Mainstreaming Women Construction Workers to Higher Skilled Jobs

The construction industry has been described as a 'shock absorber', providing easy entry to populations affected by rural livelihood crises. Contributing to 9% of the country's GDP and employing 51 million people, it is the second largest employer after agriculture. The recent decades have seen an influx of women, especially those from historically marginalised communities into the industry's workforce. As per NSS (2011-12) women constitute around 30% of the industry's workforce. While the low entry barriers of the industry facilitated labour force participation for a large number of women, these jobs are accompanied by income insecurity, violation of rights, and poor working conditions.

Within construction sites, women are hardly ever seen performing skilled jobs and are confined to jobs marked by low wages, low stability, low productivity, and low upward mobility. On construction sites, few women are seen engaged in skilled work like masonry, carpentry, plumbing, etc. The construction industry in itself has displayed tremendous change in terms of technology and scale over the years. And yet, the position of women in the industry has remained unchanged and tied to unskilled, manual labor intensive, low-paying, and low-dignity jobs.

Two partner organizations, Habitat Forum (INHAF) and Sehreeti Developmental Practices Foundation came together with the objective to understand and address this issue. Our interactions with various stakeholders in the construction industry including builders, developers, training institution leaders, trade union representatives and civil society revealed that while there is acknowledgement of the deplorable conditions of women construction workers there has been limited action taken in this regard. Only a small group of civil society organizations have spearheaded initiatives that skill women construction workers. While there are various programs, initiatives, and pilots towards improving conditions of workers, it is our contention that these interventions need to 'collaborate', 'learn from each other', 'scale-up impact' and 'address systemic challenges'. The conditions of living and the marginalization of women workers has been insufficiently addressed till now. To understand this further, an ecosystem approach that brings in the participation of major stakeholders in the construction industry and skilling ecosystem to ensure that women construction workers are not just skilled but are also able to access skilled jobs.

This agenda resulted in a report titled "Jobs and Skilling Landscape for Women Construction Workers in India: Learning from Case Studies". The report brings together the experiences of four organizations who have pioneered initiatives for the skill development of women construction workers. In addition to shedding light on the strategies through which gender barriers in the construction industry were confronted, it also seeks to identify the challenges and the lessons learnt for scaling up such problems.