Facets of the Gender Gap in Labour Force Participation and Economic Empowerment Disruption

According to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data, the average employment for January 2019-March 2020 was 403 million, which declined to 282 million in April 2020 and recovered steadily thereafter to reach 393million by August 2020. In India, female labour force participation is abysmally poor and has declined over the years, despite a rise in education. The causes for this are complex and, aside from objective factors, include a whole variety of social and cultural aspects. One of the factors causing this is the social mentality of women becoming homemakers. Furthermore, the scarcity of schooling and work-oriented courses, the lack of mobility, and sexism in the workplace have been deterrents to women's access to the public workspace. Therefore, initiatives that aim to fix this void need to be holistic. Legislation alone is not enough, and to close this gap, all stakeholders should join hands. The chapter attempts to analyse facets of the gender gap in labour force participation and economic empowerment disruption through the pandemic.

Pregnancy, childbirth and health of female labour migrants from Central Asia in Russia

The research note contains an analysis of data on health, pregnancy, and childbirth experience among female labour migrants arriving in Russia from Central Asia. Empirically, the study bases on the data of three surveys conducted in 2015, 2017, and 2020. In total, the surveys contain information on 2,028 migrants from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan living in Russia. The analysis proves that with gradual feminization of labour migration from Central Asia, pregnancy and childbirth in a significant part of labour migrants take place in risky living conditions; the existing system of maternal health protection for migrants in Russia needs modernization. Compared to earlier studies on this topic, the survey data showed a higher proportion of female migrants who had got pregnant and gave birth in Russia along with a lower proportion of migrants who terminated pregnancy. These differences may indicate a change in the reproductive behaviour of women who come to work in Russia from the countries of Central Asia. The presented note shows the need for in-depth studies of the reproductive behaviour of labour migrants in Russia, as well as the development of national migration statistics, which should become gender sensitive.

Policy Brief For “Flexible Aging: New Ways To Measure The Diverse Experience Of Population Aging In Scotland

This ESRC-SDA funded project took a demographic approach using new metrics to studying population ageing. Key project findings mentioned in Policy Brief:• Until now, most notions of dependency are false.• As an average, the UK population is younger rather than older compared to 1950.• Old age dependency has declined rather than increased since 1980 as life expectancy at older ages and female labour force participation have increased.

Formal and informal entrepreneurship: a cross-country policy perspective

This paper distinguishes between formal and informal entrepreneurship. It theorises that each are influenced by very different combinations of macro-economic factors and strongly moderated by country income levels. Empirically, we show the ease of starting a business and high-quality governance, exert a powerful influence on formal, but not informal entrepreneurship. The latter is influenced by self-employment rates in low-income countries and by female labour force participation in high-income countries. Policy-makers seeking to improve economic welfare through enhancing entrepreneurship therefore have to choose the ‘type’ of entrepreneurship on which to focus and then select appropriate policies. By providing a novel grouping of these policies, we are able to assist them in making these choices.

What Is Women’s Work? Reflections from Four North Indian Urban Clusters

The actual extent of the female employment challenge in India is much debated. Data on female labour force participation (FLFP) in India is hampered by shortcomings in data validity and data accuracy. The objective of this article is to explore challenges to data accuracy through two potential sources of error: measurement error and reporting error. Drawing on a unique source of granular survey data from households in four north Indian urban clusters, we demonstrate that the precise nature of the survey employed has meaningful impacts on the reporting of FLFP. Furthermore, the gender composition of respondents also seems to matter although, after controlling for gender, self-reporting is indistinguishable from proxy reporting.

Female labour-force participation and socioeconomic factors, with emphasis on health

Χρησιμοποιώντας ένα ισορροπημένο panel 331 παντρεμένων γυναικών ηλικίας 39-45 ετών από τη British Household Survey για τα έτη 1991-2002, επιδιώκουμε να διερευνήσουμε τη δυναμική της προσφοράς εργασίας γυναικών με έμφαση στο πώς η υγεία επηρεάζει τις εργασιακές αποφάσεις των γυναικών. Η state dependence (η εξάρτηση του τρέχοντος στάτους συμμετοχής στο εργατικό δυναμικό από αυτό της προηγούμενης περιόδου) στη συμμετοχή των γυναικών στην αγορά εργασίας, η μη παρατηρούμενη ατομική ετερογένεια, η αυτοσυσχέτιση του όρου σφάλματος και οι αρχικές συνθήκες λαμβάνονται υπόψη μέσω της προσαρμογής κατάλληλων δυναμικών μοντέλων διακριτών επιλογών. Σε όλες τις προσεγγίσεις, η εκτίμηση του συντελεστή για την κατάσταση συμμετοχής στην αγορά εργασίας με χρονική υστέρηση μίας περιόδου αντανακλά θετική state dependence και είναι στατιστικά σημαντική. Η εκτιμώμενη μέση μερική επίδραση της συμμετοχής στην αγορά εργασίας με χρονική υστέρηση μίας περιόδου δείχνει ότι, κατά μέσο όρο σε όλες τις γυναίκες και σε όλες τις χρονικές περιόδους, η πιθανότητα μιας γυναίκας να συμμετέχει στην αγορά εργασίας το τρέχον έτος είναι 60,37% υψηλότερη εάν η γυναίκα συμμετείχε στην αγορά εργασίας το προηγούμενο έτος από ό,τι αν δεν συμμετείχε. Η σημαντική επίδραση των μεταβλητών που σχετίζονται με την υγεία εντοπίζεται σε όλους τους εκτιμητές. Τα ευρήματα δείχνουν ότι οι γυναίκες έχουν μεγαλύτερη πιθανότητα συμμετοχής στην αγορά εργασίας όταν δεν αναφέρουν περιοριστικά προβλήματα υγείας και όταν δηλώνουν άριστη, πολύ καλή, καλή ή μέτρια υγεία, σε σύγκριση με τις γυναίκες που δηλώνουν ότι έχουν κακή ή πολύ κακή υγεία. Η παρουσία άγχους και κατάθλιψης επίσης μειώνει την πιθανότητα συμμετοχής. Ακόμη, βρίσκουμε ότι τα περιοριστικά προβλήματα υγείας συσχετίζονται με ατομικά χαρακτηριστικά που μειώνουν την πιθανότητα συμμετοχής στην αγορά εργασίας. Επιπλέον, οι προβλεπόμενες πιθανότητες καταδεικνύουν την ισχυρή επίδραση της παρουσίας μικρών παιδιών και των προβλημάτων υγείας στην πιθανότητα συμμετοχής στην αγορά εργασίας.

Taming and Training Greek “Peasant Girls” and the Gendered Politics of Whiteness in Postwar Canada: Canadian Bureaucrats and Immigrant Domestics, 1950s–1960s

Drawing on the voluminous government records as well as selective interviews in a large oral history archive created over several years, this article explores Canada’s recruitment of Greek female domestics in the 1950s and early 1960s within the context of the feminist scholarship on female labour schemes as well as more recent whiteness literature on the in-between racial status of peripheral Europeans. In considering the contradictory features of a large but little-known labour scheme through which more than ten thousand Greek women arrived, many of them before their families, it documents the role of the bureaucrats – who envisioned the domestics’ transformation into models of modern domesticity while portraying them as victims of their patriarchal communities and manipulators of Canadian immigration policy – and that of the women who negotiated various challenges. To account for the scheme’s remarkable longevity, a key argument probes the mix of factors that repositioned a traditionally non-preferred Southern European group of women into a desirable white source of immigrant labour and future Canadian motherhood. Ultimately, Greek women enjoyed a racial privilege and mobility not afforded to later arriving women from the Caribbean and Philippines.