Only-7%-of-urban-indian-women-have-paid-jobs

Only-7%-of-urban-indian-women-have-paid-jobs(economist.com)

14 points by wowsig 5 years ago | 14 comments

petecooper 5 years ago |

> Only-7%-of-urban-indian-women-have-paid-jobs

Requesting a tweak to the title to remove the unnecessary - characters. Thank you.

dvfjsdhgfv 5 years ago |

An alternative title: a vast majority of Indian husbands have to support their non-working wives. The social problem is hurting both genders albeit in different ways.

david38 5 years ago | |

Your alternative title is biased.

You inserted your assumption that

* not having a paid job = non-working

* these are all wives. The title just says women

* that the husbands are unwilling participants in this. I guarantee you many husbands want their wife at home

bottled_poe 5 years ago | |

Fallacy - False equivalence. Clearly the balance of power in such as relationship is not close. Downvoted.

CerebralCerb 5 years ago | | |

Not necessarily. There are other aspects to traditional family structures that serves to even out the power imbalance caused by a single breadwinner, such as the woman's parents living in the same household and alimony laws.

wobbly_bush 5 years ago | | |

Don't be so quick to judge the issues of developing country's societies through the lens of western cultures. What appears similar at surface level, might have completely different root causes and effects. The other replies here have added some interesting points.

dvfjsdhgfv 5 years ago | | |

I don't claim there is any equivalence, and it's by no means false. There is a famous book The Manipulated Man written by a feminist Esther Vilar. As long as the society puts all the blame on men (in todays parlance, 'white men') we don't get any inch closer to the solution.

gher-shyu3i 5 years ago | |

Care to explain how this is a social problem? Enduring cultures and civilizations have survived on a single source of income (mostly by the male) for a long, long time. Yet we have the audacity to claim that others have it wrong all along because they have non-Western hyper capitalistic values.

wobbly_bush 5 years ago |

> The International Labour Organisation says that only a fifth of adult women had a job or sought one in 2019.

The key point being the majority didn't even seek one.

> Dropping out of the labour force is a status symbol for upwardly mobile households, showing they are able to get by on the husband’s earnings alone.

> The best thing the government can do to increase the supply of female workers is to increase the demand for labour in general.

This is where the author is completely wrong. It's a cultural issue. Women who have been groomed all their lives to lead a life of house wife can't suddenly find employment even if they want to due to lack of training. The training won't occur unless there is cultural push for women to work.

gher-shyu3i 5 years ago | |

And this is where we see how Western values are forced on non-Western cultures. As you point out, women there do not want to work if they can get by on a single household salary. Aggressive capitalism has forced women into the workplace to increase supply, thereby reducing salaries. It's just astounding how the ideology is that only the Western values are the "best" for all time and space, and others haven't seen the light, we'll show em.

russelldjimmy 5 years ago | | |

I agree

villgax 5 years ago |

Yeah arranged marriage kind of subtly makes them stay at home leaving whatever career they had previously managed to make.

Financial illiteracy is also absent apart from hoarding gold like Smaug.

einszwei 5 years ago |

India has major problem with workforce participation especially among women [1].

This probably is a large reason why India is not able reap benefits of its demography (large percentage of young population).

[1]:https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.FE.ZS?locat...

haspoken 5 years ago |

http://archive.is/Yb9MZ