Wage Discrimination in India: The Impact of Gender (Research Paper Sample)

Wage Discrimination in India:
The Impact of Gender
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Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Introduction PAGEREF _Toc419827808 \h 3Review of the Literature PAGEREF _Toc419827809 \h 7Analysis of the Literature PAGEREF _Toc419827810 \h 10Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc419827811 \h 12References PAGEREF _Toc419827812 \h 13
Introduction
For the longest time now, labor markets have been dominated by instances of gender discrimination. Especially, for females, the inequality at work is remarkably stubborn. The wage gap between males and females is a prominent issue. Whether in developed countries or developing countries, men utterly dominate most of the industries, and women only dominate fewer industries such as Healthcare, educational services and children day care services.
Despite the fact that women get more education now than ever before, they are still in a bad situation at work. Why should women not get equity at work? Why should women not earn the same amount of money in the same work compared to men? It is pretty important to females to own the equal rights and treatment in the workplace. In order to enhance equality in the society, the public should take actions and make some policies to eliminate the wage discrimination between males and females. In view of the current situation regarding discrimination of women, this paper, therefore, seeks to provide an understanding on the issue of gender wage discrimination specifically in India.
An overview of wage discrimination by gender in India leads to two main conditions i.e. the wage gap between males and females in the rural and urban areas the wage difference between males and females in the informal labor market.According to Agrawal (2013), Indian women have suffered a lot especially in matters gender and social discrimination at the workplace. Deininger & Nagarajan (2013) argue that such acts of gender and social discrimination have continued to exist despite the Indian government’s efforts to put in place reservation policies to counter the problem. Some of the evidence of the government’s efforts includes Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) (Agrawal, 2013; Deininger & Ngarajan, 2013). The hereditary is a typical traditional phenomenon in India. Gender and social discrimination is a major component in the destruction of the various decisions made by different households with respect to the human capital investment and the allocation of human labour as well (Agrawal, 2013). This is background information about its social group system in India, which is the key reason for the wage difference between men and women.
The wage gap between men and women is indeed a bother that needs to be thoroughly screened, especially, in rural areas where the wage differential between women and men is bigger than that in urban areas. This wage gap in India is clearly illustrated in Figure 1 below:
Figure 1: Decomposition of gender wage differential: Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition with sample selection
For such reasons as child bearing matters and other household chores, females are known to have been left out of the labor market for the longest time now. In the event that they get meaningful employment, there are high likelihoods of them working even fewer hours per week or per month in comparison to their male counterparts (Agrawal, 2013). Deiniger & Nagarajan (2013), on their part, give a reasonable explanation to show the wage difference by gender. Women are playing an important role in a family to cost much to take care family compared that for men. Although, many females received much more education than women in rural areas, they still need to cost time in the family. However, women in rural areas are mainly living for agriculture, and most of the time women will deal with home affairs than their male counterparts (Harriss-White & Jan̲akarājan̲, 2004). Thus, the wage gap between men and women in a country is bigger in rural areas than that in the city.
In Figure 2 below, the wage differential between non-scheduled castes groups and scheduled castes group is shown. The discrimination between social groups is higher in the village as compared to the same situation in the city. It is because populations in urban areas owned much better educational infrastructure than that in the rural areas (Harriss-White & Jan̲akarājan̲, 2004). The quality of education influences the wage differential between two social groups.
Figure 2: Decomposition of social groups wage differential: Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition with sample selection
According to Deniger & Nagarajan (2013), three factors lead to the India’s informal labor market social wage discrimination. To begin with, formal labour markets are far much better off in terms of wage discrimination based on social groups than in informal labour markets. This arguably causes extreme losses in comparison to the possible gains from one of the country’s most important safety-net programs. The other factor is the fact that the elimination of the gender discrimination is not necessarily accomplished by merely enhancing the economic growth of the country. Third, as opposed to the findings in gender discrimination, the hypothesis of no significant wage discrimination based on caste cannot be rejected (Deininger, 2013; Verma, 1993). It implies that In the India labor market; wage differential will be a long-run issue in Indian labor market.
In Figure 3 below the wage differential by gender and caste in India’s informal labor market is summarized. It shows that the gender discrimination in the informal labor market is more severe than caste.
Figure 3: Wage discrimination in India’s informal labour markets
Review of the Literature
According to Khanna (2012), it is not entirely easy to depict the actual trend in wage discrimination across the various quantiles of the distribution in the course of an assessment on wage gaps among different genders and social groups (Khanna, 2012). He goes ahead to explain how the mean wage differential between males and females, especially amongst Indians, has decreased in terms of stability over the years. This is an argument that is seconded by Agrawal (2013) who argues that the various capabilities of women are not usually exploited to their capacity in most labour markets (Agrawal, 2013; Rives, 1997). Deininger & Nagarajan (2013), on their part, argue that the Indian government has the responsibility of ensuring that proper policies are not only put in place, but are also implemented fully to ensure women access gainful employment in the labour market just like their male counterparts (Deininger & Nagarajan, 2013). They propose such policies as those of equal pay and minimum wage as some of the possible routes the Indian government could take to seal this wage gap between males and females (Rives, 1997).
From their perspective, Deiniger, Jin & Nagarajan (2013) are of the opinion that in a society where gender discrimination is so rampant, the labour supply is usually negatively affected and the available valuable resources underutilized. Their argument is founded on their belief that in most cases, women tend to have the greatest of minds, yet they still find themselves either out of the labour markets or discriminated within the labour market itself (Deininger, Jin & Nagarajan, 2013). In so doing, such brilliant brains are denied a chance to contribute to the national cake on the basis of gender discrimination. Khanna (2012) also seems to agree with this point when he adds that such kind of discrimination is especially more rampant in the rural areas than in the urban areas where women are likely to be seen working with major corporations and holding managerial positions (Khanna, 2012).
Agrawal (2014) points out that in a seemingly unexpected turn of events, those who perpetrate discrimination (both in terms of gender and social groups) can even go the extra mile of offering to pay higher wages to their preferred groups of employees than pay a lower amount to the perceived less preferred group of individuals (Agrawal, 2014). With reference to males and females in the labour market, this implies that discriminative employers would rather incur higher costs in employing males than save on the cost by employing the females.
Overall, women have been discriminated against in the labour market because there is a blanket perception by most employers not only in India, but all over the world, that women are less productive compared to their male counterparts (Verma, 1993). According to Khanna (2012), women are only accepted at workplaces by employees on condition that they accept an extremely lower wage compared to their male counterparts. Unlike Agrawal (2013), Khanna (2012), and Deninger, Jin, & Nagarajan (2013), Agrawal (2014) categorizes the discrimination in the labour market into three i.e. employer, employee, and client. Employees discriminate by denying equally highly qualified females employment in their companies while giving men an upper hand (Agrawal, 2014). Employees exercise discrimination by refusing to work with their female co-workers at the workplace. Clients, on the other hand, show discrimination by their unwillingness to purchase certain items from entities owned and run by women (Agrawal, 2014).
In the discussion on wage discrimination in India, two main facts are arrived at: First, there is a wider wage gap with respect to gender than with the social groups, and second, wage discrimination both in terms of gender and social groups is far much rampant in the rural areas than in urban areas (Agrawal, 2014). Agrawal (2014) explains this in two main ways. First, most women don’t usually have the opportunity to live in the urban areas; they rather spend most o...