| Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the week’s gender developments. When I talk to people about India’s female labour force participation, I can see their eyes glaze over. But this week, two events broke the traditional silence around women and work. Read on... THE BIG STORY: For the first time ever, a PM breaks the silence on women’s workforce participation On Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was speaking at a conference of state labour ministers in New Delhi. “The future needs flexible workplaces, a work-from-home ecosystem and flexible work hours,” he said. These, he added, are “opportunities for women’s labour force participation.” To my mind, no prime minister has ever openly acknowledged India’s two-decade-old crisis in women’s employment. It’s a crisis that puts us barely ahead of Saudi Arabia in terms of the percentage of women who have jobs or are looking for work. Modi did not make a direct reference to what has been one of the world’s most rapid declines in women’s workforce participation. Nor did he touch upon reasons why Indian women have been quitting paid work in droves. Still, just acknowledging the problem is a start. Araam karo Between 2004 and 2020, 46 million women (roughly the population of Malaysia) quit paid work. This happened at a time when more women were getting educated, when fertility rates were falling and when the post liberalisation era was creating newer job opportunities. So, at a time when you’d imagine more women would be getting jobs, they were actually logging out. It was a mystery. But apart from a few economists, there has been radio silence, more or less, from politicians, policy-makers and, until Covid, even media. In 2017, when I began a year-long series of articles to understand why women were quitting paid work, most people were taken aback. “But you see women everywhere. Are you sure they are dropping off the labour force? You must be mistaken,” was the sort of response I invariably got, at least from non-economists and lay people. Imagine what would have happened if men in such large numbers had lost jobs. Protests. Bus burning. Rail roko. Mayhem. Fall of government. But when women lose jobs, they disappear quietly into their kitchens. Nobody says, “How terrible.” For many families, it can even be a matter of prestige that ‘their’ women don’t need to work and can relax, araam karo, at home and focus on their true calling of bringing up model children and making sure their husbands and in-laws are well looked after. Coronavirus changes the conversation  First, it brought with it the reality of domestic work and the disproportionate burden on women. Locked down at home with their wives (and minus domestic helpers), I think men saw for the first time just what it took to run a house, keep it clean, put food on the table, supervise the kids’ homework. Research by economist Ashwini Deshpande found that in the early days, men chipped in far more than they had ever done before. Sadly, by the end of the year, it was back to the usual this-is-women’s-work nonsense. Yet, if there’s a silver lining, it’s that we are talking more vocally than before about the assumptions that it is women’s work to cook, clean, care for children and elderly. Political parties even began making election-time promises of allowances to women. Second, two years into the pandemic brought with it the idea that work from home was a real possibility. This is the game-changer Modi was referring to at the labour ministers conference. And, yes, it definitely works for some women though others who I have interviewed grumble that work-from-home often means live-at-work since you’re always on the clock. Another glass ceiling gets a knock On Tuesday, Delhi’s transport minister Kailash Gahlot gave 11 women their appointment letters as drivers for Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses. He also committed to hire 200 women bus drivers. Delhi’s first woman bus driver V Saritha was hired in 2015. Seven years later she remained the only woman bus driver. Why? The old buses had fixed seats and you had to be of a certain minimum height to drive them. Now, low floor buses with adjustable seats can be driven by shorter drivers. Ergo, more women. Delhi is ranked as the fourth-worst city in the world for public transport for women, according to a 2014 survey. In a bid to get more women to take the bus, the Aam Aadmi Party has already waived ticket fares from women on buses. Now, hiring more women drivers and conductors on buses will instil greater confidence and enable more women to use public transport. And, this in turn, will enable more women to take up jobs away from their homes. If this is not the definition of a virtuous circle, then I don’t know what is. | 
