Previous BRS govt’s schemes including Kalyana Lakshmi and Shaadi Mubarak, KCR Kits, and pension for single women and beedi workers helped boost women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship
Published Date – 11:59 PM, Wed – 3 January 24
By TS Kavita Rajeshwari, Dr Avanindra Nath Thakur
While the costs and benefits of welfare schemes are debated, the Telangana government’s recent announcement of the distribution of e-bikes to college-going girls and free bus services for women takes pride in extending welfare schemes for women. Telangana, formed in 2014, has quite expeditiously gained a reputation as a land of opportunities for women, focusing on investment in creating conducive infrastructure, human capital formation and a sustainable funding model.
Vaddi Leni Runalu (interest-free loans) for strengthening self-help groups is one among many State initiatives like Kalyana Lakshmi and Shaadi Mubarak, KCR Kits, pension scheme for single women, pension to beedi workers, Arogya Lakshmi and SHE Teams to boost women empowerment and entrepreneurship. Several success stories of women entrepreneurs and women conclaves underline that women of Telangana are not just making their mark but also encouraging other women to advance professionally.
KCR’s Initiatives
Former Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao wanted to transform Telangana into a women’s welfare State. Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary of Industries & Commerce and Information Technology in the Telangana government, attributed a significant portion of the State’s remarkable per capita income growth of 130% since 2014 to women’s contribution to the GSDP.
Studies have revealed that women’s decision to enter the workforce is a multifaceted process that involves various factors beyond their control. Unlike men, women’s participation in the labour market is heavily influenced by their family, education, marital status, social status and infrastructure. Earlier research on female labour force participation in India highlights education, household income, social norms, labour regulations, access to resources, infrastructure and demand for their labour as the main determinants. While welfare programmes in Telangana, aimed at mobilising women through the formation of self-help groups, capacity building and providing support, are widely considered beneficial, it is imperative to evaluate the state of women in Telangana.
Higher Participation
According to the Periodic Labour Survey (PLFS) annual report 2022-23, Telangana reported a higher female labour force participation rate at 33.7% in rural and urban areas combined compared with an all-India average of 21.7% according to the usual principal status for all ages. The gender gap in participation rate in Telangana is 17.5% in rural areas and 35.6% in urban areas, compared with all-India’s 31.2% and 39.6%, respectively, for all ages. An extraction of NSO’s Time Use Survey (2019) for the age group of 15-59 years shows that male and female participation rates in employment and related activities are higher in Telangana than the national average.
Further, participation in the production of goods for own final use is lower in Telangana in rural and urban areas than the national average (Figure 1). Even though the variation in the female participation rate in unpaid domestic work at around 90% and higher is low, we observe that males ubiquitously report lower participation rates in unpaid domestic work in Telangana. Higher female participation in the paid market and lower participation of men in the unpaid market might warn of a double burden on women in Telangana, but foraging into the time spent on various activities tells us a different story.
Figure 2 depicts the daily time spending pattern of men and women in Telangana and at the all-India level. We observe that Telangana boasts not just high participation of men and women in employment and related activities in a day but also reports a higher average time spent per person in a day — 412 minutes for men and 185 minutes for women than the national average of 333 minutes and 75 minutes, respectively. Interestingly, women in Telangana spent a lower time of 73 minutes daily, with an average time of 217 minutes compared with the national average of 290 minutes on unpaid domestic work. The difference in the daily time spent on unpaid domestic work in rural Telangana is much starker at 81 minutes lower than in the all-India rural area.
The time spent on producing goods for own final use, primarily unpaid, is much lower in Telangana. An examination of the time spent by women on sub-categories categorised under unpaid domestic work, which includes time spent on food and meals management and preparation, cleaning, do-it-yourself decoration, household management for own final use, pet care, shopping, travelling showed that the highest amount of time is spent on food and meals followed by cleaning and washing clothes and maintaining footwear. Lower time spent by males on food and meals management and cleaning indicates that the lower time spent by females on unpaid domestic work cannot be attributed to a reversal of social norms in the intra-household distribution of domestic and care work, and invites further exploration.
Possible reasons for Telangana women spending less time on food and meals include food preparation taking less time, the primary source of energy used for cooking being efficient, lower family size, lower time available to spend on domestic work or higher incentives (reservation wages) to work to spend more time in the labour market.
We find that rural Telangana women’s higher time investment in paid activities is a major departure from the national trend of women in rural areas spending more time on unpaid SNA (System of National Accounts) activities. The SNA is a framework used to measure a country’s economic activity. Unpaid SNA work is vital because it contributes to a country’s social and economic well-being.
Telangana has made great strides in empowering women through focused policy initiatives, resulting in significant progress. Women from both rural and urban areas of the State are now dedicating more time to paid activities, which is a positive development. However, more attention needs to be given to recognising and valuing unpaid SNA and non-SNA activities as productive work, so that women’s contributions do not go unnoticed. It is inspiring to see Telangana emerge as a women’s welfare state, but there is still much work to be done to reverse gender roles. Nevertheless, women farmers in the State reeling under the pressure of loans and the increase in suicide rates is a blatant truth, reminiscing that a lot needs to be done.
