams, but then are unable to find suitable employment for the skills that they have. Jobs for the girls, the Oxfam report says, are few and far between – there is work for women, but much of it is in the form of menial labour on farms or building sites, which has “little appeal for girls with secondary and higher secondary education”.
