Getting in and staying

Ishara Jayawardane

Labor force brings to one’s mind deadlines and pressure. No one can escape this. Every single man and woman born in this world will have to work. The Labor force is a daunting prospect at times. And today the psychological pressure is massive. And more often we hear tales of people who can’t handle it; people who break. Obstacles are faced by everyone irrespective of gender.

As statistics reveal Sri Lanka has the lowest female labor participation in the region. This issue was discussed at a seminar held recently at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).

“Let us focus on the achievements that we have made in terms of Economic, Social Cultural and political stability during the journey to become the wonder of Asia. The progress in various areas measured by the world indicates that what we have achieved as a developing nation is also very significant. Most of the targets/ Millennial development goals have already been achieved.

Women constitute more than half of the population and also they represent more than half of the economically active population in Sri Lanka. There are more female students compared to male students in the education system. But the participation of females in the labor market is very low, compared to their male counterparts. The rate of female labor participation has been stagnating for a couple of decades,” said Secretary, Ministry of Labor and Labor Relations Upali Wijayaweera.

Wijayaweera further added that some researchers suggest educating a girl child will bring more benefits to households and to the society compared to the boy child.

More females

“We can all see that there are more females in the system of education in Sri Lanka. It is a fact that there is no significant gender imbalance between the educational attainments of males and females.”

“Over the recent decade millions of women have joined the labor market around the world as a result of increasing educational attainments. However the question is why is female labor participation is stagnated at 34 percent though the above factors exists in Sri Lanka.”

“Another interesting scenario in female labor force participation in our country is that amongst the age group of 22- 29 years the female labor force participation stands around 40 percent with high levels of female unemployment which is around 22 percent. Whereas amongst the female age group of 30- 39 years participation stands around 42 percent with 5.8 unemployment which is fairly low. Further amongst females aged 40 and above participation rate records as the national average which is around 34 percent with 1.4 percent of female unemployment. Another interesting scenario is that within the age group of 15 - 19 years female participation is around 11 percent. Whereas the unemployment is 24 percent. These figures tell us that the alternative and different policy measures are required to address these issues of low female labor force participation,” he said

“We have been discussing this problem for years and years. From the public policy point of view we have to really think whether we need to increase female labor force participation in this country.

Employment is often described as the most important link between economic growth and poverty reduction. Providing income earning opportunities for self employment of women is crucial to raise income and overcome poverty. There are two main arguments and debates on women and economic development/ empowerment. The right- based argument focuses on increasing women’s job opportunities and their freedom to work with security and dignity.

The economic argument emphasizes economic capacity and potential contribution of women to economic growth. The economic argument focuses increasing living standards reducing non income poverty in the long run. Thirdly, the socio economic environment in Sri Lanka is changing faster with the process of rapid globalization. In such a situation income of one member of the family is not sufficient to fulfill the growing needs of the rest of the family.

Fourth, Sri Lanka population is ageing and labor force is shrinking, year by year meaning that one worker has to feed or look after more members. One way of avoiding the shrinking of labor force is to enhance female labor force participation and recognize and harmonize their true potential.”

Sri Lanka attained middle income status in 2010. Given this achievement and its longstanding high levels of female education and low total fertility rate, a female labor force participation (FLFP) rate in line with those of other middle income countries might be expected such as FLFP rates of Thailand or Malaysia which are 80 and 57 percent, respectively as of 2010. Yet Sri Lanka’s FLFP for women age 15 and above is just 41 percent compared to 82 percent for men of the same age.

This disparity constitutes the 20th largest gender gap in LFP globally. Sri Lanka’s FLFP presents a significant challenge to national growth and equity goals.

The most potent route to achieving a larger overall workforce is through increasing the number of women in the labor force. Raising the rate of women’s LFP by 15 percentage points over current rates will add more than one million workers to the labor market each year.

Following Wijayaweera’s speech Senior Social Development Specialist Jennifer Solotaroff addressed the gathering on the topic - Getting in and Staying in: Increasing Women’s Labor Force Participation in Sri Lanka

As Solotaroff said their research aim was to dig deeper into the question of low female labor force participation in spite of high human development outcomes for women and look at why people are making decisions, the labor force decisions that they are, why employers are making some of the higher decisions that they are, to better get at the drivers of low participation rates and what can be done to address them.

“With factors such as Low FLFP in Sri Lanka accompanied by very high educational attainment and low fertility rates combined, you would expect higher female labor force participation rates, in line with those of other middle income countries for example, in Thailand FLFP rate is 80 percent and in Malaysia it is 57 percent. According to our calculations it is about 40 percent for women and this is below the regional average.

In our research we calculated as the percent of women participating in the labor force who are above age 15 and over but the Sri Lanka government (Department of Census and Statistics) itself calculates it as the percentage of women who are 10 and above. So we are talking about a significant gender gap here in labor force participation” she added

Two reasons

Jennifer Solotaroff’s speech touched on two reasons that was unanimously agreed upon by the entire panel and that was on:

What is driving Low Female Labor Force Participation in Sri Lanka?

* Women’s participation in the labor force is constrained by Gendernorms and household responsibilities, especially care of young children

Traditional Gender Norms that privilege women’s home-based roles over those of paid work are an underlying cause of low FLFP in Sri Lanka. The presence of children under age 5 in the household lowers the likelihood of women’s LFP by 33 percentage points but has no significant participation.

*Parents expectations about preferred life courses for their daughters and sons - and what constitutes ‘ appropriate’ work - vary by gender, which conditions girls’ and boys’ education and career choices

Educational and occupational streaming by gender is pronounced in Sri Lanka; 42 percent of mothers surveyed want their daughters to be teachers VS. 30 percent of fathers, but only 8 percent of mothers (5 percent of fathers) would like to see their sons teach.

In comparison, 14 percent of fathers (12 percent of mothers) encourage their sons to be engineers, whereas 1 percent of fathers (3 percent of mothers) hope their daughters will be engineers.

Parents expect gender discrimination to favor boys in the labor market and boys are given moral support regarding career selection.

The myth of female elites and The XX factor

It’s not ambition that makes women at the top exceptional, as a new book claims, but the fact that they are there at all

The existence of the glass ceiling is, for most of us at least, something of a given. But in light of “100percent men”, a new blog listing organisations and job titles where there have never - yes, never - been any women, then there’s a lot less space at the top than we thought.

Perhaps this is why ambitious, powerful and successful women are often regarded as a group apart, or - in the case of a new book by Alison Wolf called The XX Factor: How Working Women Are Creating a New Society - a supergroup of uber-women (15-20% of the total) who see their professional life as central to their identity, more so than anything else. In other words, sod childmongering, these women literally mean business.

‘The truth is you can dream big and work hard and get nowhere, as no doubt some of the 103,000 women who have become long-term unemployed in the last three years will tell you.’

If it sounds as though this is yet another example of social scientists fostering an Us v Them mentality, then that’s because it is. The Spectator is already blaming XX women for sparking an all-female class war. They are, apparently, an elite bunch who share men’s habits: their drive, their ruthlessness, all those other generalised professional traits so particular to the lads. Meanwhile, the “less driven” 85% of women, with their tiresome domesticated lives and their narrow concerns, supposedly resemble an alien species.

Indeed, Janice Turner of the Times argued that the Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg - whose book Lean In was the last media-friendly thesis on how women are still not doing it right - had missed a trick by failing to understand that “many women aren’t ambitious or driven” and “don’t love work as we do”.

Of course, most people don’t love to work, full stop. That’s the nature of being a lowly cog in the capitalist machine. But let’s for a moment examine this idea that most women are, as a gender, rather lacking in ambition (or are, less politely, a bunch of losers). It’s true that many women are happy to leave their paid jobs behind when they have children, but it’s also fair to say that many women leave their jobs because they earn less than their partners and it makes financial sense. Moreover, it’s much easier to leave your job when you’re in a badly paid, low-level position (as many more women are) than it perhaps would be if you’re in a high-earning, high-profile job that gives you money, status and satisfaction.

If it seems an obvious point to make, that’s because it is - but it’s an important one when it comes to this particular narrative. These so-called XX women, with their highly stimulating jobs and “low boredom threshold”, decry the mundanity of staying at home. But if you’re not an XX woman and are bored at work (and underpaid and unappreciated to boot) then you might as well be bored at home. It’s not as though you have the luxury of even the kind of “soft, girly job” at which the public health minister, Anna Soubry, turns her nose up.

I don’t doubt that, for some, motherhood provides an escape from the soul-crushing relentlessness of capitalist labour. (Only for it to be replaced by the soul-crushing relentlessness of changing nappies. Or novel writing.) And yes, I suppose that by opting out, it does make you unambitious, if you’re determined to see ambition purely in that way. But equally I fail to see how a failure (or an inability) to reach the upper echelons of any given profession necessarily means you’re a lackadaisical numpty.

And thus that old fallacy of meritocracy strikes again. The truth is you can dream big and work hard and get nowhere, as no doubt some of the 103,000 women who have become long-term unemployed in the past three years will tell you. I can see how it would be tempting to single out powerful women as an elite group - to succeed in areas dominated by men (whether they deserve to be there or not), they probably do need to be particularly focused and scrappy.

Equally, you could say that gender equality is only achieved when mediocre women occupy positions of power and influence, as is the current case with some men. So, rather than regarding ambitious, driven women as outliers, we need to realise that, for women at the top, it is not necessarily the qualities that got them there that make them exceptional, but the fact they are there at all. Perhaps pretending that their downtrodden sisters simply aren’t that arsed makes these “XX women” feel better about that.

They may well be creating a new society, but the real question is: who for? And how much room is there for the rest of us?

-Guardian.co.uk