More women shunning jobs

Slogging to earn a doctorate degree was not enough for 34-year-old Nisha Singh to continue job after she had her first child. Her husband, a software engineer, and her educated parents convinced her to become a homemaker for the sake of the newborn and the family. Chetan Chauhan reports. Human resource lost for domestic duties

Updated on: Feb 28, 2013, 11:30:10 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Slogging to earn a doctorate degree was not enough for 34-year-old Nisha Singh to continue job after she had her first child. Her husband, a software engineer, and her educated parents convinced her to become a homemaker for the sake of the newborn and the family.

Reluctantly, Singh, who was earning around Rs 40,000 a month two years ago, agreed as there was no other family member in Delhi to take care of her infant.

She is among the growing number of Indian women who sacrifice their careers for the sake of family.

A national sample survey organisation (NSSO) report said around 46.4% women in India were engaged in domestic duties in 2009-10, an increase of about five percentage points since 1999-2000.

Domestic duties for the survey included activities related to home agriculture production, household poultry, processing of primary products for the household and cooking.

The survey, covering around one lakh households and based on interviews with women up to the age of 60 years, found the shift higher in the urban areas. In urban areas, the jump was of about six percentage points and about three in rural areas.

But, for a majority of these women (62%), like Singh, the reason for staying at home was “no other member to carry out domestic duties”. Ranjana Kumari of Women Power Connect, said with the groing number of nuclear families, women have to sacrifice their careers. Kumar felt that such a trend was not positive as India was losing its vital human resource for domestic duties, which are not counted as progressive economic activity.

A small but significant number of women (15 to 17 %) have to perform home duties because of social and religious constraints, the survey said. For about 7% to 10% women, the reason for staying at home was unaffordability of a maid.

The report also said that around 33 % women in rural India and 27 % in urban areas wanted to work from home on a regular basis but there were very less opportunities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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