Distress signal came early: farm, unpaid women labour
surged https://indianexpress.com/article/business/economy/distress-signal-came-early-farm-unpaid-women-labour-surged-7493099/ 7th September 2021
The surge in female labour force participation rate, as evidenced in the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data for July 2019-June 2020, can be interpreted as a positive sign, but there is a catch: much of this increase is in the most sub-optimal category of unpaid family workers...
In agriculture, which constitutes about 16 per cent of the GDP, the PLFS data show that in 2019-20, there has been an increase in percentage terms of those reported to be working in the sector (45.6 per cent, see chart). This comes after decades of a progressive fall that signalled movement to high productivity jobs outside...
“There has been an increase in the share of employment in agriculture in 2019-20 even as the share of agriculture in GDP has declined. Lot of people lost jobs during the pandemic and agriculture became the employment of last resort. The distress, however, was brewing before the pandemic struck. GDP had slowed down, demand had declined and manufacturing was not expanding.
Using 12 rounds of a high frequency household panel survey, Ashwini Deshpande and Jitendra Singh of Ashoka University assert that women are likely to be displaced from employment by male workers, especially when there are negative economic shocks such as demonetisation or the pandemic. This trend had intensified, as corroborated by CMIE data for months beyond July 2020.