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Poorer regions generate inadequate work opportunities for women: Study

20 Apr 2021

Poorer and rural regions are not generating sufficient labour market opportunities for women, according to findings made by researcher Ranmini Vithanagama in the study titled “Factors Associated with Female Labour Force Participation in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province”, which was published recently by the International Centre for Ethnic Studies. Labour force participation is defined as the active engagement in the labour force, either working for a pay or looking for paid work, and refers to the share of both employed and unemployed individuals of working age (aged 15 years and above) as a proportion of all individuals of working age. Sri Lanka’s female labour force participation has remained persistently low and stagnant at around 35%, and is conspicuously low in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. These two regional economies also continue to be small and are among the poorest parts of the country. The economy of the Eastern Province contributes less than 6% to the national gross domestic product (GDP). The North only makes up about 4% of the national GDP. Thus, as noted by Vithanagama, the large capital infusions into the North and East following the end of the armed conflict appear to have failed to produce effective economic outcomes in the two regions. Although the war experience is common to both the Northern and Eastern Provinces, the Eastern Province is in many ways quite different to the North. The strategic location of the Eastern Province, its large body of natural resource endowments (including the natural harbour of Trincomalee and long beaches), and the strong agricultural sector gives the region a greater potential to diversify its economic activities compared to the North. The East, according to the Census of Population and Housing of 2012, also houses the most ethno religiously diverse population compared to any other part of the country. For example, the Batticaloa District is home to 72% of Sri Lankan Tamils and 25% of Sri Lankan Moors. The ethnic composition is even more diverse in the Ampara District (39% Sinhalese, 17% Sri Lankan Tamils, and 43% Sri Lankan Moors) and the Trincomalee District (27% Sinhalese, 31% Sri Lankan Tamils, and 42% Sri Lankan Moors). Thus, the Eastern Province is a dynamic, nuanced, and complex socioeconomic and ethno-religious landscape. A study was designed to probe into the issue of women’s labour force participation in the Eastern Province, and was carried out in 2018-2019. This research study set out to address the following questions: (i) What are the labour market outcomes among women in the Eastern Province? (ii) what are the individual, household-level, and societal and contextual factors that are associated with women’s labour market outcomes in the East? (iii) how are these factors similar or different across women from different religious backgrounds? (iv) are armed conflict-induced shocks experienced by women associated with their labour market outcomes? and (v) are the factors that affect women’s labour market outcomes also associated with their employment outcomes and how are these factors similar or different? The research study consisted of both quantitative and qualitative components. The quantitative portion of the study collected data from 1,000 female respondents from the poorer divisional secretariat (DS) divisions of the Ampara, Batticaloa, and Trincomalee Districts of the Eastern Province. The qualitative research work was informed by a combination of in depth interviews, focus group discussions, and key person interviews in the Trincomalee and Batticaloa Districts. Economic necessity, it was found, is a main driver of women’s labour force participation, and such necessity was found to be more common with regard to women heading their households. Women heading their households are not only more likely to seek work, but are also more likely to secure gainful employment compared to women from male-headed households. Women are also more likely to seek work when they have to support household members who are unemployed. Women who have loans to their name are also more likely to participate in the labour market. Moreover, women in the Batticaloa District, the poorest in the region, are also more likely to enter the labour market compared to women from the other two districts (Ampara and Trincomalee). These findings, Vithanagama pointed out, underscore the role economic needs play in women’s decisions concerning participation in the labour force. Household financial affluence, it was found, tends to preclude the need for women to work. For example, women from households that are richer than the average household in the districts, from households that have more amenities than others, and use modern devices for cooking, are more likely to be economically inactive than the others. Women’s own education, skills, and health (human capital endowment) as well as access to physical assets, it was found, have a meaningful impact on women’s labour force participation. For example, poor health keeps women away from the labour market. This is particularly concerning, Vithanagama observed, given that women are more likely to participate in the labour market at more advanced ages. Women with higher educational attainments are very likely to find paid work. Having participated in a livelihood intervention programme also increases the odds of women taking up paid work. Among physical assets, access to land and crops seems to encourage women to become economically active. The disempowering effects of the armed conflict, it was found, continue to have a bearing on women’s decision to participate in the labour force. Women are more likely to work if they have been displaced due to the armed conflict. Vithanagama noted that this is probably because displacement has aggravated women’s poverty, which in turn drives them to seek work. However, women are less likely to work if they have lost their jobs during the armed conflict. This could be because women who have lost jobs due to the war are discouraged from seeking work. It could also be that women cannot find suitable employment opportunities in the post war Eastern economy, Vithanagama opined. Another plausible reason is that the experience of the armed conflict has affected their will to look for and engage in productive work. Women’s own human capital endowment, it was found, has a meaningful positive effect on the labour force participation among Buddhist and Hindu women, while in contrast, gender norms appear to play a bigger role in shaping the decision of Muslim women when it comes to participating in the labour force. The cultural values of different communities seem to impact on women’s economic participation. For example, the findings suggest that Muslim women who are economically active also tend to experience greater domestic abuse. Moreover, where there are adult women in the household, Muslim women are less likely to become economically active. According to Vithanagama, these findings suggest that Muslim women tend to be policed a lot more at home than women from Buddhist or Hindu backgrounds. Women’s own internalisation of their place within the household has, it was found, some negative impact on their decision to join the labour force, but the magnitude of the said impact is negligible. Although the care-related burden does not have a significant impact on women’s labour force participation, it was found that it limits the opportunities available for women once they are in the labour force. If women with small children decide to join the labour force, they are more likely to be unemployed and less likely to be employed. This is probably because women cannot find work that allows them to balance unpaid care work with paid work, Vithanagama added. Moreover, the findings suggest that although women from poorer regions are more likely to participate in the labour market, they are less likely to be gainfully employed. Women in urban areas are less likely to seek work, but if they do, they are more likely to find employment than women from rural or peri-urban areas. Poorer and smaller regional economies, it was therefore observed, need special attention in the macroeconomic development agenda. It is important, according to Vithanagama, to understand the ground realities of these economically backward regions through a bottom-up methodology before devising interventions. A useful tool in this regard is the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis which is increasingly being used by development agencies such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in their livelihood intervention programmes. A detailed study, as emphasised by Vithanagama, is useful to understand the comparative advantages and resource constraints of each region, which in turn will better inform the kind of interventions that are likely to generate sustainable economic growth and development, and also in order to strengthen the inclusivity and equity of development initiatives for all communities. Ancillary educational opportunities such as vocational training should be expanded, strengthened, and properly regulated, it was recommended. Such programmes are often better geared towards catering to labour market requirements, unlike mainstream education. However, it is also important to quality control and update the syllabuses of these vocational training programmes in order to ensure they keep abreast with evolving labour market requirements, locally and regionally. In addition to focusing on encouraging female participation in these programmes, it is also important to devise programmes that are likely to be more attractive to female students. The state education curricula should be open to be informed by labour market requirements, especially at the university and tertiary education levels, it was recommended. Highly sought-after professional educational programmes revise their curricula regularly to match industry changes, and therefore, a similar approach by state universities will be useful in making university degrees and even the GCE Advanced Level (A/L) curriculum more relevant to the local job market. Measures to improve computer literacy and the knowledge of English are important for job seekers, it was observed, in order for them to explore remote working opportunities, which may be, as Vithanagama pointed out, particularly relevant in a post Covid-19 economic context. As elaborated by Vithanagama, investing in promoting these skill sets is more likely to generate immediate positive outcomes for women than working towards transforming gender ideologies which may take a very long time to produce meaningful results for women. This is also, Vithanagama explained, an effective way of working around gender norms in order to create labour market opportunities for women. Transforming gender ideologies is difficult but not impossible, but to be most effective, such an initiative has to begin from primary school education. It is important, Vithanagama said, to objectively look at how the school curriculum stereotypes gender and reinforces gender norms among young children. Well-planned livelihood intervention programmes with proper consultations with the community, along with robust follow-up mechanisms, will be a productive tool in promoting women’s livelihood opportunities, particularly for older women, it was noted. Female-headed households should be given, it was recommended, special consideration when strategies are devised to enhance women’s economic empowerment. Women heading their households who are more likely to seek work out of economic destitution, tend to be poorer, and are more likely to have less assets than women from male-headed households. Not all female-headed households are homogeneously disempowered, Vithanagama emphasised. Therefore, it is important to unpack the catch all phrase of female-headed households to understand what support different types of female-headed households need in order to overcome poverty and to improve their economic empowerment. Therefore, reliable, robust, and timely data on female-headed households, which can be collected by way of a national sample survey or by adding a schedule to an existing survey, is critical, as pointed out by Vithanagama. The legacy of the armed conflict cannot, as pointed out, be discounted in the development agenda for the East and the North. The effects of the armed conflict continue to influence women’s labour force participation in a significant way. Thus, the development and livelihood interventions in the former war-affected regions should take account of the lingering effects of the war. These effects are not just economic and financial, but also emotional and psychosocial, and development initiatives should be sensitive to the people’s full and complete experience of the armed conflict. According to Vithanagama, the Psychosocial Assessment of Development and Humanitarian Interventions framework, a comprehensive tool developed by the University of Colombo as a guide to practitioners in planning, designing, and implementing psychosocially sensitive development and humanitarian interventions, emphasises the importance of access to physical, material, and intellectual resources; the exercise of self-determination and participation; the experience of competence and self-worth; and building social connections as determinants of psychosocial wellbeing. Development practitioners, therefore, need to be mindful about different power and identity relations at play within individuals and communities when designing and implementing policies that can enhance people’s psychosocial wellbeing.


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