Gender and Livelihoods PDF

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It is well known that farmers, workers, peasants, and people living in cities have always fought to get what they need to live on. Sustainable livelihood has to be seen as a "right" rather than a "privilege" in society. Thus, the right to live is more than just the right to work. It is also a right ...

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Gender and Livelihoods

Introduction: It is well known that farmers, workers, peasants, and people living in cities have always fought to get what they need to live on. Sustainable livelihood has to be seen as a "right" rather than a "privilege" in society. Thus, the right to live is more than just the right to work. It is also a right to live a dignified life. Priti Darooka, the Executive Director of PWESCR (Programme on Women's Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, New Delhi), talked about a lot of things that had to do with women and their jobs. Darooka says that "as we start talking about livelihoods as a human right, we need to get a more complete picture of what we mean by livelihoods." This includes things like land, water, forests, the right to food, food security, and income security, and so on. To start, we need to figure out what "women's right to a livelihood" means to each other. It was written by Darrka in 2008. It started at the World Social Forum in 2009 when people talked about how women and the right to a good job were linked. The "right to a dignified life" was born out of this. All humans have the right to live a good life, and that's what Tran Thi Lanh2 (Vietnam) said in her opening speech. This idea is in our hearts, it is a culture, it is land, and it is the world around us. There are very few things in life that are more important than this. It was called "Women's Right to Livelihoods: Addressing Development and Displacement." A group of people at the World Social Forum in 2009 came up with the following definition of "right to live." -Right to Food and issues relating to food security, sovereignty, and production, such as farming and seeds. This means that people can get and own land and water and forests as well as be in charge of them. Issues relating to the market, where one would be able to trade goods and services and participate with the right education, skills, and access to money. How do you think about a gendered perspective on the debate about the right to a job? Sen (1999) says that women are active agents who help both the productive and reproductive economies. A gender perspective, on the other hand, means that women are at the intersection of production and reproduction; between economic activity and taking care of people, and thus between economic growth and human progress. This is why it is important to think about gender-specific factors that make the right to a job a women's issue (PWESCR Discussion paper 2011) - Women play a big role in their families' livelihoods. They are the main contributors to agriculture and household nutrition and financial security. There are many other human rights that are linked to the right to live, like the right to food and health, the right to work and education. Thus, the loss of livelihoods affects her position in the

power hierarchy and their bargaining power both in their home and in their community. Women face a lot of discrimination when it comes to land, credit, skills education, and other things that are important for their security and livelihood. Things get worse for Dalit women, Adivasi women (SC and ST women), because they face a lot of discrimination at work and when it comes to getting and using productive resources and markets. It doesn't take into account the structural inequalities that shape women's lives, and policies are also made with the "male breadwinner model" in mind. Such a way of thinking limits the ability of policies to help poor women meet their needs for a living. For example, a woman's job can be paid or unpaid, and she has a lot more responsibility for household chores like cooking or taking care of children or the elderly. Unpaid work, which is often called "care," took up a lot of time for women. Women aren't involved in the decision-making process, so they aren't seen by their families, communities, or policymakers as people who make money, either. Such a position does not help with the development of long-term, stable jobs. As a result, to build systems that would help people make a living, they would need to know that they need to deal with gender issues. Right to work, employment, and food are two things that are linked to the idea of a good life. In this module, we're going to talk about the right to work and how to get a job that lasts. Further, the module will first talk about the difficulties of making a living in India, and how they are linked to gender. Then, the module will talk about the problems that women have when they try to get a job and keep it. Finally, the module looked at agrarian distress in India to show how women farmers in the Vidharba district of Maharashtra are in danger. Section 1: Gender, Livelihood, Challenges The link between the Directive Principles of State Policy and Art 39, which says that "the state shall, in particular, direct its policy toward ensuring that the citizen, men and women equally," has been recognised since India became a sovereign state in 1947. This is because, in that case, the link between the two is very important. In the DPSP, which isn't legal, this direction to the government is mentioned. This makes it less effective because it's up to the government to make it happen. In the last few years, the government passed two important laws about social security for poor and unorganised workers: the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (MGNREGA)3 and the Unorganized Workers Social Security Act 2008 (UWSSA)4. In the end, these actions were meant to make sure that the workers who were deprived and didn't work for a company were at least able to get some kind of social security. Kannan (2010: 342) says that both initiatives are limited by eligibility, coverage, and benefits when he talks about them in his book. In 2011, the government started a new programme to fight poverty and improve the lives of the rural poor. The name of the programme was the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), and it was based on universal social mobilisation and financial inclusion for the poor in rural

areas. The goal of the programme was to build the confidence of the poor to start their own businesses, teach them skills, and build strong SHGs (Self Help Groups). It doesn't take into account multiple dimensions of poverty or the wider context and causes of poverty, Krishna says in 2012. It doesn't deal with the long-term issues of how to keep natural resources available and how to solve conflicts over resources. Again, these are made worse by state policies. Further, the NRLM is based on the idea that self-employment is the only way out of poverty, which makes it a part of the neo-liberal view that poverty is caused by individual incapacity rather than structural inequalities. Since the 1990s, the lives of the rural poor have changed quickly. It has changed quickly because of global pressures and the "opening up" of economies. This has changed both traditional and modern institutions. Poor women, children, and the elderly are harmed by the destruction of fragile ecosystems and the displacement of people. Because of this, poor women from different communities and regions are especially at risk because of their poverty and lack of power from patriarchal, gender biassed institutions (Krishna 2010). Further, their situation is made worse by the fact that in many cases, women have to take care of the household and the needs of their families on their own while their husbands move to cities in search of better jobs. Agarwal (2003) says that in some cases, poor women have formed groups to help them get more money and assets. Krishna (2012) cites Sainath, 2011. Sainath, 2011 says that based on the 2011 census, women are the most stable rural workers because men are moving to cities in search of jobs. To make sure they have a steady and regular income, women in rural areas have to do paid work as well as take care of the house and care for their children. Because women's economic and livelihood needs are linked to their socio-political interests as well as the ways men deal with rural unemployment and agrarian distress, this is how it works: Gender-based understandings of citizenship help Krishna (2007) make the case that one needs to think about natural resource-based livelihoods in the bigger picture of development and link them with women's rights. She wants to make sure that women's productive rights are taken into account so that they can demand a dignified life as political rights rather than as "recipients of welfare," so that they can live a good life. Angry at how the Indian state treats its citizens, Krishna wants a right-based approach to making money. She says that women have a right to resources, a way to make money, and a way to get a job. She emphasises how important it is for them to work together to get what they want. It is important for policymakers to understand and take into account the gendered nature of livelihoods, because the development approach to livelihood is thought of as the "means of gaining a living, including livelihood, capabilities, tangible assets, and intangible assets" (Krishna). In Krishna (2005), he says that based on research in the north eastern parts of India, any assessment of food sustainability would be incomplete if gender indicators were not taken into account. This is because the food production system in North eastern India and the rest of India

is very different. Food and job security can't be "created" without taking care of the structural parts of development. Any new idea can't just be added to existing farming systems without paying attention to the social and ecological problems that already exist in agriculture. Because some adivasi (tribal) societies are more egalitarian than others, a lot of changes are taking place in their resources and their ways of making money (Krishna 2003). Thus, the work done by women in the production of subsistence crops, livestock, and fish helps to keep families fed (Krishna 2012). After talking about why it's important to think about livelihoods in a gendered way and looking at the challenges that poor women in India face in securing, accessing, and stabilising their livelihoods, we'll now talk about how women in particular have a hard time getting paid work and jobs. In the introduction, it was said that the right to work and get a job is one of the main parts of the right to a good life. Section 2: Gender and Access to Work and Employment When people are talking about getting a job or making money in the long run, there isn't much discussion about gender issues. Equality of opportunity and how women are treated in the workplace was a big issue at the Fourth World Conference on Women. This is what the Platform for Action said. It also talked about how women aren't as well-represented as men in the creation of economic structures and policies (Masika and Joekes 1996). There are a lot of ways to help people become economically empowered, but we don't usually think about gender equality in all areas of work and in our own lives when we talk about it. There has been some progress over the last few decades in getting more women into the workforce and reducing gender gaps in wages, but gender equality in the world of work is still a long way off. Despite the fact that many women have become successful entrepreneurs, they still make up only a small percentage of the world's board rooms. There are still a lot of women who work, but they make less money and are more likely to be unemployed for a long time than men. This is especially true in the developing world. This is obviously because of the unfair and unequal patriarchal and institutional structures in our society that keep women in the private sphere and keep men in the public sphere. So when they do go out into the public, they don't have the skills they need to start a job. So, many of them move into the unorganised sector, where they fight a different kind of battle against the oppressive forces of their employers, who are usually men. As soon as women break through the glass ceiling at work, they face a second glass ceiling because they don't get the same level of respect from their coworkers because they are women. Thus, she isn't taken seriously or seen as capable of taking on a more important job than her male counterparts. When a lot of women start working in a certain field, the value of that field goes down, and those jobs are called "soft jobs." In this case, the best thing to say is that teaching is a

job. Somewhere, it's said that women can't do technical work, and men who work in this field are seen as less masculine than men who work in other jobs that are more male-centered. Feminist activism around the world and the rise of the women's movement in India, in particular, led to women having equal access to education and jobs that had been denied to them before, both socially and legally. There was a shift in the way that women were seen as not just passive recipients of development projects and programmes but as active participants in them. However, it's important to know that economic opportunities aren't enough to guarantee gender equality or emancipation. This is partly because not all economic activity is empowering, and also because more steps need to be taken to improve gender equality in other areas (legal, political etc.). In order to achieve gender equality, it is going to be a long and complicated process. Inequality is a multi-cause phenomenon that is linked to intra-household decision-making processes, as well as market signals and institutional norms. As important as it is for women to have access to economic activity, the main goal is to figure out which types of economic activity help women the most and under what terms and conditions (Masika and Susan Joekes, 1996). He said that effective and independent property rights were likely to be the most important thing for women's economic well-being, social status, and political power. Even though women have made their mark in the market, formal or informal, they are still being discriminated against at work. It's not just patriarchal discrimination that women have to deal with. They also have to deal with harassment, in many cases sexual, from people in power who don't want to help them get a job. The discrimination and subjugation that women face at home is also shown in the public sphere, which slows down women's growth. The economic analyses of labour markets explain why women have a hard time getting a job and are discriminated against: Supply factors are things that affect how many and how well women work in the labour market, like family responsibilities and constraints, gendered inequalities in education, training, and access to productive resources, and how many and how well women work in the labour market. There are things that make it more difficult for people to get jobs, like labour market segregation, discrimination in pay and quality of work, and higher unemployment risks, because of how the economy works. that include or exclude things Men and women don't like discriminatory laws and regulations that affect their treatment in the economy and labour market. These laws and regulations include things like employment discrimination, unfair hiring standards, and lower pay for equal work, which affect women (World Bank, 1994, ILO, 1994). It's been said that other studies have looked at market and production factors separately from household factors like the structure of the household, the income and resources it has, as well as how it makes decisions. Neo-classical economists say that women have a hard time getting a job because they have to do a lot of work for their families. There are two levels in which family responsibilities and constraints work. Attitudinal barriers may make it hard for women to work or for girls and women to get education and training. Second, because of their reproductive role,

women may not be able to get jobs because they have to look after young children and care for the sick and elderly. In both the formal and informal sectors, these factors are important (Baden and Milward, 1995). Feminists say that women's specialisation in child-rearing and domestic work isn't natural, but is instead a result of society, which makes it possible for it to be changed (Stichter and Parpart 1990). Feminist perspectives have said that not only do definitions of work tend to leave out and undervalue a lot of women's work, but that in a patriarchal family, women may not be able to control the money they earn from their work. They may be forced, coerced, or predisposed to spend their own money on their families and homes, rather than on their own needs (Baden with Milward, 1995). A lot of things are thought to be the reason why women and men have different job profiles and get less money for their work. Many people say that gender-based differences in education, training, and skills, as well as different types of gender discrimination in the workplace, are common causes. Women make less money because they have less education and training than men. The lower returns to female labour force participation also make it less likely that future investments in female education will be made. This keeps the cycle going. In addition, employers use a lack of education and experience as a way to keep women (and other groups that are less well-educated) from getting jobs. Women also have a hard time getting information about jobs because they don't have a high enough level of education (Baden and Milward, 1995). (Arriagada, 1989). There is a lot of evidence that men and women have different jobs in both developed and developing countries (Baden and Milward, 1995; Sayeed and Tzannatos, 1995). Women have a smaller range of jobs than men. 'Female' jobs are often linked to perceived female traits like patience, dexterity, caring, and docility, or to traditionally 'female' household tasks like cooking, cleaning, sewing, tending the sick, and personal service jobs of all kinds. In general, jobs that are "female" tend to pay less, be less skilled, be less safe, and have fewer chances to move up, compared to jobs that are "male." There are thought to be both institutional and ideological reasons why women aren't able to do certain jobs. Employers may not want to hire women because they think they have a higher rate of absenteeism, a higher turnover rate, less human capital, and a higher cost. They may also think that women aren't good for certain jobs that aren't good for them. On the other hand, some jobs are thought of as "female," and employers prefer to hire women for these jobs, like making clothes and making electronics. Segregation by gender can be very different from country to country (Baden with Milward, 1995). Discriminatory attitudes show up in rules for the labour market (World Bank, 1995). Legislation is in place in many countries to stop women from working in certain types of jobs (e.g. mining occupations requiring shift or night work). Employers often choose between female workers based on things that don't apply to men, like their age, marital status, number of children, and how they look. As a result, men and women's career histories tend to be different at certain points

in their lives, like when they get married, when they have kids, and when they get older. It's hard for women to work jobs that require a lot of overtime, long trips, or shift work because of the costs and difficulties of finding child care and leaving kids alone, as well as the risks of leaving them unsupervised for long periods of time (the most common outcome among the poor). Women may choose to work in jobs that are usually done by women because of strong social and cultural norms and gender stereotypes that are taught in school (Baden with Milward, 1995). There have been a lot of studies that show that women make less money than men on average. This is true in both developed and developing countries (ILO, 1994; Standing, 1989; Baden and Milward, 1995; Tzannatos, 1994). As a rule, women in developing countries earn between 50 and 80 percent as much money as men do (ILO, 1995b). Another problem with recording gender differences in earnings is that fringe benefits may be more likely to go to men than women (Baden and Milward, 1995). Women wor...