20 Aug 2017  |   05:13am IST

Women@work: In a Haryana factory, tradition clashes with aspiration

Namita Bhandare

Winter brought with it shorter days and the bleak realisation that her brief career was over.

 Her village was a couple of kilometres away from the bus stop at Saanpla in Haryana’s Jhajjar district. In the summer when the days were long, it seemed safe enough to walk back home from the bus stop alone. But by November it was already dark by the time she got off the bus and walking back home alone no longer seemed like such a great idea.

So despite the fact that she had undergone four months of training at the Jindal steel factory, despite the fact that she had accepted the job offer, despite the fact that she was amongst the first batch of women to ever work on the factory floor, Usha (who uses only one name) put in her papers, defeated by the weather or, perhaps more accurately, her state’s crime statistics.

It’s not just Haryana. All over India, women have been falling off the employment map at an alarming rate, as the first part of this series explained. Female labour force participation of 34.8% in 1990 fell to 27% in 2013. Within South Asia in 2013, India had the lowest rate of women in employment after Pakistan, according to an April 2017 World bank report. Globally, only parts of the Arab world had worse rates.

Within India’s already sparse landscape, Haryana stands out as a bleak outpost.

How Haryana Stacks Up With The Rest Of India In Terms Of Labour Force Participation

When we think of  Haryana, we tend to think of its abysmal sex ratio of 836 girls for every 1,000 boys at birth among children born in the last five years, according to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), 2015-16 — well below the national average of 919 and amongst the worst in the country.

In popular imagination, we tend also to associate Haryana with a particularly high rate of crimes against women. This isn’t always unjustified. In 2015, for instance, Haryana reported the country’s highest number of gang-rapes — 1.6 for every one lakh women — according to National Crime Records Bureau data. It had the second-highest rate of dowry deaths at 1.9 per lakh population and the third-highest rate in stalking women at 2.7 cases per lakh population.

Yet, this picture of Haryana as a state hostile to women is only partially true.

On other parameters, the state does well; better than the national average. Female literacy, for instance, at 75.4% is above the national average of 68.4%. And 45.8% of girls in the state have completed more than 10 years of schooling – also above the national average of 35.7%, finds NFHS 2015-16.


Where Haryana’s Women Go To Seek Employment

But, when it comes to employment, the figures falter. Just 17.6% of women in Haryana reported being paid cash for work in the preceding 12 months, below the Indian average of 24.6%, states NFHS 2015-16.

 Why isn’t rising education leading to more women in the workplace? Why are Indian women falling off the employment map at such a steady and alarming pace? Over the next few months IndiaSpend will track declining female labor force participation through on-the-ground reports that seek to understand the various constraints that inhibit their employment and participation in the workforce.

“Haryana is a land of paradoxes. On one hand, women are encouraged to play rough contact sport like wrestling, boxing and judo, but on the other hand, they are discouraged from employment, particularly in the formal sector,” said Kanta Singh, UNDP’s state project head, looking after skilling programmes in Haryana and the National Capital Region. “For many girls and their parents, playing sport is a ticket to government jobs, money and fame.”

Education is a priority for girls and this is reflected in the states’s education indices. This doesn’t translate into jobs because, said Singh, everybody wants a government job and there are simply not enough to go around. “After completing an MA or a BA, they are still either not getting jobs or getting offers at very low salaries,” she said. Private sector jobs are generally looked down upon as low status jobs — or regarded as temporary jobs.

Moreover, jobs in such sectors as Information Technology, textiles and auto spare parts tend to be found in places like Gurugram or in the industrial belt of Panipat. “How is a woman from a far away village supposed to commute? If she gets a job in Gurugram, where is she supposed to stay? The lack of post-placement support such as affordable transportation and accommodation is an issue,” said Singh.


Where a woman’s veil takes pride of place

Sparks are flying at the Jindal steel factory at village Rohad, district Jhajjar. Here women have taken positions on the factory floor ever since the first batch of trainees set off on a four-month training course in May 2016. After going through the grind of safety and health, learning how to operate machines and rules of etiquette on the factory floor, 27 young women emerged, burnished and ready to work.

 Just over a year later, 72 women have completed training as part of a public-private partnership between JSL Lifestyle and the Disha project — a partnership between UNDP, India Development Foundation and Xyneto. Of these, 62 are currently employed at the plant earning the legally mandated minimum wage of Rs 8,340 a month. Amongst those who didn’t sign, “some got married and others went in higher studies,” said Rakesh Kaushik, deputy manager HR at JSL Lifestyle Ltd. Two went on to better jobs at higher salaries, added Singh.

The factory, set up in 2003, had never seen women on its floor. None of the women had ever seen the inside of a factory. “They had no exposure to the outside world,” said Kaushik. But now that they are there, the work environment has changed for the better. “The other men cannot use abusive language in front of them. They are our mothers and sisters. So we have definitely benefited as employers.”

“The biggest change is in the women’s nature and confidence level,” said Pooja Sharma, welfare officer at the factory. One of four sisters from Rajasthan, Pooja is, unusually for the state, living as a paying guest at Bahadurgarh.  “I want to be recognized for my work,” she said.

Ever since the women started working here, the factory has added facilities like a toilet for them. Lunch is eaten at the employees’ canteen, but the men and women eat at separate times. “The women are not comfortable sitting with the men and eating with them. Plus different lunch hour timings ensures that the production line remains uninterrupted,” Kaushik said.

Haryana is a state where patriarchy is almost institutionalized. Its infamous khap panchayats – or caste councils — routinely make the news for issuing diktats on what girls may or may not wear and who they may or may not marry. A recent issue of a state-run magazine called Krishi Samvad featured a photograph of a veiled woman carrying cattle feed on her head. It’s caption read: Ghoonghat ki aan-baan, mahra Haryana ki pehchaan (the veil is the pride and identity of Haryana..

The challenge is not convincing women to study. The challenge is allowing them to work and voice their aspiration in a state steeped in patriarchy. “There’s a huge social investment to be made in convincing girls and women and their families why they need to work, become financially independent and overcome patriarchy,” said Singh.

(Namita Bhandare is a Delhi-based journalist who writes frequently on gender issues confronting India)

IDhar UDHAR

Idhar Udhar