Women’s Work in South Asia: Reflections on the Past Decade

Abstract

The development and promotion of legislation and policies promoting gender equity in employment form an essential part of the agenda of international organisations and global forums. However, gender inequity in the labour markets of South Asian countries remains, and the Global Gender Gap Report 2022 predicts that it will take 197 years to achieve gender parity. This article explores some of the changes and challenges of the past 10 years related to gender equity in employment and outlines some of the legislative changes during this time such as the increase in maternity leave and requirement for women on boards. While changes have occurred, many issues of inequity remain. The changes brought about by the government regulations during the pandemic of 2020-2022, including the sudden focus on working from home, has had both positive and negative effects on women’s work and lives.

Introduction

Nearly 10 years ago we reviewed the broad issues for women in the labour market in South Asia, concluding that there were many challenges to the achievement of gender equality (Strachan et al., 2015). We noted that the impact of reforms on women employment ‘remains less than satisfactory, generally representing an empty-shell or toothless tiger construction of EEO’ and ‘what seems to be common…is an unrelenting alliance of patriarchal traditions and gender inegalitarian interpretation and practices of various religious and/or tribal codes’ (Ali, 2010, p. 51). These conclusions remain a decade later. According to the Global Gender Gap Report (World Economic Forum, 2022), the projected time frame for closing the gender gap has now extended from 100 years to 132 years. In South Asia, it is predicted to take 197 years (World Economic Forum, 2022). The consequences of this regression will not only affect women but have broader implications. In this article we reflect on gender (in)equalities at workplaces in the early 2020s, examine some of the recent legislative changes and the impact of the regulations during the pandemic of the early 2020s.

The nations of South Asia account for over one-fifth of the world population, and India is now the most populous nation on earth, with 1.429 billion people. These countries remain predominantly agricultural, with two-thirds or more of the population living in rural areas. In South Asia, nearly three-fifths of all jobs held by women are in agriculture, compared with one-third of jobs held by men (International Labour Organization [ILO], 2022). In India, 76% of women work in agriculture (2021–22) compared to 51% of men. The median age in South Asia is under 30 years, with the exception of Sri Lanka, where it is about 34 years. Many women workers combine paid employment with primary responsibility for child and family care, and many work in the informal labour market, and frequently their work in family enterprises goes unrecorded. In Pakistan the informal labour sector accounts for 71.7% of employment in main jobs outside agriculture, higher in rural areas (75.6%) than in urban areas (68.1%). This large workforce has limited access to labour welfare services and faces ‘challenges including rights at work, child and bonded labour, social protection, lack of sustainable employment, working poverty, gender-based discriminations’ (ILO, 2022).

Recorded labour force participation rates remain low for women. In Bangladesh, for example, women’s work force participation rate (WPR) in 2016–17 was estimated at 36.3%, compared to 80.5% for men, with lower rates for women in urban areas. The majority of women work in agriculture (60%), almost twice the rate of men (32%). Three-quarters (76%) of contributing family helpers are women, and 92% women compared to 82% men are regarded as working in the informal economy (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2022, pp. 55–61). In India, once again, there is a stark difference in the WPR, with the rate for women over 15 years being 36% in rural areas and 22% in urban areas, less than half of the labour force participation rate for men. Women’s earnings remain lower than that of men, with professional women, for example, earning 85% of the hourly rate of men, and women craft workers, 70% of the men’s rate (National Statistical Office, 2022, pp. 38, 138–41).

There are many challenging labour market issues for gender equality, and many of these seem to remain and are resistant to change over time. Regardless of the continued efforts to reduce the gender gap, workplace gender disparities and inequalities continue to exist in South Asia. The past decade has encompassed several years in which the world was gripped by the declaration of a pandemic of the virus SARS-CoV-2, commonly referred to as COVID-19. The early 2020s presented new challenges and labour conditions for workers in most countries. While the pandemic and the ensuing economic recession that many countries face has wide-ranging and long-term implications for both women and men at work, women have been affected to a greater extent by these changes (Mohapatra, 2021; Türkcan, 2022). Women in developing countries in South Asia are facing a significantly greater impact than men and women in developed countries (Mohapatra, 2021), with widened and worsened gender disparities, impacting women’s professional and financial lives in numerous ways. In this article we examine briefly some of the changes and challenges of the past 10 years.

Gender Equality and Legislation

Promoting gender equality through fair treatment of women under the law can help tackle the key challenges experienced by women in South Asian countries. Labour law can ensure equal treatment, which makes it possible to encourage a greater influx of women into the workforce, enhance their retention rates, facilitate their advancement to managerial positions and empower them to assume influential roles. However, according to an analysis by the World Bank Group (2023) on accelerating gender equality by reforming legal frameworks, South Asia has the lowest regional average of the number of women’s rights reforms implemented during the years 2020–23. However, there are a number of significant recent changes in the law, and we outline a few of these.

An investigation into legislation related to maternity benefits for working women indicated that many South Asian countries have brought in revisions and amendments to their existing laws to provide more benefits. For example, through the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2017, India increased paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks and has introduced a provision enabling new mothers to work from home (WFH), which may be exercised by the woman after the expiry of the 26-week leave period. Further, this Act covers mothers adopting a child below the age of three months who are entitled to 12 weeks of maternity leave from the date of adoption. Bangladesh, through an amendment in 2019 to their Labour Act 2006, has guaranteed financial benefits to new mothers post-partum. In Nepal, the length of paid maternity leave was extended from 52 days to 14 weeks (98 days) for employees through the Labour Act 2017, a scheme in which the employer pays for 60 days and the social security fund covers the remaining 38 days.

While countries such as India and Sri Lanka have had legislation addressing gender-based violence (GBV) at the workplace for some time, countries such as Pakistan have introduced such legislation only recently. In 2016, Pakistan enacted the Sindh Terms of Employment (Standing Orders) Act, prohibiting gender-based discrimination at the workplace. Despite Nepal’s adoption of the Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention) Act in 2015, aimed at preventing and protecting employees from sexual harassment, experts have pointed out several limitations in the legislation. These include the absence of accompanying regulations, the lack of codes of conduct that establish reporting and dispute resolution mechanisms and the nonexistence of a dedicated ministry responsible for enforcing the Act. Some of these gaps in legislation appear to be common to other South Asian countries as well. However, Bangladesh is yet to develop comprehensive and specific laws that define and prohibit violence and harassment at the workplace. This is especially important when numerous organisations have reported an increase in the existence of GBV in Bangladesh’s workplaces. For example, as Yasmin (2021) reports, a survey by the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies found that 12 women working in various sectors were raped, 12 were gang-raped and 62 were murdered between April and June 2019. While legislation is essential, it is critical that an inclusive, integrated and gender-responsive approach to eradicating violence and harassment at the workplace is adopted to tackle the root causes of gender inequality and existing societal disparities.

Legislation related to retirement and pensions also indicates disparities based on gender for some South Asian countries. For example, in Pakistan, there is no legislation that stipulates mandatory retirement ages. However, there is a disparity between men and women regarding the ages at which they can retire and receive full or partial pension benefits. Sri Lanka too had similar legislation with different retirement ages for men and women and different ages at which they can receive their pension benefits. However, these disparities were removed with the introduction of the Minimum Retirement Age of Workers Act, No. 28 of 2021.

The laws restricting women’s employment at night have been debated constantly, and this has negatively affected women employment. While some countries have lifted these restrictions, others still continue the restrictions. In 2021, Pakistan amended the Sindh Shops and Commercial Establishment Act and lifted restrictions on women’s ability to work at night. Even though employer organisations have continuously made demands for the government to lift these restrictions on working women in Sri Lanka, to date the restrictions persist. Despite the presence of legislation related to equal pay for equal work in certain South Asian countries like India, Nepal and Bangladesh, a gender pay gap persists in practice. Notably, countries such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan have not yet fully harmonised their legal provisions to guarantee equal pay for equal work regardless of gender.

Overall, many South Asian countries currently lack comprehensive legislation addressing workplace discrimination. For example, while India protects persons with disabilities and those with HIV, safeguards transgender persons from discrimination under the Transgender Act and protects employees from sexual harassment at the workplace, it currently does not have a single comprehensive law on discriminatory practices at the workplace. In Sri Lanka, while the constitution ensures non-discrimination based on sex and the penal code identifies sexual harassment at the workplace as a criminal offence, there is no specific and single comprehensive law on discriminatory practices at work. In accordance with Article 27 of the Constitution of Pakistan, ‘No citizen otherwise qualified for appointment in the service of Pakistan shall be discriminated against in respect of any such appointment on the ground only of race, religion, caste, sex, residence or place of birth’; however, this Article addresses only public sector jobs. While Section 345 of the Bangladesh Labour Act prohibits discrimination (ITUC, 2022), Bangladesh is found to be one of the 10 worst nations in the world for working people.

In addition, when compared to the past, representation of women in professional and technical roles has increased primarily in Nepal, Bangladesh and India. Conversely, a decline is reported in the shares of women in these roles in Pakistan and Maldives. India and Sri Lanka have made progress in narrowing the gender gap concerning the proportion of women occupying senior positions (World Economic Forum, 2022). Nevertheless, overall, the low representation of women in leadership positions continues in many South Asian countries.

In most countries, women’s membership of corporate boards is low, and the figures for South Asian countries are particularly low. However, in 2013, India amended the Companies Act so that it was mandatory for all publicly listed companies to have a minimum of one woman director on their board (Aguilera et al., 2021). Today, women’s representation in Indian boardrooms is higher than the global and Asian averages, and fares better than the global average in the share of women board chairs, a change ‘driven by regulation’. In an analysis of 77 leading companies with a market cap of € 8 billion or more, 75 had at least one woman director, although more than one woman on a board is less common (Egon Zehnder, 2022, pp. 4–5). A study of the top 500 firms on the National Stock Exchange revealed that this legislation had significantly enlarged the pool of women serving as directors, although they were less likely to be appointed to prominent committees (Aguilera et al., 2021). In contrast to the developments in India, 40% of the companies in the top 30 largest companies on the Colombo Stock Exchange in Sri Lanka have all-men boards and only one company had a woman chairing its board, a position she held for one single year (International Finance Corporation [IFC], 2022).

Gender (In)equalities at Workplaces from Pandemic to Post-pandemic (2020–23)

With the emergence of COVID-19 and its rapid spread to many countries, governments reacted with major changes. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020 and designated the outbreak as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. More than 3 years later, on 5 May 2023, the WHO declared that the global emergency had ended (WHO, 2023). Widespread government action in many countries from 2020 until 2022 varied in the type of regulation and duration; however, there was extensive use of measures such as travel restrictions and closure of workplaces and schools. For example, on 24 March 2020 the Government of India ordered a nationwide lockdown, which extended for several months, depending on the region. These lockdowns and other regulations created not only different social conditions but also different working conditions, as working from home was suddenly instituted and children were educated at home with lessons provided by the schools and supervision by the parents. UNESCO estimated that more than 1.5 billion students in 188 countries were affected worldwide (UNESCO, 2023). In many places and employment sectors, the changes were sudden and created a new working scenario with unknown consequences. It was a time of uncertainty, as regulations could and did change frequently.

These workplace changes and uncertainties have had profound gendered impacts. Women have specifically been affected by the regulations and social issues surrounding the pandemic, and that effect may continue in many areas such as employment, including issues of work–life balance, new work structures such as working from home and associated social issues such as child care and GBV. If left unattended, the adverse effects of these recent years on women could result in a trillion-dollar reduction in the global economy by 2030 (Madgavkar et al., 2020). With women bearing the brunt of the job losses, care duties at home, and GBV during the pandemic, the gender gaps at workplaces have widened. Nevertheless, there appear to be little or no policies or procedures that have addressed these issues, nationally or in organisations. In essence, the gendered perspective is absent in the policy responses to the pandemic and subsequent recession (Collins et al., 2021). Hence, there is a pressing need to advocate for reforms in workplace policies as a means to promote gender parity objectives. Such reforms are essential for achieving organisational inclusivity and, ultimately, fostering a flourishing society and economy in the aftermath of the pandemic (Johnson, 2022).

Numerous studies have found that the years of the pandemic have had a disproportionate negative effect on women’s employment and their employment opportunities, widening the gender gap in employment (Mohapatra, 2021; Türkcan, 2022). Research emphasises how women lost jobs, experienced higher wage cuts, were given decreased working hours and had to take on more in-house responsibilities when working remotely (Türkcan, 2022). These inequalities appear to be more heightened and prominent for women in the developing South Asian countries, especially due to their patriarchal cultural settings and the resultant gender job segregations and gender role stereotyping beliefs (Mohapatra, 2021).

Overall, the pandemic led to a decline in jobs in 2020 globally, with both men and women losing jobs. This job loss was reported to be the highest in South Asia (ILO, 2022). The WPR in South Asia has been declining over the last few decades. In fact, South Asia has the lowest WPR of all regions, standing at 23.6% (IFC, 2023; World Economic Forum, 2022). Except for Nepal, in all other countries of South Asia, women are three times less likely to be employed in full-time jobs than men (IFC, 2023). The situation has exacerbated post-2020. India reported a record low women’s WPR of 15.5% in 2021 (IFC, 2023), while Sri Lanka recorded 31.8% in 2021—the lowest rate in 10 years (Department of Census and Statistics, 2021). Nevertheless, the period between 2019 and 2022 witnessed a rise in unemployment rates among men, surpassing the typically higher rates experienced by women in the region (ILO, 2022). However, this situation swiftly reversed, with unemployment among women in South Asia once again surpassing that among men (ILO, 2022).

Most women are employed in the informal sector in South Asia, in domestic work, working for family members and as seasonal agricultural workers. The pandemic negatively impacted them the most, where the travel restrictions and other health issues led to their job losses and income losses, heightening their exposure to poverty (Nanthini & Nair, 2020). The pandemic regulations also affected many of the jobs held by women in the informal sector related to travel and tourism across South Asia (The World Bank Group, 2020). For example, in Sri Lanka, women comprised 67% of those who experienced job losses across all segments of both the formal and informal tourism sectors (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2020). Further, some of the other formal industries that were affected the most were also industries with predominantly women employment such as manufacturing and retail, again impacting women’s employment and earning (Mohapatra, 2021). The garment industry, an industry that is heavily affected by the pandemic and ensuing recession due to the declining demand from global fashion companies, has also closed down factories and cut down employment as well as reduced overtime, leading to job losses and reduction in employee earnings. For example, the garment industry in Bangladesh, which provides employment to approximately 4.1 million workers, terminated or laid off over a million employees (Hossain, 2021). According to Hossain and Alam (2022), during the period of the pandemic, more than 348 garment factories shut down in Bangladesh and 0.4 million garment workers, the majority of whom are women, lost their jobs. This adverse impact on the industry and its employment is forecasted to continue into the future (Hossain & Alam, 2022). Sri Lanka reports that the industry faces 20% –25% reduction in orders and factories are running at half capacity (Dias, 2023). Among the South Asian countries, the labour force participation rates for women were the lowest in Iran, Bhutan and Afghanistan in 2022 (World Economic Forum, 2022). Women’s choices regarding their return to work after the pandemic have been influenced by gender roles, with some women potentially opting not to return to work at all (Chauhan, 2022). According to the ILO (2022), job recovery for women in 2021 after the job losses in 2020 lagged behind that of men.

While WFH became the new norm with the advent of the pandemic regulations, it affected men and women differently, giving rise to certain inequalities. WFH is, in fact, not gender neutral (Chauhan, 2022). Even though the location of work is identified as advantageous for women and is something that women are said to prefer as it allows them to manage home and work, the benefits of WFH accrue when women voluntarily choose to adopt WFH. This was not the case during the pandemic when WFH was a forced emergency practice. As such, there were many reports of how women found it more difficult to manage home and work and how the boundaries were more blurred as they had more caregiving tasks in families that led to more pressure and difficulties (Adikaram & Naotunna, 2023; Uddin, 2021). In fact, prior to the pandemic an unequal distribution of household and childcare responsibilities existed, with women predominantly shouldering the burden, often at the expense of their career prospects. However, the pandemic exacerbated this situation as households had to undertake home schooling, full-time childcare, elder care, and cope with frequent closures and quarantines.

While these circumstances were similar for women in many countries, in patriarchal Asian societies the ensuing challenges were particularly pronounced, with deeply entrenched beliefs about gender roles and societal norms placing a greater burden of household responsibilities on women. For example, Chauhan (2022) studied 30 dual-earning married couples in India who had experienced WFH and working in the office before the pandemic as well as during the pandemic, and this research revealed that women were disproportionately affected by WFH during this time. The study reveals how women had to bear an unequitable and unfair burden of unpaid work at home as a result of various factors such as home schooling, attending to the needs of family members who are now predominantly at home, reduced reliance on domestic workers for performing household work and the increased focus on sanitisation and hygiene. As such, within their households, women navigate gendered arrangements of time and space, where limited resources tend to favour men. In effect, not only their work performance but also their overall well-being is affected, in turn affecting their career opportunities and promotions. Similar findings are reported in other South Asian countries such as Sri Lanka (Adikaram & Naotunna, 2023) and Pakistan (Tas et al., 2021). There are also many reports of how women had to opt for reduced work hours to take care of their families, affecting their career prospects and earnings (Tas et al., 2021).

GBV has been a continuing issue for women in South Asia. As IFC (2023) estimates, two out of every five women in South Asia (2020) experience some form of GBV in their lifetimes. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a surge in GBV, especially for working women and those who worked from home. Confinements due to the pandemic led to an escalation in the severity and frequency in GBV against women (de Paz et al., 2020). The domestic violence that women who were working from home faced also became part of workplace violence with the boundaryless nature of WFH practices. In addition, the augmented utilisation of technology and media and virtual work during the pandemic has contributed to a rise in instances of cyberbullying, with women being the predominant victims. This situation is said to be widespread in South Asia (Achuthan et al., 2023; Bansal et al., 2023).

Conclusions

South Asian countries are signatories to international conventions protecting and advancing the rights of women, and these labour markets exist in the context of overarching national laws and policies on gender equity (Strachan et al., 2015). Legislation forms the national policy framework. Gender responsive budgeting ‘serves as a strategy to promote the goal of gender equality and gender mainstreaming by paying attention to revenue raising and spending of government finances’ (UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, 2018, p. 5) and is widespread at the level of governments. It has been enshrined in government directives and policy documents since 1997 in Sri Lanka and more recently since 2012 in Bhutan and 2013 in Nepal (UN Women, 2016). India’s gender budgeting practices ‘stand out globally’ as they have influenced expenditure and revenue policies and have been integrated into many aspects of public finance (Chakraborty, 2016, p. 14).

While the legislative and policy framework is arguably strong, the reality of the outcomes for women can be very different. Women’s workforce participation and advancement occurs within the context of wider cultural and social beliefs, including those of family and child care, education and employment, so legislative provisions relating to maternity leave and childcare are important. Implementation and guidance for workplace policies come from laws for gender equality and more specific labour laws. In the past decade, legislation has expanded in many South Asian countries to extend maternity leave and tackle GBV and specific workplace issues such as night work. However, inequities remain. Many mirror issues in other regions of the world such the long-standing gender pay gap and the minority of women in senior corporate positions. Others have characteristics that reflect local circumstances and beliefs in the regions of South Asia. The government responses to the pandemic of 2020 to 2022 brought new challenges to gender equity, and a government responses to the pandemic of 2020 to 2022 brought new challenges to gender equity, and a deeper analysis of these changes in national and cultural settings is needed.

In addition to legislation and national policies, organisational policies are needed to ensure the legislated outcomes, and this is where the translation into practice can slow or cease. Interviews with 30 university qualified professionals in Pakistan revealed macro-national issues, meso-organisational issues such as sexual harassment and career advancement hurdles as well as micro-individual issues related to their individual identity, family status and agency (Ali & Syed, 2017). Ali and Syed (2017, p. 474) emphasise that in south Asia, ‘macro-level sociocultural factors seem to mediate institutional influence at times, contributing to the policy-practice gap’. While this is true in other countries (and one only has to think about the lack of usage of parental leave by men in most countries), they emphasise that deep-rooted sociocultural values such as female modesty and gender segregation result in the lower status of women (Ali & Syed, 2017, pp. 474–5). As we emphasised in 2015, there is a gap between legislation and policy and practice, and this policy and practice has to be socially and culturally responsive (Strachan et al., 2015), as ‘foreign discourse on gender equality faces the traditional challenges of local non-compatibility’ (Ali & Syed, 2017, p. 475).

There is a major question for equity scholars and practitioners about the applicability of the overarching literature on equity in different societies. Syed and Ali suggest ‘that “the mainstream” western literature on gender and equal opportunity, along with its secular orientation, may not capture the complexity of gender and equal opportunity in Muslim majority countries’ (Syed & Ali, 2019, p. 1621). While recognising the diversity in Muslim majority countries, Ozbilgin et al. (2012) believe that there is a ‘need to use an Islamic lens in understanding and achieving gender equality in the workplace…instead of depending on western-centric theories alone, there is a need to re-imagine new formations and ideologies of equal opportunity in Muslim majority countries using an Islamic lens’ (Syed & Ali, 2019, p. 1632). We can extend this notion of a ‘lens’ to other cultures within the region of South Asia. While we do not have answers to this challenge, it is an important issue to consider in the path to the successful implementation of ideals of gender equity.