India: Why Did Working Women Disappear?

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On Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Archana Sahai runs a 24 hour helpline from a tiny call center in the Indian city of Bhopal. It's called Childline India, and it gets hundreds of calls a day. Four stories from kids who tell Archana and her staff that they're being abused, are forced to work, or are in a number of other bad situations. When Archana can, she sends in help, calling in government services, or the police. In the pandemic hit, Archana was prepared for the helpline to be inundated, and it was. Some of the calls were what she expected from already vulnerable kids. Others caught her by surprise. Suddenly, we started getting a lot of calls about child marriage. Child marriage. These calls were coming from girls, sometimes as young as 12 years old. They said their parents were forcing them to get married, even though child marriage is illegal under Indian law. Archana tried to intervene, sometimes traveling to remote villages with her staff. We tried to talk to people, and we said, "Why are you getting such young girls married?" Many of the girls didn't want it to get married. But when we tried to stop, the community people they said, "Why are you people stopping? Let it happen." Across India, officials observed a similar trend. In 2020, marriages among teenagers and young adults surged by as much as 80% in some states. But Archana noticed something else. The calls from young girls to child line would surge when death rates were highest. "First lockdown, there were around 34 marriages with these dogs. The second lockdown, we found more of the marriages because there was so much of death rate. Parents think, "Once we get the girl married, at least my daughter is safe now." Archana had a theory. In the poorest and most desperate places, marriage was seen as a lifeline. "Jowless claims coming in, I mean, really jumping from the week before, pretty brutal, 3.2 million." A record, 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment last week. "Indian walking, the most impacted by the pandemic." We believe that we are impacting one girl, one family, one village, one country at a time. On out to the billionaire boom. "According to Bloomberg, super yacht chargers are up over 340%. And the billionaire was created every 26 hours during this pandemic." "No, I'm not waiting in line for a COVID test with the public, gross." "It is time for wealth tax in America." Welcome back to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield. One of the biggest and most devastating economic stories of the pandemic has been how it just decimated women. "Women are more likely to face unemployment right now." The economy is still bouncing back from the pandemic, but for working women and mothers, it's a slow climb. "This doesn't board very well for the future." As things have started to open up, the big question is when and how will women recover? In India, things don't look good. Even before the pandemic, it had one of the lowest labor force participation rates for women, just 21%. By March 2022, that fell to less than 10%. This would be bad news anywhere. Getting more people in the workforce helps economies grow. But the scale is particularly stunning in India. Economists estimate that a female employment were brought on par with male employment. India's gross domestic product could expand by almost a third. But encouraging Indian women to work starts by prioritizing school and career over an early marriage. In some parts of the country, that campaign starts with girls as young as 12. Archana Chaudhary, a reporter in Bloomberg's New Delhi bureau, has the story. "Every morning, more than 2,000 girls traveled to the Padada Padadi Educational Society. It's in the banks of the Ganges in the town of Anupshahir. The Padada Padadi means great-grandfather, great-grandmother, calling back to tradition. But the campus is actually modern, with computer labs and basketball courts. Since 2000, the school has tried to create opportunities for girls in the surrounding villages. This is a conservative pocket of India. Most families earn a few dollars a day working as farmers. One room huts are common. A single water buffalo might be a family's most valuable possession. For many of these families, girls can be seen as a financial burden, another mount to feed. That's where Padada Padadi comes in. Its goal is to keep girls in school against cultural forces that would have them get married in their teens. To date, more than 300 students have graduated and gone on to lucrative jobs in IT. One or the government. When I visited the campus on a recent day, one of the first signs I saw read, "I will select my future husband." Before the day began, students gathered in the courtyard. They sang an old ballad with him about walking on the side of righteousness. They decided the Indian national anthem and then, together, they made a promise. "I will get married in my daughter's wedding." I pledged that I will not marry before I am 21 years old. There in that courtyard, that's where I met Madhusharma. She was smiling and chatting with students. She has worked as a Hindi teacher at Padada Padadi for more than a decade. She grew up near the school in a family of educators. She knows the complicated, tangled of factors that hold women down. Students at Padada Padadi look up to Madhush. They see her as their guardian as a kind of Saruget mother. One student, a 16 year old, said she called Madhush last year after her grandfather pressured her to get married. She was worried he might get sick during the pandemic and not live to see it. She spoke to me during her lunch break in a small classroom as other students shuffled around the hallway. I was very upset. I couldn't focus on anything. So I told Madhush that my folks are pushing me to get married and I want to study. She said, "I will come and talk with them. They cannot force you to get married." She came home and spoke to my grandfather. I also told him that I want to study, that I want to join the army. After all our efforts, he agreed. But Madhusharma told me Padada Padadi's mission has become harder during the pandemic when girls could no longer rely on the protective bubble of the school. Administrators purge his tablets for older students to ease the transition to remote learning. And the school appointed teachers to visit villages to collect assignments. Since most students did not have regular internet access or even phones. But as the lockdown went on, girls found ways to call Madhush. They were tearful and panicked. They told her their parents were trying to get them married. Madhush spoke to the girls' parents on their behalf. Part of her job is to dissuade them from following through with meddings. Families told her they had no other option. They worried that grandma would get sick and not live to see an exchange of vows. Money was also a factor. Restrictions and gatherings meant families could avoid the massive multi-day weddings in favor of smaller ceremonies at home. It was also less pressure to be on the ground. large dowry. Since most businesses shut, brides had an easy excuse not to buy gifts for the groom's extended family. The tradition is illegal but still common across India. During the lockdown, people thought that since children weren't going to school, we wouldn't find out what's going on. For the students at Padada Padadi, the consequences of getting married before the finished school are especially pronounced. When a woman marries, she typically moves in with her husband and in-laws. Madhu said, women become dependent and lose ownership over their lives. A middle class woman in India doesn't have a home to call her home. At the husband's place, for every small thing, the mother-in-law says, "Is this what you've learnt from your mother?" And the husband tells her to leave his home after every little tip. So that home isn't hers either. In all age, the home belongs to the son. In 2015, Prime Minister Modi started a campaign called Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, which roughly means "Save our daughters, teach our daughters." Beti Padhao, Kasundesh. It's an initiative aimed at keeping girls in school and reducing sex-selective abortion. The government has also tried to eradicate child marriage. Last year, Modi's administration passed a proposal to raise the legal marriage age for women from 18 to 21, which is what it is for men. But in many villages, the national laws are abstract and far away. Local customs are set, and enforced by local panchayats, which is essentially a group of elders, almost all men. And while Modi's campaign to educate India's daughters received lots of publicity, recent government audits found that much of the initiative's funds remained unspent. I spoke to Shadran Joes, who manages the Padada Padadi School. He said that initially, when the school is founded, administrators encountered resistance. Families didn't understand why teachers cared so much about educating daughters. Shadran said, "Marage is an intense pressure point for families in the district." And while India's literacy rates are rising, and the number of people living in absolute poverty has decreased, when it comes to working, women have lost ground. Michaelith, Ranajar Mazar, Daghalithi, deeper into the numbers. What did you find, Ron? It's interesting, Archenab, because what we're seeing is that female labour participation fell by about a third in the years during the pandemic. In 2005, 32% of women were in the labour market. And by 2019, it dropped to around 21%. That's lower than any other country in the G20, except for Saudi Arabia. As India's economy has grown, the women at the middle and top of the income ladder have stopped working. For them, it's perceived as a marker of status. On the other hand, women at the lowest rungs of societies still are seen as potential earners. They are often work menial or unpaid jobs that are far from the formal economy. In other words, their labour isn't even counted. Rosa Abraham is an economist at Azim Prem's University in the city of Bengaluru. She said that either way, women have little choice in the matter. It is a pianful, fortunate situation that the position to work is often not in the hands of the woman I said. It is negotiated by social structures, by patriarchy. But the picture got even worse during the pandemic. During the first lockdown in 2020, women were several times more likely to lose their jobs than men. Rosa studied which tracked the career trajectories of 20,000 Indians during the pandemic, found that many of the women never came back. So women, there was no return to work. In fact, what we find was that if women lost work during the lockdown, they were 11 times more likely than men to not return to work. Rosa said things like increased domestic duties, the lack of childcare options, and school shutdowns all help explain why women struggle to recover jobs. And for young girls who were pushed out of classrooms and into marriage, their dreams of independence or a well paid office job were replaced with what Rosa calls distress-led employment. That means unpaid work in the home or taking care of relatives. It's not that women are entering salary workers or as wage workers. They're not starting businesses. They are simply entering into their existing primary form. The news doesn't stop on the weekends. Context changes constantly, and now Bloomberg is the place to stay on top of it all. 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Make us part of your weekend routine on Bloomberg Television, Radio, and wherever you get your podcasts. Back at the Padada Padadi Educational Society, Madhu Sharma told me she understands that cycle intimately. Before the pandemic, she said that school might see only three child marriages a year. Over the past year, Madhu Sharma says she's prevented a dozen. She recalled a 15-year-old, who called her the peak of infections in 2021. The girl was sobbing. Her parents had decided to get her married. I went to her place and spoke with her mother and father. I first said, "She's a small child and you don't have to pay any expenses on her behalf. You're lucky to have found a school where all you have to do is send her there." So why are you snatching away her dreams? Madhu told me she stopped this marriage after one conversation. But others are trickier. Sometimes she has to go to the police or a district magistrate for help. In one instance, a family refused to reconsider its plans to marry off their 14-year-old. The school could go to the government's child welfare office, but they would need proof. They came up with a plan. The girl would hide a copy of the wedding invitation in the folds of her kurta or a tunic and pass it on to another student who would bring it to Madhu. Soon after, Madhu got a call from a young man who refused to give his name. He told Madhu he had recordings of her phone conversations with the girl. He said, "Madam, this is not a good thing that you have done." He said the family was backed into a corner that they'd been preparing for the wedding and her meddling would bring shame to the family. He threatened to blackmail her and turn the community against her. If she continued, he said, "She'd regret it." He said, "You are going to find out in a few days who I am and how strong I am." Madhu was used to death threats. In one instance, a family had threatened to shoot her. This time, she wondered if the entire village would come after her. When she went to the police station, Madhu said officers told her not to worry. The next day, the young man called again and Madhu drew him into a conversation. She was surprised by what she learned. He was just a teenager himself, a farmer. He hadn't even finished school. I said, "Child, then it is not your fault. I spoke to him with a smile and told him that the problem was his lack of education." After that call, Madhu told me the threats stopped. The wedding was called off when the girl went back to school. Of 14 weddings planned during the pandemic, Madhu and other administrators stopped all but two. Many girls say Madhu gives them permission to imagine a different future for themselves, to strive for a life of independence and freedom, to seek out fulfilling jobs and to live with dignity. When girls start their education at Padada Padadi, they each plant a sapling on campus. Years later, when they return as women with their own paychecks, those seedlings have sprouted into trees. The Padada Padadi School can't alone fight the weight of the cultural expectations that millions of Indian women face. Prime Minister Modi is trying to push India into what he calls "um-rit-call" or "a golden era of growth." But in April of this year, India reached a disconcerting milestone. The majority of its 900 million person labor force had stopped looking for jobs entirely. Many of those people were women. Next week on the paycheck, we head to a place that's owned almost entirely by one man. One of my biggest fears is that the people of this community will be the ones that would be caring for the elite rich that can afford to actually live here one day. And that's our full purpose. Thanks for listening to the paycheck. If you like our show, please head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, to rate, review and subscribe. This episode was hosted by me, Rebecca Greenfield, and reported by Archena Chaudhary and Rana Joy at Mazumdar. It was edited by Kai Schultz and Janet Paskin with help from Francesca Levy, Rakshi D'Salouja and Mi. We also had editing help from Danielle Balbi, Chely Banjo, Kristen V Brown, Jildo De Carly, Nicole Flato, and Elisimic Donald. This episode was produced by Jildo De Carly and Sound engineered by Matt Kheim. Our original music is by Leo Cydron. The voiceovers you heard were by Mary Joseph and Tomana Balvada Moon. Special thanks to Magnus Hendrickson, Fakinen De Kuiper, Margaret Sutherland, and Stacey Wong. Francesca Levy is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. See you next week. [Music] This is Tom Keane, inviting you to join us for the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. It's about making you smarter every business day. I'm Paul Swini. We bring you complete coverage of the US Market Open. We cover stocks, bonds, commodities, even crypto, all the information you need to excel. 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