Women and Work Mobility: Some Disquieting Evidences from the Indian Data

Abstract

In this paper we have attempted to raise an issue which has always concerned feminist scholars- the sex segregation of jobs and its perpetuation over time to the disadvantage of women workers, in the context of the nineties, the period of globalisation in India. Our data show that horizontal segregation indicated by the index of dissimilarity has declined during the period 1987-88 and 1993-94 in urban areas but has increased slightly in rural areas. Given the aggregate nature of the data, the indices are very low. Women are more mobile between establishments while hardly achieving any upward mobility in terms of status/occupation. More importantly, we emphasize the need to include women’s domestic work as a category of work in such an economic analysis, arguing that a growing proportion of women (or ‘working’ days of women) moving into the activity ‘not in the labour force’ whether voluntary or involuntary, reduces their mobility.