India's decentralised renewables workforce to double by 2022-23: Report

This comes at a time when India is facing a 45-year high unemployment rate.

Business Standard : India’s decentralised renewable energy (DRE) sector--which generates, stores and distributes renewable energy locally--could employ nearly 100,000 more people by 2022-23, according to a new report.

While most of these jobs are expected to be long-term, women constitute only a quarter of the workforce in this sector. With this addition, the DRE sector’s workforce could double in size--from about 95,000 jobs in 2017-18 to 190,000 jobs by 2022-23--if the mini-grid market “continues to expand at a rapid pace”.

The number of informal jobs in the DRE sector is expected to remain stable at around 210,000, noted the first Powering Jobs Census 2019: The Energy Access Workforce report by Power For All, a coalition campaigning to scale DRE, released on July 15, 2019.

This comes at a time when India is facing a 45-year high unemployment rate, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey released by the National Sample Survey Office in May 2019. Of nearly 61 million jobs created in India over 22 years post-liberalisation of the economy in 1991, 92% were informal jobs, according to an IndiaSpend analysis.

The report captures DRE employment data for 2017-18 to establish a baseline that explores the link between Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 (access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all) and SDG 8 (inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment, and decent work for all).

The report covers India, Kenya and Nigeria: The DRE sector is estimated to add more than 260,000 direct, formal jobs in these countries by 2022-23. In India, 36 companies in the sector were surveyed.

Renewable appliance firms are the “job engine”

End-user product providers--that is, companies that sell pico solar appliances (that use small amount of power for gadgets such as calculators, cameras and mobile phones), solar home systems, and other small, off-grid appliances directly to customers--are the “job engine of the sector”, the report said, adding that they are expected to add 86,000 direct, formal jobs nationwide by 2022-23.

These companies alone accounted for 97% of 95,000 DRE jobs created in 2017-18. In addition, they added 470,000 “productive-use jobs”--created by the DRE end users as a result of newly-acquired or enhanced electricity access--in the same year.

Facebook plans to double women employees globally in 5 years

The world's largest social-media company also wants half of its US workforce to be from underrepresented groups by 2024.

Facebook aims to double the percentage of women working at the social media giant around the world over the next five years, while simultaneously doubling the number of black and Hispanic employees in the US, setting new diversity goals for the organisation.

The world's largest social-media company also wants half of its US workforce to be from underrepresented groups by 2024.

"We envision a company where in five years, at least fifty-per cent of our workforce is made up of women, people who are Black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islanders, people with two or more ethnicities, people with disabilities and veterans," Maxine Williams, Facebook's chief diversity officer, wrote in a blog post Tuesday.

Facebook released the new targets alongside its annual diversity report, which details the ethnic and gender breakdown of its workforce.

"In doing this, we aim to double our number of women globally and Black and Hispanic employees in the US. It will be a company that reflects and better serves the people on our platforms, services and products," she added.

In the report, the company said women currently make up 36.9 per cent of staff, up from 36.3 per cent last year and 31 per cent in 2014.

At senior leadership level, women account for 32.6 per cent of staff, up from 30 per cent last year.

Williams said the company had achieved higher representation of women in leadership by focusing on hiring and growing female leaders. In technical roles, though, women account for just 23 per cent of staff.

The proportion of black and Hispanic staff in the company stands at 3.8 and 5.2 per cent of Facebook's workforce respectively, up from 3.5 and 4.9 per cent in 2018.

Facebook said on Tuesday it had increased the number of black women at the company twenty-five fold since 2014. For black men, this was tenfold.

Facebook has put the most effort into diversifying its technical workforce, "so there is an irony and a frustration on our part that we have not been able to grow more," she added.

Last November, a now-former employee went public with an internal blog post saying Facebook had a "black people problem," and that the company was not doing enough to support black employees or black users.

Business Standard

Conspicuous absence of women in India's labour force in last 30 years

There are a number of ways to boost the number of women working.

India’s rapid economic growth has been accompanied by falling fertility rates and higher educational attainment among women. These advances often lead to an increase in women entering the labour force, but there has been a surprising decline on this front in India. Less than 30% of working-age women are currently in work compared to nearly 80% of men in India.

The conspicuous absence of women in India’s labour force is part of a wider issue the country is facing when it comes to jobs growth. But the fact that it is affecting women more than men is a worrying trend for India, which tends to rank poorly in UN rankings like the Gender Development Index and Gender Inequality Index, and has historically had low shares of women participating in the labour market. Plus, the number of women working has been gradually falling over the last 30 years.

There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from a lack of jobs growth in female-friendly sectors such as manufacturing, to more women staying in education for longer, and persisting stigma surrounding the idea of women working. As India grapples with boosting the number of jobs available to people – and young people especially – it must ensure it does not leave women behind in the process.

Global trends

It is useful to understand India’s experience against the global landscape. According to the latest estimates from the UN’s International Labour Organisation, the worldwide labour force participation rate in 2018 for women aged 15-64 was 53% while it was 80.6% for similarly aged men. Since 1990, participation rates for both groups have shown an overall decline around the world.

There are, however, variations in these global trends. The number of women working in high income countries went up between 1990 and 2018, largely due to policies like better parental leave, subsidised childcare, and flexibility in jobs. But in South Asia’s low and middle income countries, the number of women working has declined.

In India, female labour force participation fell from 35% in 1990 to 27% in 2018. India fares better than its neighbour Pakistan (where the rate increased from 14% to 25% over the same period). But it lags behind Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, and other countries at similar stages of growth and development.

There are regional and demographic differences across the country. Rural women have higher participation rates than their urban counterparts. Married women, less educated women, and women from higher castes are less likely to participate in the labour market.

Business Standard

Fewer women working in India: Labour participation down to 26% in 2018

The report highlighted the need to empower women in India through quality education and re-skilling.

The female labour force participation in India has fallen to 26 per cent in 2018 from 36.7 per cent in 2005, amid lack of access to quality education and underlying social, economic barriers limiting the opportunities for women, says a Deloitte report.

According to the Deloitte report titled Empowering Women & Girls in India for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, 95 per cent or 195 million women are employed in the unorganised sector or are in unpaid work.

According to the report, the education ecosystem needs to go through a set of system strengthening initiatives, including the introduction of digital and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education in schools, which in turn will introduce girls to various career choices.

"Specifically in the India context, the female labour force participation has had a decadal fall from 36.7 per cent in 2005 to 26 per cent in 2018, with 95 per cent (195 million) women employed in the unorganised sector or in unpaid word," the Deloitte report noted.

"The range of challenges for women and girls echoes across Asia and India - lack of education, access to quality education, digital divide, which limits them from gaining employable skill sets and entering the workforce or establishing an enterprise," the report said.

It further added that a set of underlying social, economic and political barriers limits opportunities for women.

The report highlighted the need to empower women in India through quality education and re-skilling.

With regards to the fourth industrial revolution, the report said, "a definite concern arises from the advent of technology, digitisation and automation that women who are largely employed in low skills and low paying jobs will lose their place in the workforce".

The fourth industrial revolution influences the future of work in terms of the nature of organisational realities and leading skill types - complex problem solving, creativity, people management and emotional intelligence - providing opportunities for gender inclusive work cultures to emerge," the report said.

"In addition, mentoring adolescent girls on vocational training and apprenticeship avenues can build a strong linkage towards considering technology linked training and employment options," the report said.

Business Standard

The old rules of the workplace aren't working. At least not for women

What is it that seems to stand in the way of greater strides by women in the workplace?

Business Standard : Despite clear gains by women in so many aspects of society over the decades, their progress in the workplace seems to have stalled. It is as easy to find a man named John walking the corridors of American power as it is to find a woman.

The number of female chief executives in Fortune 500 companies is 5 per cent and has actually declined — by 25 per cent — over the past year. In Britain, a study by the British Equality and Human Rights Commission found that a third of employers still think it’s O.K. to ask a woman during a job interview if she plans to have children. It’s not.

Women receive the majority of college degrees in the United States — and more advanced degrees — and yet they still must work four extra months to earn what their white male colleagues earned the year before, according to United States census data. When those numbers are segmented by race, it’s clear: Women of colour must work even longer.

And then, of course, there is the rise of the #MeToo movement, which revealed as never before the sexual pressure many women face in the workplace. At least one study has found that 81 per cent of women say they have experienced some form of sexual harassment.

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Economists have long contended that there is a clear financial case for gender equality: Companies are more profitable, more collaborative and more inclusive when they hire women. True gender equality, research from McKinsey & Company has shown, would increase the gross national product in the United States by 26 per cent.

What is it that seems to stand in the way of greater strides by women in the workplace?

At the New Rules Summit in Brooklyn last week, The New York Times gathered 250 of the boldest, most powerful, most successful leaders across business, politics and culture to consider that question.

We asked them to explore some of the challenges women face and to come up with practical recommendations for change that businesses, policymakers and even individuals could enact. Although The Times convened the event, we left the hard work of generating the recommendations to our guests. This section is the result: a playbook for change.