MRS. - The Untapped Economy

A movie recently released in India - “Mrs.”, which covered the married life of an average woman in India and was a hot topic of discussion for quite some time. The claim to fame for the movie was striking a chord with women of all age groups across the country. The movie, in a very gut wrenching way, showed us the harsh reality of life for married Indian homemakers even in affluent families. From elaborate meals all throughout the day to doing the dishes after, followed by laundry, cleaning and a multitude of chores for an entire family with no help from the male members at all. Add to it, the contempt of being treated like a child bearing machine and the lack of respect and recognition for what the woman does on an everyday basis keeping her own goals and aspirations aside. It made the movie a great representation of the modern Indian woman. Should I use just ‘Indian woman’ and keep the ‘modern’ out? Let’s find out how the Indian ‘Mrs.’ is a bewildering concept not just for the Indian society but the Indian economy as well.

695 million - That’s the population of only women in India. To put that into perspective, that’s the combined population of Russia, Australia, Canada, Germany, UK, France, Italy, South Africa, Japan and South Korea. A bigger shocker was that out of every 100 working people mentioned in the above countries, 46 are women while the number stands at 22 for India. The total number of females working in every 100 individuals is known as the ‘Female Labour Participation Rate’ and it has been a growing cause of concern for India for many decades now. While countries like Japan (54%) and the US (47%) keep increasing their female labour force, India’s FLPR has fallen to 22% - A massive question on the Indian society and economy.

India, the 5th largest economy in the world commands a staggering $4.2 trillion GDP. It is also set to overtake Japan in 2026 to 4th place and keeps holding strong. The interesting part of this is that while these numbers seem amazing, India holds a population 12 times larger than Japan, 18 times larger than Germany which is in 3rd place and 3.5 times larger than the US in first place. The per capita GDP is in shambles and it begs the question, what is going wrong?

While manufacturing, skill levels, educational infrastructure and ease of doing business are the general answers, one paramount factor no one seems to talk about is women! India, primarily an agricultural and rural economy, has only 25% of its rural women working and if you thought women in urban areas must be more educated and working more, the number stands below 23% in urban areas. The worst part, nearly 80% of women in rural areas are involved in agriculture and animal husbandry which makes almost all of our Female Labour Participation engaged in agriculture, which to be honest, is again just helping your husband tend to the fields. They do not even own and earn from the fields, female ownership of land stands at 28%.

India has always been a ‘more hands, more money’ economy with our GDP booming because of our booming population, but how are you supposed to grow if 50% of your population is under-utilized, under-educated and under-worked? While more women have been educated and enrolling in higher education and STEM degrees continuously, the ratio of women in the workforce keeps falling. This is happening largely due to societal dynamics in India which are more family oriented and encourage women to stay at home, look after the kids and allow the husband to be the sole breadwinner of the family. India’s society has been dominantly patriarchal since ancient times and has been way more so than their western counterparts in recent history too. Women have been the spoils of war, been through insane religious rituals and in an unstable, colonized country. All this has shaped Indian society in a way that prefers women at home. The higher participation of women in rural areas is attributed to poverty, the husband needs more hands on the field or another income to survive and thus comes in the working wife. So educated or uneducated, women in India usually only work when their husbands pay is not enough which is a disaster for the economy as that prevents 500 million people from entering the workforce who could not just be hands in manufacturing, but brains in corporates or entrepreneurs who could create jobs and help the economy grow exponentially.

India’s dream of being a $50 trillion economy by 2047 will stay largely unrealistic if they do not focus on Indian women entering the workforce and work on it from the roots up - right from primary education to enrollment in higher education, skill building and societal encouragement and education on letting women work. India has a gold mine in the form of 1.5 billion enterprising and enthusiastic people with a median age of 21 looking to work, contribute and grow themselves with their country, can’t really happen with the “Mrs.” sitting at home though!