Six key areas that restrain women from entering labour force - a random response to the Women's Policy Action Network

 


A recent article in the Daily Mirror reported on a press conference organised by the Women's Policy Action Network (WPAN) of the Advocata Institute, on the vexed topic of Women's Labour Force Participation. It really sounds like a broken record

So here are a few random points that I can't help but put down

First point - one that is repeatedly made but which economists, especially the neo-liberal kind, repeatedly ignore.  Contributing to economic growth should not be the reason for increasing women's labour force participation. Women (like men) have a right to work and have rights at work, and policymakers have an obligation to respect and protect these rights.

The ILO sums up these rights as "decent work" - "it involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for all, 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." ( https://www.ilo.org/topics/decent-work) I have heard Dr Ramani Gunatilleke at a WPAN discussion  point out that decent work is hard to come by in our economy, and we all know that women workers are concentrated in the more precarious positions - in the apparel sector, in the plantations, in the hospitality industry, as street sweepers, domestic workers etc

So I would add that creating decent jobs in all sectors should be a prerequisite to increasing women's participation in the labour force. 

It is encouraging to see the caregiving role of women being flagged as an important deterrent to women's labour force participation.  Finally the voice of feminist activists and feminist economists are being heard - but only partially.  The Purple Economy is a term coined by my friend Ipek Ilkkaracan  to convey the need for an economic model which recognises care work.  Care work consists predominantly of cooking, washing, cleaning, shopping, and taking care of babies/ill/disabled/elderly as well as taking care of healthy adults. We must not forget this overarching burden of care that women shoulder and how the recent economic reforms has intensified this burden and increased women's time poverty (check out https://www.csf-asia.org/colombo-urban-lab/). Any assessment of the impact of care on women's right to work cannot be isolated from the effect of other macro reforms on households.

I am also curious about this lack of social infrastructure, especially childcare. In the not so dim distant past, there was a network of nursery schools run by Sarvodaya and the Lanka Mahila Samiti (to name two organisations). I know the Lanka Mahila Samiti schools received a headcount grant from the Probation and Childcare services, the organisation provided nursery school teacher training and the communities where the schools were located supported the school by providing the land for the building and other day to day requirements. According to the women at the Lanka Mahila Samiti headquarters in Malabe, several of these nursery schools are still running, but require serious upgrades. It would be useful for the Advocata Institute to survey these schools with a view to building on existing capacity.

My final random point is about domestic workers as an unorganised group.  This is of course not the same the world over, and there is a very active and powerful International Domestic Workers' Federation that works on strengthening the collective voice of domestic workers so they can claim their rights.  Given the tendency to stifle other collective labour actions and the elitism inherent in our political and economic structures,  I am not sure whether there is space for such organising to take place right now in Sri Lanka, but I look forward to the day it does happen and domestic workers have a voice beyond reliance on the patronage of their employers. 

I apologise for the randomness of these comments - but I am hopeful that they will stimulate discussion that will take this conversation further than where it is right now.





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