Towards a gender audit

Some aspects of the budget announcements have extraordinary gender dimensions. One, the 100 days of work. Experience, however, suggests that...

Some aspects of the budget announcements have extraordinary gender dimensions. One, the 100 days of work. Experience, however, suggests that this is not an adequate response to the commitment to employment. If the first programme of a promise of 100 days of work to one person per household is implemented, a question that must immediately be addressed is: which person from the household? Most often, the person who is chosen is a male, young or old, routinely considered the primary bread winner. However, research points to the fallacy of this nomenclature. It is the women in a poor household who bring the income which provides for the basic needs of the household.

Thus, in order to be sensitived to gender, what would be required would be to either make it two persons per poverty household 8212; a woman and a man 8212; or the woman first. This may appear absurd, but it is corroborated by other evidence distilled from all the studies done at the ground level of the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme.

A study done by a research centre, ISST, with the cooperation of the late Shri Page, the father of the Employment Guarantee Scheme in Maharashtra, revealed that participation by women as a proportion of the total participation of labour ranged from 60 per cent to 80 per cent across the various districts of Maharashtra. A further examination of who comes for the work from these poverty households revealed that it was usually the older women, not men, even though the men may be also unemployed; the men were loath to take on work which was so arduous and yet so underpaid. Thus, unemployment of women and labour of women in poor households needs to be taken note of in the new design.

The finance minister has identified 85 items that 8216;8216;can be safely taken out of the reserved list. Further, it is felt that technology upgradation of SSI units is the most urgent requirement to do business in a competitive environment.8217;8217; Which items? What technology? How to ensure that it 8216;8216;grows8217;8217; along with growth of jobs in tandem, as he hopes, and not into a mechanised giant?

This is a gender issue. There is a need to examine which items are identified and what is the role that women play in them and how liberalisation would impact production, output, technological choice, location of those small-scale industries and manufacture of these items. Very often, in small-scale and household enterprises, women are engaged in unpaid work. Yet, their contribution to the household product is such that if that household were to lose that particular source of livelihood, women would be the most deprived.

It has been shown that when poverty increases in a household, it is the women who suffer most. It has been suggested that the mechanisation of farming in Punjab, which made women8217;s contributions redundant, is one of the reasons why the state is such a killing field for unborn girls.

Another announcement the finance minister made was to consider the opening of free trade zones. Evaluations by the UN and the ILO indicate that free trade zones have a pernicious effect on the status of women. While employers usually look for female labour and therefore offer an opportunity for employment to women, certain adverse effects are noticeable. Firstly, employers often insist that the labour that they use should be young and unmarried, so that they may work night shifts. Studies conducted by ESCAP and ADB in Southeast Asia showed that during the fast growth phase of the Asian tigers very young women from the rural areas were absorbed in the free trade zones into the work force of sunrise industries. They were offloaded after a few years, and since they had left behind their earlier lives, many of them were nudged into the sex industry.

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Secondly, they do not permit any form of unionisation since a free trade zone8217;s attraction is to be tax free 8212; they are also free of any legislation which is protective of labour or capital or country. In the absence of such legislation, women workers are among the most vulnerable.