Yet the participation of women in India’s workforce has been abysmal and is one of the lowest in the world. Women’s participation in India’s workforce stands at under 28%. According to the Global Gender Gap report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2017, which ranks countries on parameters of gender equality in health, education, economics, and politics, India finished 139 out of 144 countries on economic participation and opportunity. Despite managing to bridge the gender gap in enrolment in primary and tertiary education, India ranked 112 on the education attainment metric. Overall, India ranked 108 out of 144 countries.
Why is India leaving its women behind? Do Indian women self-select themselves into unfavourable career choices as adults, given their primary responsibility of caring for children and running the household? Is it that women who focus on pursuing professional careers cannot maintain a work-family balance as costs of child care increase and there are few alternative part-time employment options? Do women opt out of formal employment?
Researchers Amit Jain Chauradia, Chandrasekhar Sripada and Glory George investigated the career choices of women, within the context of the short-term skill development training activities of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY). These researchers conducted an ethnographic study to understand the PMKVY ecosystem and the importance of key constructs such as gender and placement. To understand the nuances behind the ‘skills-to-jobs conundrum’ in India, they further analysed a large dataset with over a million observations.
Impact with skill development?
Inadequate training infrastructure, outdated curricula and stigma towards the vocational education system have long jinxed the skill development ecosystem in India. Long-term training programmes for teaching industrial trades are unpopular. They have high dropout rates and diminishing enrolment. To remedy this state of affairs, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship was created to provide skill development and entrepreneurship programmes through a streamlined institutional mechanism.
Often in developing economies, government-sponsored training programmes act as tools for integrating the unemployed and economically disadvantaged into the mainstream workforce. These programmes allow beneficiaries sufficient time to move through basic education and job training to obtain occupational certificates. On the other end of the institutional spectrum, they offer incentives to entities that provide support to such programmes
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