Realty strikes for women construction workers

Blame it on socio-economic conditions or technological advancement; the percentage of women folks at the construction sites has seen a drastic decline in the last one decade dipping sharply to under 10 per cent from its peak level of 35 per cent, according to a survey.

For decades, the construction industry has been an abode for the poor migrant families who toiled on construction sites - wife worked alongside her husband even as their children loitered around - to eke out a living in the city. At its peak, experts estimated that women wage labourers comprised up to 35% of total workers employed at constructions sites in india.

The percentage of women workers at construction sites during Commonwealth Games was averaged at 2%. At its peak, the Delhi Metro project employed 30,000 construction workers. Women were not even 5% of them, according to an ET report.

"Earlier many workers came to cities with their families. Today, many come alone, leaving behind their families," says Karan Singh, executive director (HR), DMRC. Anjali Alexander, chairperson, Mobile Creche, has seen the dip first hand. The number of children on the construction sites has gone down steeply because there are fewer women there, it said.

This shift can be attributed largely to the changes that the construction industry has undergone. About two decades back, labour cost was about 15-20% of the total project cost. Today that has come down to 5-12%. This is primarily because construction industry has become automated, mechanised and capital intensive.

As today most of the residential and commercial buildings are high-rise structures. Hence safety becomes the prime factor for the labourers, who are reluctant to bring their families at the site. Another factor which stops women to work in the site is the workability condition. Most of the contractors do not prefer the sari-clad women baoureres who can’t work as fast as their male counterpart.

"There are safety issues involved in high-rise construction and workers do not want to work with families there," he says. It is difficult to make sari-wearing women work on physically strenuous job on viaduct, says Karan Singh of DMRC.

Anjali recalls the time when Delhi was preparing for the Asian Games in the 1980s. When Moolchand flyover was being built, Rajasthani workers migrated with their families and there were shanties all over that grew into slums later, she recalls.
This time for the Commonwealth Games, they used a lot of pre-fabricated material for building flyovers etc. Due to automation there is a thrust on skilled workers, which are often men. While earlier, about 80% of labourers working on construction sites were unskilled, today that has gone down to 50-60%. "There are no head loaders today. From hot cement mix to others - machines have replaced quite a bit of labour," she adds.

There is another reason why women workers may be seeing a dip. In 1996, the Construction Worker Act specified that any construction project employing more than 60 women have to have a crache. This additional burden would have further encouraged contractors to scale down hiring of women workers.

Bigger shift

But this dip in number of women workers signals many changes underneath. One, it signals a shift in migration patterns of workers at the bottom end. While earlier, many desperate unskilled workers migrated with families for a livelihood today many are migrating alone. "We see a sharp rise in young single male worker working on the construction sites," says Amita Baviskar, sociologist, Institute of Economic Growth.

These young workers often work 14 hours a day as the projects have faster turnaround - from a typical 5-6 years earlier, today it has come down to 2.5-3 years - and return home after two-six months before coming back again. It helps that wage levels have gone up, the report further said.

"Earlier, they came and looked for settling down with families here in jhuggis," says Alexander. That is not so pronounced now. This makes the workers more footloose and mobile - a fact buttressed by the fact that many labourers from Bihar, UP are frequently shifting their destination of migration today.

NREGA  jobs

Partly, this shift in migration patterns may also have to do with changes in the rural economy and the households. Earlier, coming from poorer states like Bihar and West Bengal, there was virtually no employment for these women back home," says Singh of DMRC.

Now, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) jobs, better political environment (like in Bihar), growing rural economy, rise in non-farm component in household incomes (which is both less volatile and more predictable) is boosting both employment and incomes in rural households. As a result many migrant workers prefer to leave behind their families back home.

There are two important side effects of NREGA that is helping too. One, NREGA sets the floor for the minimum wage in villages, which is being periodically revised by the government. For example, Singh of DMRC says the daily wages have gone up from 180 to 200 in the last six months.

Two, NREGA reduces gender discrimination in wages. S Sivakumar, CEO of ITC's agri-business, says that rural women workers typically earned 20-30% less than men for the same job. "With NREGA, for the first time, women are getting the same wage as men. And it has a bearing on their incomes," he says. Not to forget that living costs in the cities have surged and it makes sense for the workers to live alone and send more money back home for the family.

All this has had some positive impact. While NSSO latest data suggests that the income gap between rural and urban households have widened in the last five years. The percentage gap has gone up from 80% in 2004-05 to 91% in 2009-10. But in absolute terms, rural incomes have gone up and are powering consumption there, which has grown almost at par with the urban Indians, according to the NSSO data. The rural per capita consumption grew 6% in 2009-10 (1.2% in 2004-05) as against urban per capita consumption which rose by 6.8% in 2009-10 (2.9% in 2004-05).

The impact of all this is visible in some of the villages. "Women are far more visible on the farms today than they were in the past," says Sivakumar. They are also visible in jobs that were primarily a man's domain earlier, like spraying, harvesting etc, he adds. Also, it is not unusual to see a few retail shops in villages managed by women - a rarity in the past.