Mainstreaming the idea of women-friendly workplaces

On February 22, the Karnataka Legislative Assembly adopted the Factories (Karnataka Amendment) Bill, 2023, enabling female employees to work night shifts and overtime, subject to consent by those interested and the employer, ensuring required safety measures for the same.

The government emphasised that this would enable “providing for quality and equal opportunity to work and earn, thus creating more economic activities and employment opportunities”. It is indeed a thrust toward gender equality and equal opportunity.

However, there is a gap between employability and workforce participation. As per the India Skills Report 2022 released by Wheebox with All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) and Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) being the partners, women’s employability is at its all-time best of 51.44% and male employability is at 45.97%. However, the women’s participation in the workplace is 32.8 per cent and the male participation in the workplace is 67.2 per cent.

The legislation may offer little impetus in reducing the gap between women’s employability and actual women’s participation until the gender mainstreaming considers Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) parameters and the same are not actively adopted by the workplace management.

What is gender mainstreaming?

Gender mainstreaming in the workplace is the accounting and ensuring of efficient resource allocations for all genders, in order to create a just and sustainable workplace. Some of the gender mainstreaming parameters considered are policies, workplace dynamics, equality in organisational culture, leadership, equal representation in decision-making, measures against gender-based violence, work-time arrangement and work-life balance.

The role of the male workforce does not change the health and safety aspect with time as it does with the female workforce. Therefore, any occupational health and safety step should account for the three main roles women play with time: as housewives, as mothers and as workers. Here the workplace environment and working time arrangement are important determinants of the work-life balance.

Model rules under the Factories Act 1948 clearly specify the occupational health and safety protocols and the working hours that are to be observed while employing women and children and underline the hazardous areas and processes where they should be exempted. The onus is laid on the employer to ensure a safe, healthy workplace as seen in the Factories (Karnataka Amendment) Bill, 2023 too for a factory in general.

One size doesn’t fit all

The mainstreaming parameters are many; let’s take the most obvious one with the help of a commonly observed workplace scenario in a manufacturing unit.

Safety shoes are basic personal safety gear for everyone while stepping on the production floor. Kusuma, HR manager with a wire harnessing industry that has 60% women among its workforce says that the safety shoes provided by the company were kept aside by the women, as they were heavy and uncomfortable. They say the shoes are heavy and painful when worn for long hours, and affected their productivity.

As a result, not all women workers are seen wearing safety shoes. Kusuma tried sourcing better options with the supplier. The choices were just two for women’s safety shoes. When checked on the internet, the results of the variety of safety shoes were on an average ratio of 40:2 for males and females.

The “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work in the arena of the gender equation. This is in an organised sector, wherein over 80 per cent of women’s labour force participation is reported in the unorganised sector, where occupational health and safety are not even taken into consideration.

This scenario highlights many aspects that require gender sensitivity. Occupational health and safety risk data associated with work majorly being carried out by men is widely known and effective preventive measures are identified. However, there is a lack of scientific data on women reporting health issues. Without this, framing policies and welfare measures to address gender differences becomes difficult.

Need of the hour

The process of risk assessment and its management is based on the need to adapt the work to the individual worker and identify risks they are exposed to and protect them. To manage diverse workers like women, men, young, old, migrant or disabled, inclusive risk management facilitating suitable and specific preventive and protective measures has to be designed.

Promoting active equal participation of women workforce in decision-making aspects of improving the workplace environment has to be encouraged, to achieve consensus instead of refusing to follow a safety practice.

The gender aspect must be integrated into research and teaching content to bring a change in behaviour of inclusiveness to the male-dominant workplace culture.

World Bank data shows 76.38 per cent of self-employed women in India say they are in it in a bid to achieve work-life balance. The lack of a gender-sensitive workplace is a strong reason for women to choose to work alone than in a team. Though women hold up half the sky, their voices are yet to be heard. The practice of simply following the historically structured gender order should stop in order to have safe workplaces for women.

(The author is an occupational health and safety consultant)