In February 2024, we revisited the regulations identified in the 2022 report to see if the legal position regarding women’s work has changed in any way. We found that legal barriers largely continue to exist, with only a few states easing restrictions on women’s employment at night.

Listed below are our findings:

1. There are limitations on working at night in several states

There are 24 states with laws that limit women’s participation in various kinds of factory operations. Among these, there are 11 states that bar women’s employment at night. Two laws govern these strictures: the Factories Act, 1948, at the union level and the shops and commercial establishments laws at the state level. Governments have argued that these stipulations are necessary to prevent sexual violence and safeguard women from the physical dangers of longer working hours.

Even when women are allowed to work at night, the laws place several prohibitive conditions on their employment. For example, in most states employers must ensure that female workers make up a minimum proportion—either 10 or two-thirds—of the workers and the supervisory staff for the night shift. Such constraints make it difficult for employers to run night shifts with women workers, thereby reducing job opportunities for women. To illustrate: an employer would have to cancel a night shift if some women are on leave and there aren’t enough female workers to fulfil the two-thirds requirement.

Some states permit women to work at night in commercial establishments ranging from offices and theatres to warehouses and hospitals. States such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Gujarat require inspectors to be “satisfied”, ensure that establishments provide “adequate protection of (women’s) dignity, honour and safety”, and mandate facilities such as shelters, restrooms, toilets, and night crèches.

Though Indian states have historically prohibited women from working at night, there have been gradual relaxations on this front. However, the pace of reform is slow. Since 2022, states such as Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have done away with laws that prevent women from working at night. Women in Andhra Pradesh are now allowed to pursue factory work at night, and those in Madhya Pradesh can engage in night-time work at commercial establishments. However, most other states, including Bihar and Rajasthan, continue to prohibit women from working at night in factories, while West Bengal continues to prohibit women from working at night in commercial establishments.

2. Women tend to be excluded from higher-paying jobs

Under the Factories Act and other labour laws, women are prohibited from working in various industrial processes even during the day. These laws are based on the assumption that some industrial processes may be too dangerous for women. The alleged heightened risk factor and increased susceptibility to accidents when women work with certain machinery led to bans on employing them in processes deemed dangerous or hazardous by state governments. Since 2022, no state has eased restrictions on women’s employment in ‘dangerous’ jobs. Women’s participation in new and growing industries and better-compensated work is also curtailed.

Even in traditional industries, the law may exclude women from jobs that pay more. Processes that women are prohibited from participating in—such as glass manufacturing and the processing of oils and fats—are generally better compensated.

The table below shows a comparison of minimum monthly wages in some industries from which women are prohibited and where women are allowed to work. The industries in which women are prohibited usually have higher minimum wages.

India’s 10 most populous states collectively impose 139 prohibitions on women from working in specific industrial processes ranging from electroplating and generation of petroleum to the manufacturing of products such as pesticides, rechargeable batteries, and so on. In many cases, there is no literature that identifies the special danger to the women, as opposed to the men, working in these jobs. Besides, these roles are open to women in some states and prohibited for those in others, which makes it evident that there is no scientific basis for exclusion. For example, women can be engaged in abrasive blasting (used for cleaning surfaces across industries) in Karnataka, but not in the neighbouring state of Maharashtra.

3. Moral policing furthers discrimination

Archaic laws continue to keep women out of various types of jobs that are considered incompatible with the gendered expectations that society has of them, such as working in liquor establishments. The prohibitions are based on the belief that it is morally inappropriate for women to serve liquor in public. For example, according to the Punjab Excise Act, 1914, this restriction is necessary as it prevents “the woman folk from becoming addicted to the intoxicants and avert and avoid any conflict between sexes and chances of foreseen sexual offences”.

Among India’s 10 most populous states, West Bengal does not allow women to participate in the alcohol serving/selling industry at all. Even in the states where women are allowed to participate in the alcohol service industry, their involvement depends on the type of alcohol being served, a rather arbitrary criterion. India divides the alcohol industry into two classes—country and foreign liquor. Some states allow women to participate in one while barring them from the other. Women in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra can serve/sell foreign liquor, but not country liquor; on the other hand, women in Andhra Pradesh can serve/sell country liquor, but not foreign liquor. In other states such as Telangana, women can secure a licence to sell foreign liquor, but cannot work in establishments serving foreign liquor.

There have been a number of court judgements that have upheld women’s right to work at liquor shops. However, these interventions haven’t led to a change in state laws and women’s employment in such establishments continues to be penalised. 

How can women’s workforce participation be improved?

The situation on the ground won’t become better without a change in the perceptions and laws preventing women’s employment. The government and policymakers can enable this by: 

1. Addressing gender stereotypes in legislation

Gender differences should not be used as a basis for greater disparity through legislation. Many Indian laws continue to be influenced by stereotypes and promote discrimination rather than eliminating it. It is high time that such antiquated laws are amended to align with international frameworks put forth by Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Several states and courts are beginning to question and overturn discriminatory laws based on outdated stereotypes and their harmful impact on women’s economic roles. Regions such as Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, and Punjab are issuing exemptions to factories through government orders informed by landmark decisions, such as Vasantha R vs Union of India. In the Vasantha R decision, Madras High Court struck down the law forbidding women’s employment at night as unconstitutional and laid down model conditions subject to which they could be engaged in night-time work. State governments have used these models as templates to set conditions within their respective jurisdictions.

2. Providing clarity on the implementation of laws

Currently, laws can be changed by the state government through three different legal instruments: amendments in acts, amendments in rules, and by issuing government orders. Additionally, laws can be pronounced—wholly or partly—unenforceable by court judgments.

When acts are amended but rules are not revised in keeping with the law, it can create confusion. Take, for instance, the Uttar Pradesh Factories Act and Rules, 1950. While a 2017 amendment in the act removed the restrictions on the employment of women in night shifts, the Uttar Pradesh Factories Rules, 1950, which continues to be valid, states, “No woman shall in any circumstances be employed in any factory more than 9 hours in any day or between the hours of 7 pm and 6 am.”

A more streamlined approach to the implementation of laws and amendments would ensure that the progressive measures taken by states actually benefit the working women.

3. Ensuring safety at the workplace

Prohibitions on women’s work were first adopted based on a paternalistic approach toward women’s safety. However, these laws continue to exist in our statute books because government functionaries are risk-averse. They worry about opening up industries to women because they may be blamed for mishaps that some women may experience. The solution to the problem may involve greater public awareness and acceptance of risks and planning for their mitigation. Instead of making it overly expensive or operationally difficult to employ women, state governments can make sure that companies deploy safety measures such as CCTV and GPS-enabled transportation to ensure women’s safety.

It is important to consider that restricting women’s work creates greater poverty for women, which has its own health and safety implications. 

Suyog Dandekar and Eknoor Kaur contributed to this article.

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Know more

• Listen to this podcast to understand how gender norms shape women’s access to the workforce.
• Read this article to learn more about women’s employment in India’s factories.

My family has always invested in my education despite difficult financial circumstances. After I completed my schooling, my parents couldn’t afford to pay for college. But my mama (mother’s brother) offered to pay the fees so that I could pursue a BSc degree in biology. By the time I reached the final year, my mother had started working as an anganwadi worker and paid for the tuition from her earnings. After graduating, I could have studied pharma or done an MSc, but we did not have the resources for further studies. I moved to Delhi to live with my older brother and took some courses to learn new skills—tailoring, beauty parlour training, and a computer diploma. I wanted to continue to live in Delhi and start working there, but my mother fell sick, so I returned to the village to take care of her. To help pay for her treatment and manage household expenses, I felt that I should start earning too.

My first job was at Vigyan Foundation. After working with them for some time, I joined People’s Action for National Integration (PANI), another nonprofit with a presence in eastern Uttar Pradesh. They were hiring people to survey the agriculture and water consumption patterns of gram panchayats in Balrampur. I worked at PANI for four years. In addition to conducting various surveys, I helped farmers—especially women—learn about new farming techniques that improved their yields and conserved water. We created multiple mahila kisan sangathans (women farmer collectives) and farmer resource centres (FRCs) to make it easier for women farmers to access the right information and high-quality agricultural inputs.

At PANI, we often had visitors—other nonprofits, funders, and corporates. I would always volunteer to take them to see our work in the villages. PANI trained us rigorously, which gave me the confidence to conduct independent visits and speak without hesitation, even with new people.

One such visit was by Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and I volunteered to take them to a mahila kisan sangathan meeting. During their interaction with the women farmers, the HUL team asked them what they had learned from me and how I had supported them. They asked me about the techniques I had introduced to the farmers, and I walked them through each step. One of the visitors was the executive director of customer development at HUL. He was impressed with my work and appreciated me in front of my colleagues. Anoop sir from PANI even joked with them, asking if they wanted me to join HUL. To my surprise, HUL did make me an offer to join as a rural sales promoter (RSP)—a role that involves selling HUL products to shops in villages.

I was very content with my role at PANI, but some time later, my younger brother became gravely ill. He was diagnosed with a neurological problem and had to be taken to Lucknow for treatment. Our combined family income was could not cover his ongoing treatment. I was not due for a promotion at PANI and the RSP role at HUL would pay significantly more, so I decided to accept the offer.

I joined HUL in September 2022. I was told that there were 4,000 RSPs across the country—almost all of whom were men—and that I was one of the first women hired for this position.

5.00 AM: I always wake up at this time, regardless of the weather or the season. The first thing I do is clean the house, or else my mother chides me—she says Lakshmi mata (goddess) doesn’t come to homes that are not clean. I then spend the next few hours doing pooja, preparing breakfast and lunch with my mother, and getting ready for the day.

10:30 AM: I set out on my scooty (two-wheeler) to visit one of my ‘points’. Each RSP is allotted ‘points’ or shops, which we visit on a regular basis. Since my role requires me to travel extensively around Balrampur, I bought a scooty soon after joining HUL. I took out a loan in my name to finance the purchase and pay the monthly instalments with my salary.  

The points are usually small neighbourhood setups that sell products such as soaps and washing powders manufactured by HUL, among other things. These shops are owned or run by women who are known as shakti ammas. As an RSP, I’m the bridge between the shop owners and the distributor at HUL. Once a shakti amma is onboarded by HUL, she gets a monthly incentive depending on her chosen target of stocking and selling HUL products. For example, if her target is to sell HUL products worth INR 6,000, her monthly incentive would be INR 200. The incentive increases if they increase their target. I handle their onboarding process and help them manage their monthly targets, which can range from INR 6,000–1 lakh (for the points allotted to me). I take their product orders every week and convey them to the distributor.

When I onboard a shakti amma, I also show her two videos. These provide information about health, nutrition, sanitation, and more. The shakti ammas usually have questions about the messages in the videos and I make a conscious effort to spend the extra time needed to have these discussions. I learned how to interact and engage with people through my role at PANI, which made my transition to HUL easier. Although one is a nonprofit and the other a corporate, there are similarities in my work at both organisations. At first, I did not expect my role at HUL to include field work. I didn’t know that private sector employees also spend so much time in the field—I thought they almost always had an office and a desk job. But as I became familiar with my responsibilities, I understood why this is an important dimension of working at a corporate.

At PANI, I worked closely with women farmers—showing them videos, taking them to on-field demonstrations of new farming techniques, and answering their questions—to make the process of trying something new as easy as possible. I play a similar role with the shakti ammas by helping them navigate new situations such as managing their targets or using an app to place orders. I really enjoy interacting with these women and over time I’ve built good relationships with them, just as I did with female farmers when I worked at PANI.

1.00 PM: I’m constantly on the move—visiting points, stopping by the distribution agency—and usually cover 60–70 km in a day. Sometimes it feels like I hop onto my scooty at 10 am and keep driving till evening. I even named my scooty Dhanno for this reason! The name comes from Sholay, one of my favourite movies, in which Basanti’s character names her mare Dhanno. In fact, every morning when I set out for work, I say, “Chal meri Dhanno (Let’s go, Dhanno)” much to my father’s amusement.

In between visiting the points allotted to me, I also spend some time looking for potential points. As the number of points we manage increases, so does our target. When I started as an RSP, I had 11 points and had to sell products worth INR 70,000 every month basis. Now, with 34 points my monthly target ranges from INR 3–4 lakh. We’re supposed to achieve 103 percent of the allotted target and I can proudly say that I’ve only missed achieving my target twice!

When I first joined HUL, I learned about 300 different consumer products so that I could speak to shop owners confidently and answer any questions they may have. The distributor Sandeep sir really helped me in learning all the details. In the first few weeks, I visited the agency regularly with my diary in hand to note down details of the products and memorise everything.

I had to learn many new things and the onus was on me to acquire this knowledge. The team at PANI comprised both men and women, so in the early days at HUL it took a while for me to get used to working with an entirely male team. While I had been the person who encouraged team members to speak up at PANI, I now found myself hesitating to put my point forward or ask questions in a room full of men. But I stayed focused on the job that needed to be done and adjusted quickly. The initial days always present a steep learning curve. I never backed down or felt dejected if my questions weren’t answered. Instead, I tried to grasp as much as possible by observing the other RSPs.

It is undoubtedly challenging to be the only woman in this role, but I tried not to let this faze me. If more women are hired as RSPs in this area, I hope that I can help them manage the challenges they will inevitably face. I wouldn’t want them to give up in the face of obstacles such as travelling long distances, learning on the job with limited support, or dealing with jibes. I recall that when we first started working with farmers at PANI, they—especially the men—would make fun of us by saying, “What will these young women teach us?” But seeing our determination and knowledge, their doubts faded. I carried the same conviction into HUL and put my best foot forward each day so that I can keep growing.

6.00 PM: I reach home and after spending many hours on the road I’m glad to get off my scooty. My mother insists on cleaning the house, so I sweep the floor once again. My family then sits down to drink some chaiand we prepare dinner together. My father is also back by this time after tending to the fields. I didn’t know much about the traditional farming techniques that he used to follow. But after I began working at PANI, I introduced him to new and organic techniques that helped improve the output on our farms too. He and I often joke that I can easily identify which farms belong to whom in our village.

10.00 PM: After dinner, I spend a few hours studying, usually till 1 am or so. I’m always looking for opportunities to learn more, so I joined a course to get certified as an auxiliary nurse midwife (ANM). I pay the fees through my salary and my mama also contributes to it.

I have been working for approximately six years now and fieldwork has always been a key part of my job. I have really enjoyed these roles, which is why I’ve always given them all my effort and energy. At the same time, I do dream about having a desk job in an office someday.  

As told to IDR.

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Know more

• Learn about the many challenges women in India face when they join and navigate the workforce.
• Listen to this podcast about the crucial, yet invisible role that women farmers play in agriculture in India.
• Ashwini Deshpande unpacks the recent increase in women’s labour force participation in India.

When we at ANANDI—Area Networking and Development Initiatives—started work in the tribal districts of Panchmahals and Dahod in Gujarat in 1995, women did not want to participate in the electoral and political process because of structural, financial, and cultural barriers. Many of these obstacles continue to exist even today. The Global Gender Gap Report 2023 ranks India at 127 of 146 countries.

It is challenging for women to compete in the electoral process because they carry the burden of gendered work and don’t have support for their unpaid workload. According to the UNDP Gender Social Norms Index 2023, nearly half the world still believes that women are less capable than men in positions of power in politics. Faced with this prejudiced mindset, controlled mobility, restricted access to information, negligible access to technology, and, above all, no opportunity for community leadership, they are less likely to consider themselves qualified or equipped to compete in formal elections. Even after being elected, EWRs face backlash not only from their opposing panels but also in the form of intimate partner violence. Hostile social power structures and issues of caste and class make the system even more complex for women from Adivasi, Dalit, and other marginalised communities.

In the past two decades since the constitutional amendments reserving local seats for women were passed, there has been some shift in the number of women enthusiastic about joining the electoral process. In the 2021 election of the gram panchayats (GPs) in Devgadh Baria block, approximately 53 women got elected in PRIs and two became deputy sarpanches.

To push for such an outcome, ANANDI, along with a tribal women-led collective called Devgadh Mahila Sangathan, identified and trained more than 130 young people as gaon saathis, or friends of the village, in the area. After two to three years of exposure to gender issues, rights and entitlements, and citizen’s roles in building a development agenda, participants learned how to shape their election manifesto. We also hosted voter awareness campaigns to help them identify the kind of leader they would choose for their panchayat. Participants visited model panchayats in Gujarat and Kerala and interacted with senior government officials to learn about their work.

Training and capacity building

We need more dedicated leadership training and capacity-building sessions for women panchayat leaders that are accessible to them. Parliamentarians get this type of orientation and training.

Panchayati Raj training institutes in Gujarat do conduct sessions but these are not held at the block level, and EWRs find it challenging to travel long distances for them. Sometimes these sessions are conducted virtually. However, the training is not always contextual, and the instructions are technical and directional, with little or no scope for GPs to express ward-level realities. This is why we organise regular capacity-building sessions for GP members.

But to enable the GP to take charge of its role as a local institution for developmental planning and implementation, we need to build leadership not just among the elected GP members but also among other women and youth. Only this can truly activate the ward and gram sabha.

We use a participatory action learning system (PALS) to initiate dialogue with communities. Modules are designed around various issues such as unpaid and care work, gender division in labour and decision-making, rights, and citizenship. The modules hold space to learn from the lived realities of the participants. Groups can then prepare and attend the general village council with their own agenda and ensure their priority is built into the final approved list of works.

Collective support

Village-level collectives of women and youth trigger inter–generational dialogue and gender-responsive planning and action. In ANANDI’s experience, strengthening such collectives has led to increased attendance and participation during the PRI process. We pair literate women with experienced women (known as bhaneli–ganeli ni jodi) and train a pool of such pairs as gaam sangathan aagewans. Members of this bimonthly cluster-level forum do not directly participate in the electoral exercise. Instead, they take turns to accompany elected members for house visits to marginalised homes, difficult-to-reach hamlets, and government institutions for work related to individual and collective rights and entitlements. When EWRs begin their work, it helps to have this systematic hand-holding support.

We have also trained mahila nyay aamitis, or social justice committees, of the Devgadh Mahila Sangathan to address issues of violence against women. The committee campaigns to spread awareness on prevention of violence. This is important because, in tribal villages, the panch—a group of elders nominated by the community—forms the traditional mechanism of dispute resolution. Most panch meetings are held around marital issues, separation, land disputes, family disputes, and domestic violence. In most of these processes, the panch is comprised of men. Elected members are invited but, in most cases, husbands or other male proxy members represent women. Few women attend the panch in person and speak up. Instead of resorting to the panch or getting embroiled in the complexities of court cases, women approach the mahila nyay samiti, where they can be guaranteed space to speak up for themselves. Committee members carry out investigations and interventions.

However, ever since collectives and self-help groups of women have proven effective, women’s collectives are seen as instruments for all interventions. Our policies need to realise that these institutions cannot be merely instrumentalised. To be able to use the power of the institution effectively, we need to build the power of the leaders within the institution.

Bureaucracy and policy advocacy

Collectives often share on-ground information about what can make the electoral process accessible and fair to them. This works as evidence for civil society organisation (CSOs), which can use it for advocacy on their behalf. There are multiple policy issues that need to be addressed.

• In all public meetings, dialogues with the state, and written and oral petitions, EWRs have demanded that government officials should not encourage men who come as proxies for EWRs. How has ‘sarpanch pati’ become a formal position? How can we even build that into our language and legitimise it?
• EWRs find it challenging to stay on top of documentation, as their name may change after marriage or some document may be missing the name of the husband or father. Filling forms is complicated, forms are rejected often, and updating them is a long-drawn process. Every panchayat election, Devgadh Mahila Sangathan sets up a support desk at the tehsildar’s office that helps candidates with the nomination process.
• Reducing bureaucratic hindrances while filing nominations was one of the key advocacy points during the last GP election. Instead of four or five of the total listed options for documents with affidavits, the local administration was insisting on all of them. This process was not only expensive and time-consuming but also dependent on the arbitrariness of the government representative. Based on our comparative analysis, the development commissioner issued a letter to all districts stating that this demand was not consistent with government orders.
• In Gujarat, elected PRI members don’t get honorariums and their travel costs are not reimbursed. Many women leader collectives have brought this up because it gives those with financial, caste, or class power more influence in the system and often leads to proxies.
• EWRs also say that important information remains in the hands of powerful people as they have access and familiarity. Often, the gram sabha circulars are sent through WhatsApp. Many EWRs may not have or may not use cellular phones. CSOs can mobilise support for mobile phones to be given to women in the area to decrease the digital and information divide.

While there are improvements in women’s roles in PRIs, the positive changes are not always permanent or constant because there are external variables. For instance, in 2021, many women who wanted to file their nominations couldn’t do so because of the two-child norm. The social norms and culture rarely recognise women’s agency over their self and body. If regressive policies are discussed at the higher levels, it becomes challenging to talk about equality on the ground.

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Know more

• Here’s a primer on the form and function of local government bodies in India. 
• Learn how reservation may have granted Dalit women the designation but not the dignity.
• Read this factsheet for a global overview of women’s participation in politics.

On the one hand, social expectations that women must shoulder most of the responsibility for unpaid care work can hinder their engagement in clean energy businesses, initiatives and investments, and thwart the clean energy agenda. On the other hand, access to clean energy resources can potentially alter these long-standing social norms by reducing the drudgery of household care work and redistributing it more equitably between men and women. For example, a 2020 report by Oxfam shows that the introduction of certain time- and labour-saving clean energy technologies can be associated with men’s increased participation in care work, when they are coupled with targeted interventions to support this behavioral change.

As investments in the clean energy transition grow, and social innovators expand access to clean energy solutions, these solutions must be intentionally designed to engage women and address their heavy and unequal responsibility for unpaid care work, to ensure that no one is left behind. Below, we’ll take a closer look at these interlocking challenges, highlighting some innovative approaches that are addressing them while presenting new opportunities for women and the business community.

Women are underrepresented in the clean energy sector

According to the International Energy Agency, more than 770 million people—most of them in rural areas in low- and middle-income countries—have limited or no access to electricity, and 2.5 billion people lack access to clean technologies and fuels for cooking, lighting and heating.

Women bear the greatest burden of energy poverty because of existing social norms.

As is often the case with global development challenges, women bear the greatest burden of this energy poverty because of existing social norms. As the primary providers of household care work, women are often responsible for looking after children, older persons, and persons with illness or disabilities, and for domestic tasks such as food preparation and cooking, cleaning, and collecting water and fuel. The lack of access to affordable and reliable clean energy makes these tasks harder to perform, placing additional burdens on women’s time, which in turn limits their opportunities for education, paid work and entrepreneurship—including within the clean energy sector itself.

Clean energy employment worldwide reached 12 million in 2020, and is expected to continue growing rapidly in the future. However, the sector is heavily male dominated. A 2019 global survey by the International Renewable Energy Agency found that women represented just 32% of the clean energy workforce. They were also disproportionately grouped in “feminized” occupations in administrative and support services, holding only 28% of the technical positions that require science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) training.

Women are also underrepresented in senior leadership and management positions in clean energy. A 2019 study by the International Energy Agency found that only 10.8% of senior management positions in the renewable energy sector were held by women.

Care work is a barrier to women’s engagement in clean energy

Many of the barriers to women’s engagement in clean energy that have been identified are similar to the barriers women face in the traditional energy sector—and elsewhere in the global economy. They include gender stereotypes about women’s abilities and the appropriateness of different jobs; lack of access to funding and financial services; lower levels of education and training; isolation from male-dominated business networks; and limited female role models and mentors.

The time spent on household care work has a direct impact on women’s schedules and the amount of time they can dedicate to clean energy.

As mentioned above, social norms assigning the responsibility for unpaid household care work to women also significantly limit their employment and entrepreneurship in clean energy. In some rural communities and low-income countries, women spend up to 14 hours each day on unpaid care work (compared to just over four hours for men). In South Asia, women spend up to 20 hours per week (or more) on a single household task: collecting fuel to use for cooking, lighting and heating. Likewise, in some countries in Africa, this task may consume over three hours each day. Simply put, this time spent on household care work has a direct impact on women’s schedules and the amount of time they can dedicate to clean energy.

Mobility constraints are another key challenge. Work in the clean energy sector can require significant travel and time away from home to sell, install and maintain clean energy solutions, or to access renewable energy construction projects. This is difficult for women with caregiving responsibilities, especially those with young children and those living in rural areas where distances are greater and transportation is limited.

Finally, the clean energy sector currently lacks a supportive policy environment for gender equality and care, because it has been molded around the needs of a predominantly male workforce. Women’s underrepresentation in the sector and the perception that care work does not apply to men contribute to the absence of gender-responsive and family-friendly workplace policies and arrangements. Without adequate leave policies, flexible work schedules, lactation rooms, and on-site or nearby childcare services, for example, women are less likely to enter and remain in the clean energy sector.

The irony is that without care work, the energy sector would not be able to perform. It relies on these long hours of invisible female labour that allow the industry’s mostly male workers to perform their duties, as their own and their loved ones’ care needs are met.

Women have a leading role to play in the clean energy transition

However, despite these challenges, women have a leading role to play as change agents in a sustainable and inclusive clean energy transition—as energy consumers, producers, entrepreneurs and decision-makers.

Studies have found that there are advantages in involving women from start to finish in the design of clean energy solutions, because they hold first-hand knowledge of household and community energy needs. There is also evidence that engaging women across the clean energy value chain can help to boost sales, especially in rural and hard-to-reach areas. For instance, because of social norms, women may feel more comfortable and confident speaking with female sales agents who better understand their energy needs and use. The same is true for the distribution, installation and repair of clean energy solutions, which can require sales agents to enter households during hours when men may not be home.

For the development, social enterprise and broader business sectors to enable women’s growing involvement in the energy transition, stakeholders will have to tackle the gendered and care-related barriers that obstruct women’s access to clean energy resources, solutions, employment and entrepreneurship. This response will also require a better understanding and recognition of how the clean energy sector itself can benefit from meaningfully engaging women across the value chain, owing largely to their household energy and care responsibilities.

Social enterprise solutions for care and clean energy needs

Social enterprises can play an important role in facilitating women’s increased involvement in clean energy, in part by providing access to clean energy technologies that can help to make some care tasks more efficient and free up women’s time for other productive work. The IDRC-supported Transforming the Care Economy through Impact Investing initiative—which aims to generate knowledge on the impact and scalability of market-based solutions so they can contribute to global progress on gender equality—has identified several examples of enterprises that are embracing this role.

Tierra Grata in Colombia is one of them. This social enterprise develops and implements energy, water and sanitation solutions, serving 12,500 customers in 48 rural villages in the country. Its solar panels, portable solar lamps, drip water filters and ecological dry toilets are low-cost, environmentally friendly, and easy and fast to install. They reduce the long hours women and girls spend boiling water or fetching wood. Tierra Grata also offers capacity-strengthening to customers and beneficiaries, to improve their knowledge and skills in repairing and maintaining these products.

Another example, Usafi, is a for-profit company that manufactures and distributes cookstoves and high-energy, high-heat content biomass briquettes in Kenya. The company has reached over 4,200 households. Similarly, Atec, a for-profit enterprise working in Bangladesh and Cambodia, provides sustainable, affordable and accessible clean cooking products for low-income households. Solutions such as these companies’ energy-efficient appliances and clean energy technologies reduce the time and drudgery associated with domestic tasks, and further help to ease women’s care work in subsistence agriculture and household food production.

Solely facilitating access to clean energy technologies, however, is not enough. In its evaluation of a program that aimed to reduce women’s time on care tasks, Oxfam found that technology-focused solutions need to be coupled with targeted interventions to change social norms. Likewise, programs aiming to promote women’s employment and entrepreneurship in clean energy need to integrate a gender and care lens into their design to eliminate the barriers that women face—including through gender-responsive and family-friendly workplace policies and arrangements like those we described above. Clean energy training, employment and entrepreneurship initiatives should also be tailored and scheduled around women’s childcare and domestic workloads, while recognizing and helping to address the care responsibilities that may prevent women from participating.

Unless we consider the heavy and unequal responsibility for unpaid care work that is shouldered by women and address these structural barriers, the transition to low-carbon economies will falter—and possibly reinforce existing gender inequalities in the process. We will also miss out on women’s clean energy contributions and innovations, which could prevent the world from moving towards the transformation we need to see. In other words, the takeaway is clear: A sustainable and inclusive clean energy transition needs to address unpaid care work.

This article was originally published on NextBillion.

Our commitment to this cause has helped us realise that there needs to be a more robust funding ecosystem for WLR in India. As a result, we sought to understand the challenges that prevent funders from entering the space. Here’s what we learned:

1. A lack of established models of intervention

The funding ecosystem for WLR has been so vacant that there is a dearth of imitable models and approaches that potential funders can adopt. A lack of structured intervention by nonprofits around WLR has resulted in limited evidence on the positive impact of relevant programmes. By extension, there is limited India-based evidence regarding how work on women and land can/should be funded. Funders thus don’t have the confidence that their funds will be effectively utilised given the contextual heterogeneity of land and communities across the country—resulting in an apprehension towards engaging with WLR. 

2. Potential sociopolitical backlash

Social norms have a profound impact on access to and control over land in India. One of the most common land disputes we’ve come across through our work in rural regions involves women (and men) from caste-marginalised communities. This can present unique challenges, as enabling their access to land may draw the ire of those that wield greater power within the community, if such work is perceived to be disrupting the existing social fabric and hierarchy. As a result, there is apprehension among funders about the potential backlash that could be directed at an organisation working on WLR.

3. Perceived complexity

There is a common narrative that interventions on land are ‘complex’ and ‘long drawn’. This, coupled with a lack of gender disaggregated data on women’s land ownership, has resulted in a variety of understandings regarding the extent of the problem and how it plays out on the ground.

The reporting parameters for WLR differ across various databases; states seem to have different mechanisms for recording gender disaggregated data, with some of them not including a gender column in their land records. For example, the fifth National Family Health Survey indicated women’s land ownership to be 22.7 percent, whereas a women’s land rights index constructed by the Center for Land Governance estimated the national average to be 12.9 percent.

Besides failing to convey the extent of the problem, the lack of data also makes funders perceive land as a technically complex issue. Funders view it as a subject that requires extensive knowledge of a variety of laws and thus steer clear from it, instead opting to fund causes they are more familiar with—such as education, health, or livelihoods. 

This perception also places rights-based interventions in opposition to the existing system of governance. A number of existing interventions primarily aim to fill gaps in implementation rather than seeking a complete overhaul of the system itself.

Land-related interventions are often also long-term projects. For instance, interventions related to inheritance or agricultural land may not have a significant impact to display in two or three years. This serves as a deterrent for funders who want interventions to bear favourable outcomes within a relatively shorter time frame.

The role that land can play in the progress towards achieving the sustainable development goals cannot be underplayed.

Lastly, the existing ecosystem for work on WLR is fragmented, as a lot of the efforts on the ground are by community-based women’s rights organisations that do not have access to land as a primary focus. They are often pulled into the realm of WLR work when the women they engage with experience land-related issues. The absence of a strong and evolving ecosystem ensures that the capacities of community-based organisations and other stakeholders (such as government functionaries) to provide effective support remains limited.

Having said that, the role that land can play in the progress towards achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) cannot be underplayed. Land for women can have a multidimensional impact, serving as an underlying financial asset and a means of generating livelihoods. Ensuring land rights for women contributes towards 13 SDGs under the overarching umbrella of SDG 5: Gender Equality and its intersections with SDG 2: Zero Hunger, SDG 08: Decent Work and Economic Growth, SDG 13: Climate Action, and SDG 17: Partnerships.

Therefore, it becomes imperative for all of us to evaluate the work we are doing from a lens of women’s access to and ownership over land.

How can funders integrate WLR into their work?

1. Get a lay of the land

When we started our work on WLR, it took us six months to make sense of the problem in the Indian context given the diversity of land, the issues related to it, and how it applies to women belonging to different social and cultural contexts. Therefore, we encourage interested funders to take some time to look at what they already fund and gauge whether they can extend the ambit of their programmes to include one or two land-related issues.

This is especially helpful for funders who are already working with rural women, given that the lives and livelihoods of these women are strongly intertwined with land. Similarly, a variety of commonly funded issues—organic farming, nature-based livelihoods, migration, and climate—are linked to land.

The fragmented nature of the existing ecosystem of stakeholders is a genuine problem, as there is minimal communication between the numerous organisations that are working on WLR and funders. This is why we are always happy to get on the phone with anyone interested in learning more about the landscape, as we believe that sharing the knowledge and expertise we have obtained through our experiences in this field can contribute positively.

2. Generate indicators

We understand and accept that there simply aren’t enough evidence-based models that can be emulated. Therefore, the question we  ask those who fund related causes such as agriculture, ecological restoration, food security, and housing is, “Can you incorporate the collection of baseline data on women’s land ownership or access or control into any of your existing programmes?”

This data collection doesn’t need to be a part of or a precursor to a larger WLR intervention. For example, if your organisation is working with self-help groups (SHGs) and is having conversations with members about bolstering their livelihoods, you can ask them questions about land ownership as land constitutes a critical element of the assets they may or may not have. The information obtained through these conversations can serve as key indicators that may inspire your organisation and others to undertake more structured interventions on WLR. At the very least, it will contribute to filling the significant gaps in information about the status of women’s land ownership in India.

3. Sidestep backlash

Most land laws in India are gender equitable on paper, but their implementation is often lacking. Designing or engaging in programmes that enable effective implementation are thus not in opposition to governance. Prima facie, nobody should have a problem with this. The opposition that may still emerge as a result of community dynamics is to be expected in the case of any intervention that shifts the status quo.

Funding organisations that have strong community presence in a particular region can also leverage their support. By mapping relevant stakeholders, they can work to identify an effective intervention model that elicits minimal pushback.

Funders could also look at ways to support land-related initiatives that are promoted by state governments. For example, the Odisha government is seeking to complete its implementation of the Forest Rights Act by 2024. This serves as a perfect avenue for funding organisations to step in and provide support, such as training women from tribal communities in the region to help their communities file forest rights claims.

4. Consider an alternate view of land

Historically, access to and control over land has equalled agency and power, and this still holds true. Thus, at The Womanity Foundation, we view land as a pathway to women’s empowerment—both social and economic. If empowering women is a key aim of the initiatives you choose to fund, we recommend looking at land as an avenue to achieve that. In fact, land is the most sustainable pathway to fulfil this aim as it is an asset that grants women financial security, shelter, social status, income, and livelihood opportunities. Therefore, funders aiming for the long-term sustainability of their work on women’s empowerment should strongly consider investing in WLR. It can help ensure that women have more agency, long after a programme or project ends.

A myopic view of land as an asset to be monetised can be a dangerous one. 

When we first started funding WLR, we stressed on women’s economic empowerment as our primary goal. But soon we learned that a myopic view of land as an asset to be monetised can be a dangerous one. Through conversations with the women we work with, we realised that the social security accorded by land is often far more important in their eyes, and this is something all funders should keep in mind. 

Although the mindset shift required by funders is substantial, the steps they can take could be incremental. Engaging at conferences and events with organisations that work on this issue is also a useful step in deciding whether it’s worth adding to the agenda.

Lastly, there is significant space for innovation in this field. It is conducive for funders looking at innovations relating to climate and alternative funding instruments. Given that a number of outcomes on land and its economics are measurable and verifiable, we believe there is a case for investments in the form of development bonds with stringent evaluation studies. This will not only create credible evidence, but can also potentially open alternate funding options for this resource-crunched issue.

We would thus encourage everyone to take a step back, understand the sustainable impact land can have for women, their families, their communities, as well as the planet.

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Know more

• Learn more about the importance of securing land rights for women.
• Learn about the need for equipping community-based organisations to work on land rights.

Localised conglomerations of the sex trade were convenient not only for customers, but also proved useful to the police and health authorities. For the police, RLAs were the focus of raids, rescues, closure of brothels, and crackdown on sex traders (a move that was sometimes genuine, and otherwise tokenistic). For health authorities, hundreds of victims could be found in one place and kept ‘clean’ to protect society from sexually transmitted infections and diseases.

However, modernisation has led to changes in the nature and speed of activities in localised sex trade. Even as RLAs grew more populated, there were limits to their expansion, surrounded as they were by mainstream society. This led to a forced dispersal and delocalisation of the sex trade, which has in turn thrown up several challenges to rescue and rehabilitation efforts. 

Changing patterns in commercial sexual exploitation

1. New sites

The RLA is no longer the locus of sex trade; it has splintered into dozens of unmarked sites of commercial sexual exploitation that include boarding and lodging houses, small hotels, and private residences. When trafficking networks are traceable, it becomes easier for anti-trafficking agencies to intervene, report about commercial sexual exploitation, rehabilitate rescued women and children, and bring perpetrators to book.

Yet, despite the decentralisation of the trade, new sites of commercial sexual exploitation continue to be unearthed, thanks largely to civil society organisations (CSOs) that conduct on-ground surveys where victims are likely to be found. They then share this information with law enforcement agencies. For example, we received a child at our shelter facility in Raigad district who was rescued by the police while on the way to being sold by a pimp to a customer. The transaction was to take place at a boarding and lodging house in urban Raigad. The police were tipped off by a local CSO.

Scenes like this play out often: One or two rooms in a private establishment become sites of exploitation—the makeshift brothel—while the rest of the lodge continues to serve the general public. (Recently, four rescued minors submitted draft guidelines to the Supreme Court demanding that owners of properties deployed as brothels pay damages to the women and children found there.)

2. New routes

Over the last fifteen years, the supply areas, routes, and destinations of trafficked persons have changed. When Prerana started work in the Kamathipura RLA in 1986, more than 20 percent of women in the brothels of Mumbai were trafficked from Nepal. Domestic trafficking exposed a rural-to-urban movement, with women and children from West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and the border districts of Karnataka and Maharashtra brought to cities such as Mumbai, Kolkata, and Delhi.

Our current data show that both the source and the destination are now urban areas, and the physical distance between them is closing. In Maharashtra, for example, we have a number of cases of girls from marginalised communities transported from source districts such as Thane and Mumbai to destinations like Raigad, the district next door.

There has been a sudden proliferation of small hotels and lodging–boarding establishments in urban Raigad, to which customers and victims are brought. It is increasingly expensive to run the sex trade in Mumbai, but Raigad costs half as much. Given its proximity to Mumbai, customers from the metropolis can be ferried there in a few hours and assured anonymity. There has also been an increase in the migration of single male migrants to Raigad district and they too have driven up demand for commercial sex.

We also notice a growing incidence of girls born and raised in the same city (Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane) where they are exploited.

3. New dynamics

Earlier, women and their children lived in the brothel, and customers were entertained right there. In sex tourism, customers travelled to places where victims were made available. Now we see both the customer and the minor girl or young woman transported to a new site, and afterwards her handler sends her back to her family.

We witnessed this recently in eight cases, where the girls were asked to report to a particular spot from where they were transported to the customer. They were sent back late evening, with their families told that they worked at an event management company to justify their late hours.

Perpetrators are increasingly fishing in families, particularly where dysfunctionality and duress are evident; for example, one or both parents have deserted the children, leaving them in the care of elderly grandparents. One of the grandparents may be alcohol-dependent, or one or both are very ill but have to support their wards. This is the narrative we frequently encounter.  

In the last couple of years, almost all the rescued girls we worked with were school dropouts, having left school after standard 8 or 9. More recently, some of them told us that they discontinued schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Caste and distress mobility

Various stressors increase the vulnerability of women and children to sex trafficking. These include chronic poverty, loss of livelihood, and cultural practices like intergenerational trafficking prevalent in communities such as the Bedia–Banchhada and the Devadasi.

• Caste plays a major role in the induction of girls into the sex trade. It’s usually girls from the scheduled castes who are more vulnerable to trafficking compared to the middle or upper castes who are exposed to similar socio-economic pressures. We’ve had families of rescued girls who claimed to belong to a scheduled caste, but 90 percent of them didn’t have a caste certificate. This document makes it possible to prosecute perpetrators under The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which stipulates severe punishment and grants the women financial compensation.

• Distress mobility born of famine and drought has always been a prime hunting ground. But as the intensity and frequency of climate-change-related disasters increases, this risk is likely to escalate. One of the cases we handled involved a family affected by the tsunami of 2004. Tricked by traffickers who promised to help them avail of government relief programmes, the entire family was lured to Ahmednagar, where their two adolescent girls were sold into the sex trade. The Latur earthquake of 1993 also trapped women in trafficking networks.

Social media: Ground for grooming

In many cases, adolescent girls are brought into contact with perpetrators via WhatsApp and Instagram. These platforms are used in the initial stages to woo, groom, and make introductions. We have noticed a rise in the number of school-going girls among such victims. Formal education per se does not grant immunity against sex trafficking.

Perpetrators also approach girls with job offers through WhatsApp. “Contact us within four hours for a job that pays quick money,” the ads say. Many of these jobs are at escort agencies, spas, beauty parlours, call centres, and event management companies—grooming grounds where women are gradually eased into the sex trade. Eventually the women are told they can make money on the side if they escort a client to a party or accompany him on a tour of Mumbai.  

However, while perpetrators may use certain occupational sites to target women, it cannot be emphasised enough that these are legitimate places of work and a source of income for women. They should not be stigmatised. At the same time, we want women and young girls to take extra care when approached with job prospects at these worksites.

Preventive mechanisms are crucial to curbing sex trafficking.

To help women become aware of early signs of exploitation and new tactics that traffickers are adopting, Prerana has published a knowledge resource manual called Jagaran. This manual is intended for community frontline workers and development practitioners who work with adolescents and young women in vulnerable populations. A preventive tool (with lesson plans and contextual information), Jagaran can be used to build awareness, help young women protect themselves from vulnerabilities, and guide them towards support systems.        

Preventive mechanisms are crucial to curbing sex trafficking, particularly now that rescue and rehabilitation has become even more challenging. Decentralisation of the sex trade has made tracking difficult because it invisibilises the victim. Conventional indicators of trafficking such as malnourishment and signs of physical abuse no longer apply to the current reality.

Invisibility also isolates women, denying them access to traditional support systems such as CSOs, the public healthcare system, the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), law enforcement agencies, and legal aid services. It also impacts data collection, which was a challenge as it is. NACO estimated the population of female sex workers in 2004 to be between 8 and 12 lakh. Given the growing diffusion of the trade, the numbers will become even more unreliable now.

Building a resilient rehabilitation programme

Prevention and rehabilitation programmes should be strengthened simultaneously. We haven’t invested enough in imagining a holistic rehabilitation system; what we have instead is a morality-centred, incarceration-based system, with conditional laws and policies. For example, the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, stipulates that rehabilitation is possible only after the victim is rescued by the state machinery. But what if a victim wants rehabilitation without coming into contact with law enforcement agencies and the judiciary? They are denied compensation or support from the state and the only support they receive is from CSOs.  

We also need a mindset shift in society where we turn away from our messianic attitude and cultivate a compassionate approach. Without it, rehabilitation will continue to be a challenge, and this will only make perpetrators stronger. It will lead to re-trafficking, and the victims will eventually lose faith in the rehabilitation system.  

Some years ago, Prerana trained several minors rescued from dance bars to work as petrol pump attendants in Mumbai. Word leaked about their former circumstances, and customers started name-calling and propositioning them, making it impossible for the women to forget their life in the sex trade.  

Following this incident, we developed an orientation protocol for rescued victims, counselling them on their rights, particularly the right to privacy and confidentiality. The protocol advised them on when disclosure was necessary and with whom to share sensitive information. If they felt that their safety was compromised, they had the right to reach out to relevant support systems. We share this safety protocol with every adolescent girl at our shelter homes.  

This intervention has prompted girls to talk more openly about risky situations they encounter. We once worked with a girl employed in the service sector whose colleague harassed her for sex when he learned she was the daughter of a prostitute. But because she was aware of a statutory body like the Internal Complaints Committee, she immediately reached out to them with her problem. She also approached Prerana and the one-stop crisis centre. She knew the importance of contacting multiple people and wasn’t dependent on a single support system because of the protocol we had framed.

Why collectivise?

We have understood the value of partnering with multiple stakeholders in the space of anti-human trafficking, women’s rights, and child safety. Given our limited resources, it’s important for CSOs to collectivise and pool resources because it’s difficult, independently and individually, to protect victims after rescue. Two decades ago, Prerana filed a public interest litigation on standards of care in shelter facilities for rescued victims. Organisations like Committed Communities Development Trust (CCDT), Pratham, and Centre for Inquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT) lent their support to the campaign, and our collective effort resulted in public advocacy. Today, every state is required to have well-defined, rights-based standards of care and protection in all shelter facilities for women and children.

The need for CSOs to collaborate has grown more urgent than ever.

Collectivisation can take two forms: organisations can assemble to form a formal network, or they can come together when the situation demands it. A recent example of this situational collectivism was when the Supreme Court launched the Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes, a glossary of gender-just terms that would replace traditional terms in legal documents. A whore or a prostitute ought to now be called a sex worker.

Several CSOs working on anti-human trafficking immediately spoke up against this revision. We believe that by blanketly using the term ‘sex worker’, we fail to acknowledge that many of these women are victims of human trafficking and forget the modus operandi of violence that was used to sell them into the sex trade. Deciding to write to the chief justice about it, we drafted a letter within a week, signed it, and e-mailed it to his office.

The need for CSOs to collaborate has grown more urgent than ever. Mounting an allied front does more than add weight to advocacy and breadth to relief efforts. It can protect potential victims from entrapment by raising awareness of trafficking risks at the grassroots itself. This is one of the ways we can stop the human trafficking web from growing.  

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Know more

• Read this article about how, India does not fully meet the minimum standard to tackle trafficking.
• Read this article about the victim–saviour dichotomy in dominant narratives of human trafficking.
• Listen to this podcast called ‘Humans Not for Sale’ produced by Prerana, which creates broader awareness around human trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation.

This lack of progress is evident in SDG 5: gender equality. The COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of progress and strides made towards achieving economic and cultural equality for women in India and the rest of the world. This is clearly depicted by the fact that India ranked 135 out of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index 2022. Policy solutions aiming at bridging this gap are therefore more important today than they have ever been before. The question is, which solutions can bring about large-scale change?

One solution studied by researchers affiliated with J-PAL focuses on adolescents, who are young enough for their attitudes to still be malleable but also old enough to comprehend discussions on gender. A curriculum developed by Indian nonprofit Breakthrough to promote gender-equal views among children is an example of how to develop and implement an effective intervention and take it to scale.

Breakthrough’s curriculum, titled Taaron ki Toli (Gang of Stars), tackles a pressing and pervasive problem in India—bias against women. J-PAL-affiliated researchers Seema Jayachandran and her co-authors evaluated Taaron ki Toli (TkT) in Haryana and found that it fostered progressive gender views among young adolescents. For instance, the programme led to an increase in household chores done by boys (although not a decrease in chores done by girls, due to external constraints). This behaviour change among boys persisted even after the programme ended, measured two years later. 

The next question to ask is, how do we share these results with policymakers and expand the use of such a curriculum across states? Policymakers are often interested in whether results and lessons from a programme tested and found to be effective in one region are applicable in different contexts. If we are faced with the same policy problem, then it is possible that the solutions to fight those problems can also be the same, or at least similar. These solutions can offer general lessons, which can be transferred to other states and applied after accounting for local needs. 

Following the encouraging results in Haryana, J-PAL South Asia and Breakthrough partnered with the governments of Odisha and Punjab to scale up the curriculum in state-run secondary schools. In Punjab, the programme was launched under the name of Chanan Rishman while the Government of Odisha launched it under the name of Barnali. It is slated to reach a total of 3 million children every year across the two states. 

Even though each programme requires a different approach for scaling up, TkT offers a few broad insights into the process that may be useful for governments, implementing organisations, and researchers working towards this end.

Some background to the curriculum

Adolescence, considered a critical time for development, is when children are still forming their own attitudes but are mature enough to grasp and reflect on complex issues.

The TkT curriculum includes interactive classroom discussions on gender roles and on contemporary issues such as violence against women and sexual harassment. Students would also be given homework assignments such as writing stories or discussing gender issues with family members.

The curriculum was delivered to 18,000 girls and boys between the ages of 11 and 15 across schools in Haryana.

The curriculum was rolled out for the first time in 2013–14 in Haryana, a state with a highly skewed gender ratio. The Government of Haryana was interested in evaluating policies to reduce gender bias. Spurred by this interest, Breakthrough worked closely with officials from the Department of Education, school principals, and teachers to introduce TkT in state-run schools, with J-PAL South Asia collaborating on the evaluation.

In a span of two and a half years, the curriculum was delivered to 18,000 girls and boys between the ages of 11 and 15 across 150 co-ed and single-sex schools in four districts in Haryana. The interactive, 45-minute sessions were taught by Breakthrough-trained facilitators during school hours. They were held every three weeks during this period.

Interestingly, the evaluation showed that at the second end line of results collected, boys showed a greater increase in gender positive attitudes compared to girls. At the first end line, the attitude change was the same for boys and girls, but ultimately translated into more behaviour change for boys. One way to understand these results is that, compared to girls, boys are allowed a much higher degree of freedom to express themselves as well as act on their belief systems within their families and communities. Even then, data collected during the study showed that girls who were part of the programme applied more for college scholarships. This suggests that the programme had a positive effect on girls’ aspirations or their ability to persuade their parents to support their goals.

Maximising impact: Scaling up TkT in Punjab and Odisha

Building on Haryana’s success, TkT was scaled up by the state governments of Punjab and Odisha. Governments of both states have shown tremendous commitment towards addressing issues of gender inequality.

In Punjab, the programme was officially launched in March 2021. By July 2022, it had reached 6,250 state-run schools and had been integrated into the state’s Social Studies and English curricula.

In Odisha, the curriculum is being rolled out with support from ASPIRE. The government has announced that the curriculum will be introduced to 23,000 upper primary and secondary state-run schools across all districts, reaching 2.5 million students. 

Three key lessons emerge from the experience of taking the TkT programme to new contexts and scale:

1. Finding common ground: Aligning with government priorities

Government involvement and ownership is vital to expand the reach of a policy intervention that has proven to be effective. Specifically, understanding ground realities and building buy-in at the implementation level is key.

A thorough analysis of the state’s policy priorities is the first step towards getting government buy-in. In other words, the policy problem that a given programme is trying to solve should fit with the government’s priorities.

For example, TkT is in line with the Odisha chief minister’s 5T School Transformation programme, which, among other things, aims to enhance the quality of education and infrastructure in state-run high schools. And gender, more generally, has been a key area of focus for Odisha. The state was one of the first to adopt gender-responsive budgeting, as early as 2005.

The Government of Odisha has also set aside significant funds for teacher training as well as for designing and printing textbooks, demonstrating long-term commitment to the programme.

In the case of Punjab and Odisha, J-PAL South Asia’s long-term partnerships with multiple departments ensured a solid foundation for TkT.

2. Being flexible: Adapting to local needs

For a programme to be successful at scale, it must easily adjust to local realities. The Breakthrough curriculum was designed keeping this in mind. The malleability of Breakthrough’s curriculum allowed for it to be adapted not only to different social and cultural contexts but also seamlessly into regular school curricula across several classes. This way, the government of any state can decide how the original 28 session curriculum needs to be integrated into regular classes and in which grades.

By discussing locally relevant issues, the programme makes it easier for students to grasp important lessons about the society we live in.

The governments of both Punjab and Odisha worked closely with Breakthrough to refine and change the curriculum according to the specialised needs of each state. Breakthrough provided technical and knowledge support to Odisha’s Department of School and Mass Education for developing the pedagogical material with strong contextual relevance, based on inputs from the Commissioner-cum-Secretary of the aforesaid Department, and a group of independent experts in the field of education and gender. It will be delivered through supplementary textbooks for the first year. During this time, J-PAL South Asia and Breakthrough will closely monitor the delivery of the curriculum and make the necessary adjustments to ensure it is relevant to the local context.

In Punjab, the programme material has already been included in English and Social Science curricula for the academic year 2023–24. Students in Punjab are learning about the consequences of living in a male-dominated society, one in which women have fewer social freedoms than men and often stay at home tending to household chores. In Odisha, in addition to learning about rights and responsibilities and enabling intergenerational dialogues, the teaching material will deal with local issues such as child marriage.

By discussing locally relevant issues, the programme makes it easier for students to grasp important and meaningful lessons about the society we live in, and the various challenges women often face. Making the gender curriculum a part of school education allows for greater reach and longevity.

3. Doing the legwork: Keeping things on track

A lot of time has to be spent on the field to make sure we are doing the right things, and doing them the right way.

Enough robust data is required to check for the effectiveness of the programme before it can be scaled up. The researchers on the Haryana evaluation conducted surveys before, during, and after TkT was rolled out to measure student progress over the years.

These students are being followed and surveyed nine years after the programme has ended to see how the curriculum has affected their lives as adults. Some of these students are now married with children and are in positions where they have a say in their communities and within their households.

As we scale up in newer geographies, it is also important to check for the local conditions and implementation capacity to determine the suitability of scaling a programme. For TkT, this meant mapping the attendance rates of students and teachers in Punjab and Odisha as well as staffing in the schools. Low attendance rates and poorly staffed schools would have impeded the delivery and effectiveness of the programme. 

Training the teachers in the state-run schools was just as important. Breakthrough held week-long workshops on gender sensitisation and curriculum delivery to reduce the possibility of teachers’ personal gender biases coming through in the classroom.

As the experience with TkT makes clear, scaling up an evidence-based programme takes time, money, and effort from everyone involved. It needs technical expertise to gather generalisable insights, a deep understanding of policy priorities, and sensitivity to local nuances.

Scaling up is a marathon, not a sprint, and it calls for consistent involvement by partners committed to maximising impact and reaching more and more lives with an innovative solution. It requires an acknowledgment of the problem at hand, being invested in the use of evidence, and having the flexibility to adapt the programme by creating a culture of knowledge sharing and learning. 

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Know more

• Read this report by J-PAL to learn more about a series of interactive classroom discussions about gender equality that led to behaviour change.
• To learn more about ASPIRE, a joint initiative by J-PAL South Asia and the Veddis Foundation that works towards scaling up effective programmes across India, click here.  
• Read this article to learn about lessons from a study on scaling up empirically tested behavioural solutions in Maharashtra and Jharkhand.

Environmental degradation coupled with financial constraints have pushed many men to look for work elsewhere. However, a new trend has emerged. Newly married women from Udaipur’s Gogunda Block migrate with their husbands to Gujarat and Maharashtra and work in the kitchens of hotels and hostels.

We previously had a limited understanding of women’s migration, focussing mainly on the trend of families from Banswara district moving to Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, primarily for construction work. Our prior knowledge of the working conditions for women and adolescent girls portrayed a grim picture, marked by physical exhaustion, persistent malnutrition (even during pregnancy), and the constant specter of sexual harassment.

However, our conversations with women from various villages in Gogunda revealed a complex nature of migration, shaped by intricate societal structures. Some of these women we spoke with were visiting to help families for the Kharif crop season, or have returned to their homes permanently, because they dared to speak up for themselves.

No entitlement, lack of options

These women shared their diverse experiences and varied impacts of migration on their lives and families.

Tara, a mother of three young daughters, Ganga, Monika and Geeta, works in a hotel in Rajkot with her husband. For the last four years, she has been cooking in the hotel’s kitchen. She has left behind two of her daughters with her relatives in Gogunda.

“They only allow one child to stay with us and since Geeta is the youngest, she travels with us. We have enrolled the other two in a school there [in Gogunda], but they are not consistent because nobody keeps an eye on them,” says Tara. Her expression showed how she has been left with an agonising choice—leaving behind her two children, and the wage she seeks to earn to take care of them.

However, Tara’s main concern lies with her husband’s drinking habits. When they are at the workplace, everything seems fine. Tara feels content and her husband remains sober, as alcohol is strictly prohibited within the campus.

However, as soon as they return to their home in Gogunda, her husband starts drinking again. This leads to frequent arguments and even physical abuse, leaving Tara deeply troubled.

“I live like you there,” she pointed out to our attires. “I just apply sindoor and nothing else is compulsory. I can wear a suit, or even a saree,” she says, as if shedding the heavy burden of wearing a traditional lehenga choli offers her respite.

Tara isn’t the only woman who doesn’t want to come back to her village after working in a big city like Rajkot or Ahmedabad. Women workers are torn between the worlds they inhabit; they stand between the societal expectations of leaving work for family and the different life cities offer.

The gap between these two worlds is quite evident.

Sonu, 23, a mother of two, came back to her husband’s village Dadiya, during the COVID-19 pandemic and never went back.

She first went to Ahmedabad when she was 10 years old, with her uncle who worked at the airport. “It was not my first time living away from home. I went with my uncle and lived there for two years. I wanted to see the aeroplanes and thought I could study anytime but this is my only chance to go out and see them taking off,” her eyes sparkle as she recalls those days.

Even after getting married at the age of 12, she found the courage to speak up about her previous experiences. “I am not afraid ma’am. During one of our jobs, my husband and I were made to stay along with other men because there were not a lot of women working in those spaces back then. I raised my concern and asked my husband, who is quite understanding, to get work somewhere else,” she says.

“We just had one task to do there—I used to clean the kitchen and in turn, I was getting good food and the privilege of working in a place with a functional fan,” she adds.

She came back to Rajasthan when her sons grew up and needed to enroll in school. Her migration, which once gave her an opportunity, now seems like a distant memory. There are Gujarati-medium schools mostly, and the Hindi-medium ones are expensive. Because of the inaccessible education system, she is compelled to stay behind.

As private ownership grows and public education declines in the state, inequalities between disadvantaged and privileged groups have become more apparent. The lack of access due to language barriers keeps the cycle of marginalisation going.

An identity crisis

Another concern emerged during our conversations—that despite their vital contributions, women failed to recognise themselves as workers.

Women working alongside their husbands raises intriguing questions about the evolving migration patterns. To truly understand this shift and the motivation behind women’s inclusion, it is imperative to delve into the complicated ways in which both men and women perceive women’s roles in this process.

When asked about her decision to accompany her husband to Ahmedabad, Ganeshi Bai’s response was rooted in the belief that she was needed to assist him.

“Everyone said he is already working, and you will work in the kitchen only at home. So, why not help your husband with his work,” she says.

Her response also shaped her perception of her role as a wife and a worker.

Many women find themselves cast into the role of a ‘helper’. However, this seemingly innocuous term conceals a significant imbalance. It also reveals a subtle yet significant form of labour exploitation since it diminishes the magnitude of their work, demoting them to a position devoid of the rights that a recognised worker would command. This linguistic choice effectively deprives these women of the entitlements that should rightfully accompany their labour.

In Obra, a quite remote village in the block, where opportunities are limited, catering contracts have become increasingly popular, attracting numerous young couples who are hired by the subcontractors and contractors to cities like Rajkot and Ahmedabad.

Hansa, 22, a mother of one, confidently shares her story. She and her husband primarily earn from catering services, where they are paid Rs 500 per day. However, if they secure a monthly job at a hotel, they are paid Rs 15,000 combined.

“I said I also want to go with him because I heard other women from many villages go and help their husbands in the kitchen. I studied till 9th grade. I can keep an account of our salary,” she says.

Awareness about the complexities surrounding labour migration, the need for a consistent income, and the importance of labour rights are crucial for female workers.

As we visited Hansa’s home in Obra, we were greeted by a modest kuccha house, barely spacious enough to accommodate her family of six adults along with a dozen farm animals. Such living conditions were common among families in the village.

“We came back to the village for my first delivery, which was seven months ago. My husband will go back [to the city] when he gets some work. Then I will also go after two to three months to work [in the city],” she adds.

Although the uncertain nature of these contracts may expose them to an unreliable employment environment, Hansa and other women from her village do not seem to care about the lack of stability because of the abundant opportunities this migration offers.

However, an awareness about the complexities surrounding labour migration, the need for a consistent income, and the importance of labour rights are crucial for Hansa and her peers as they aim for a more secure and empowered future.

These stories, however, raise an important question. Why are women now being included in these migration ventures when historically they had been kept out? The answer to this question lies in the concept of enlisting women as ‘helpers’, which strategically eliminates the need to hire two separate individuals for kitchen-related tasks.

Contractors keenly seize upon this ploy: by encouraging male workers to bring their wives along, they can avoid the expense of hiring two men because then they can pay two individuals, a husband and a wife, a combined wage that is often lower than what two male workers would individually command.

The contractors’ cost-saving strategy, however, becomes unfavourable to women as it does not allow them to explore their identity as an independent worker. This approach also highlights how gender, migration, and economics intersect, showing the ongoing struggle for women to be treated fairly and paid equally.

Kailashi, 21, shared her experience as a migrant labourer. “I was not paid for the work, only my husband did, and at night, all the kitchen staff used to sleep together in the kitchen,” she says.

When she came back from Maharashtra due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kailashi found her in-laws’ home overcrowded, with six people crammed into a single room.

When she demanded her husband to provide her and their son a separate living space, he abandoned her and sent her back to her maternal home. In the process, her husband also took her son away, she says.

“I never wanted to get married, and now I don’t know what I will do with the rest of my life,” she says, while working on her father’s farm.

Kailashi’s story reveals how women are treated when they seek empowerment.

It also highlights the dire need for a systemic change that upholds women’s rights, recognises their worth, and safeguards their aspirations within the broader theme of migration and society.

Furthermore, these stories also call for the need for a more comprehensive approach to address the multifaceted issues women face, including access to education for children and the intricacies of marital dynamics in the context of migration.

This article was originally published on The Wire.

Had the Act been implemented, and the benefits raised in tandem with (say) nominal GDP, Indian women today would be receiving cash benefits of about Rs 20,000 in the event of pregnancy, as they do in Tamil Nadu. This would help to ensure that they are not deprived of adequate nutrition, rest and healthcare at this difficult time.

Instead, the central government has used every possible means to evade its obligations under the Act. For a full four years (2013 to 2017), there was no action at all. In 2017, a national scheme of maternity benefits was finally launched—the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY). This scheme, however, restricts maternity benefits to the “first living child”, at a measly rate of Rs 5,000 in three instalments. By the time Covid-19 hit the country in early 2020, even this restricted coverage was still a distant goal.

Meanwhile, pregnancy and childbirth remained a harrowing experience for millions of women. In 2019, the Jaccha-Baccha Survey (JABS) found horrendous levels of deprivation and insecurity during pregnancy in a sample of 700 rural women spread over six north Indian states. Among 364 women who had delivered a child in the preceding six months, less than a quarter had eaten nutritious food more often than usual during pregnancy, and nearly 40% complained of a lack of rest at that time. Weight gain during pregnancy was way below the recommended norms—just 7 kg on average. This is all the more worrying as so many women are severely undernourished to start with. (See “Maternity Entitlements: Women’s Rights Derailed”, by Jean Drèze, Reetika Khera and Anmol Somanchi, Economic and Political Weekly, 20 November 2021.)

How is PMMVY faring today? This is not easy to tell because PMMVY has no public data portal worth the name. In this respect, it stands out among India’s social programmes, and violates the pro-active disclosure norms of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. We had to fall back on RTI queries to rustle up the most elementary statistics on the progress of PMMVY. The latest response of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, in January 2023 (four months after the query was submitted), includes state-wise and year-wise numbers of PMMVY recipients for the last few years.

According to these official figures, the limited progress that had been made under PMMVY by the end of 2019 was largely undone during the Covid-19 crisis. The number of women who received some PMMVY benefits crashed from 96 lakh in 2019-20 to 75 lakh in 2020-21 and 61 lakh in 2021-22—a decline of nearly 40% over two years.

To put this in perspective, assuming a birth rate of 19.5 per thousand (the Sample Registration System estimate for 2020), and a total population of 140 crore, the annual number of births in India today must be around 270 lakh. Barely 23% of these births were covered under PMMVY in 2021-22 (see Chart). Even if we assume, optimistically, that another 10% of births are covered by maternity benefit schemes in the formal sector, overall coverage would still be as low as one third of all births.

These PMMVY coverage figures refer to the number of mothers who received at least one of the three instalments. If we raise the bar and focus on women who received all three instalments, the coverage figures are much lower. In 2021-22, the number of pregnant women who received the third PMMVY instalment was just 35 lakh—about 13% of the annual number of births.

State-wise figures are presented in Table 1. Between 2019-20 and 2021-22, PMMVY coverage declined in all major states except Kerala and Jammu-Kashmir, sharply so in many cases. In West Bengal, it appears that the scheme has come to a standstill—perhaps it is victim of a centre-state dispute there, like the rural employment guarantee scheme? PMMVY also came to a virtual standstill by 2021-22 in several other states, including some “double engine” states like Gujarat. The third instalment eludes most women in most states.

We can shift the goalposts and focus on first births, the official target of PMMVY. When the fertility rate is around two children per woman and most women have at least one child, as is the case in India today, first births account for about half of all births. Thus, the coverage figures would roughly double if we put first births in the denominator instead of all births (see Chart). Even then, they would be quite low—46% for “at least one instalment” in 2021-22 and 26% for the third instalment.

It is unlikely that PMMVY coverage expanded radically in 2022-23. Indeed, central expenditure on the SAMARTHYA package (of which PMMVY is the main component) was barely 10% higher in 2022-23 than in 2021-22. Incidentally, we are talking peanuts—barely Rs 2,000 crore per year, compared with an estimated requirement of about Rs 14,000 crore per year for full-fledged implementation of maternity benefits under the National Food Security Act.

The PMMVY setback in 2020-21 and 2021-22 is a sign of mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis. PMMVY is just a cash transfer scheme, there was no good reason for it to be so badly disrupted. And there was certainly no excuse for the disruption to continue in 2022-23.

The root of this fiasco is that pregnant women count for very little in public policy and electoral politics. Quite likely, a real effort to universalize maternity benefits would have made waves. Instead, the central government took refuge in a lame scheme that didn’t really take off. On three occasions, the Finance Minister ignored an appeal from 60 Indian economists for much higher spending on maternity benefits. The opposition parties, Congress included, did very little to challenge this inertia. The outcome is a lost decade for maternity entitlements.

This article was originally published on The India Forum.

Women are known to be intuitive savers, prudent investors, and responsible re-payers. They tend to be loyal customers and are unlikely to switch financial service providers (FSPs). This makes them ideal consumers for products such as fixed deposits, insurance, pension, gold loans, and educational loans. We witnessed this in our work with the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) account holders, where the financial revenue generated by women account holders is 12 percent higher in comparison to men. Thus, the case for gender-intentional lending is more compelling than ever.

Compared to enterprises led by men, women-led MSMEs face greater barriers in terms of limitations on time, mobility, and resources, along with significant cultural and social constraints. Fewer opportunities for networking and mentorship are available to women. They face disproportionate challenges due to caregiving responsibilities, greater vulnerability to financial shocks, and restricted access to information and technical skills. Women are also less likely to have access to smartphones or digital financial services. They may find it daunting to apply for loans, make payments, and purchase insurance, and are usually not discovered by lenders.

Except for a handful of companies that have focused on creating solutions for women, the finance industry has overlooked the needs, preferences, and obstacles unique to women.

Where is the credit?

Women entrepreneurs largely point to the lack of access to credit as a challenge. The International Finance Corporation estimates that, globally, women-led businesses face a credit gap of USD 1.5 trillion. Due to this lack of access to credit, their businesses are often informal, home-based, small in scale, and concentrated in the sectors traditionally assigned to women. Women tend to run micro-businesses—too big for microfinance institutions (that have a loan requirement of greater than INR 50,000) and too small for banks (that have a loan requirement of less than INR 10 lakh). Consequently, women-led small businesses form just 10 percent of the gross loan portfolio of most financial service providers.

Typically, a loan application goes through multiple steps. At every stage, there is potential for biases to seep in when lending to women—they are twice as likely to be rejected for a loan than men. Women continue to face the consequences of historical beliefs and cultural practices and have fewer assets in their name, which means they don’t have collateral security. This causes women-owned businesses to be denied bank credit more often, due to which they do not feel encouraged to apply for bank credit, are less reliant on it, and receive inferior terms on granted loans. Another reason for loan rejection is that women are more likely to be ‘thin file’ customers, that is, they lack a formal credit score, and credit history. Such credit product requirements may simply not work for women.

How lending can be made gender-intentional

Actively countering prejudices is critical to ensuring fair and gender-intentional lending processes. Biases creep in during the data collection process itself, as online lending instruments collect different types of information from the user’s handheld device such as internet usage per day. This may not be an appropriate criterion to gauge eligibility for financial products. Keeping a check on the unconscious biases of individuals developing such apps and investigating every step of the process can pave the way for fairer lending practices. 

Technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning can be great enablers in providing access to credit.

Women’s World Banking has devised a set of tools to detect gender bias in lending, taking six factors into account—credit score, approval rate, loan amount, interest rate, collateral size, and characteristics of rejected candidates. The tools enable financial institutions to self-evaluate whether they are marketing to/targeting women customers, actively acquiring more women, and building and retaining a gender-diverse portfolio.

Technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning can be great enablers in providing access to credit for women entrepreneurs. They can be used to generate alternative data to create a proxy score in order to gauge creditworthiness and bring more women into the credit funnel. The data could include an assessment of assets owned such as LPG gas connections, indoor sanitation facilities, and type of house. Behavioural data from transactions such as the proportion of informal loans to formal or concurrent loans can also help build a profile that is not solely based on the customer’s collateral and credit history.

Leveraging digital payments

Although more than 48 percent of women prefer cash payments to digital means, UPI adoption has seen varying rates of growth—ranging from 5 to 20 percent—signifying women’s openness to digital payments. Greater access to the internet, along with alternate payment methods becoming more prevalent in the merchant points around them, has further increased women’s awareness about digital finance. Digital payments can only work for women when banks, FSPs, and FinTech firms facilitate their onboarding through physical touch points. It is important to actively build women’s trust in digital payments by addressing phishing attacks, setting withdrawal limits, investing in data protection, and more. Further, the introduction of apps that offer women a sense of control and privacy can encourage them to adopt digital financial services. The decision to launch UPI 123PAY, which works on basic phones, is a great example of designing payment solutions for women who do not own smartphones. 

When apps effectively target women and are designed keeping their unique needs and capabilities at the centre, service providers accrue benefits by acquiring a new customer base—people from low-income groups, and women, who offer a significant retention and lifetime value.

As more women shift to using debit and credit cards, banking applications or UPI for payments and remittances, become cash-light and do business transactions digitally, they will develop credit histories that will then encourage banks to lend to this segment.

Including women in digital public infrastructure

Access to credit and digital payments is one side of the coin. Digital public infrastructure (DPI) can serve as the tipping point in women’s financial inclusion journey by virtue of its scale and it being a convergence platform for public goods and services. When DPI is built with gender intentionality, women can be its largest beneficiaries, while also unlocking a new business opportunity. India has already addressed the three foundations of building a DPI—a digital identity system through Aadhaar, a real-time fast payment system through UPI, and a consent-based data aggregatory through data empowerment protection architecture (DEPA)—via IndiaStack.

It is vital that women are equipped with digital and financial capabilities.

With respect to entrepreneurs, consider India’s digital public infrastructure—the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC)—which is meant to be a great equaliser that will bring together sellers, buyers, and creditors, and facilitate business between hinterland entrepreneurs and city-based retail businesses. Imagine a woman micro-entrepreneur from rural Maharashtra who creates hand-painted Warli sarees. If she were to be successfully onboarded on to this DPI, she would have direct access not just to loans and payment solutions, but also to markets, retailers, and brands that would like to invest in her product. As more women have Jan Dhan accounts, build financial histories and business identities, and are registered to pay taxes on their businesses, they will be able to engage with buyers and sellers on ONDC, use UPI for payment, and avail credit through the Open Credit Enablement Network (which helps connects lenders and marketplaces). 

For women to engage with digital financial services, it is vital that they are equipped with digital and financial capabilities. Beyond literacy, this requires them to have the knowledge, attitude, and skills that increase their capacity to actively use digital and financial services on their terms. This will not be possible unless FSPs invest in their female customers.

India has already started its journey towards financial inclusion for women by recognising the importance of digital access as a fundamental right and in establishing a thriving DPI ecosystem. Gender intentionality needs to be at the heart of the efforts to bridge the digital divide and in ensuring that every citizen has equal opportunities to participate in the digital realm.

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Know more

• Read more about how banks can enable women’s financial inclusion.
• Learn more about how to ensure women entrepreneurs’ access to finance.
• Learn how women’s access to credit can be improved.