India: Why Did Working Women Disappear?

it was. Some of the calls were what she expected from already vulnerable kids. Others caught her by surprise. Suddenly we started getting a lot of calls about child marriage. Child marriage. These calls were coming from girls, sometimes as young as twelve years old. They said their parents were forcing them to get married, even though child marriage is illegal under Indian law. Archinda tried to intervene, sometimes traveling

to remote villages with her staff. We tried to talk to people and we said, keep why are you getting such young girls married. Many of the girls they didn't want it to get married. But when we tried to stop the community people. They said, why are you? People are stopping Let it happen. Across India, officials observed a similar trend in marriages among teenagers and young adults surged by as much as in some states. But Archinda noticed something else. The calls from young girls to child line

would surge when death rates were highest. First logdown, they were around trip before marriages will be stopped. The second lockdown we found more of the marriages because there was so much of detrit parents thing. Once we give the girl married, at least my daughter is safe now. Archna had a theory in the poorest and most desperate places, marriage was seen as a lifeline. Dobless claims coming in, I mean really jumping from the week before pretty brutal.

Three point two million record six point six million Americans filed for unemployment last week. Engian working women abo the worst impastage by the pandemic. We believe that we are the impacting one girl, one family, one village, one country at the time. Well, now to the billionaire boom. According to Bloomberg, supriocht charters are up over three d and a billionaire was created every six hours during this pandemic. No one not waiting in line for a of the test.

With the public growth, it is time for a wealth tax in America. Welcome back to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield. One of the biggest and most devastating economic stories of the pandemic has been how it just decimated women. Women are more likely to face unemployment. Right now, the economy is still bouncing back from the pandemic, but for working women and mothers, it's a slow climb. This doesn't board

very good for the future. As things have started to open up, the big question is when and how will women recover. In India, things don't look good. Even before the pandemic, it had one of the lowest labor force participation rates for women. Just by March that fell to less than ten This would be bad news anywhere. Getting more people in the workforce helps economies grow, but the

scale is particularly stunning in India. Economists estimate that a female employment were brought on par with male employment, India's gross domestic product could expand by almost a third. But encouraging Indian women to work starts by prioritizing school and career over an early marriage. In some parts of the country, that campaign starts with girls as young as twelve. Archana Chaudhry, a reporter in Bloomberg's New Delhi bureau, has the story.

Every morning, more than two thousand girls traveled to the Paddi Educational Society. It's in the banks of the Ganges in the town of Badadadadi means great grandfather, great grandmother, calling back to tradition, but the campus is actually modern with computer labs and basketball cords. Since two thousand, the school has tried to create opportunities for girls in the surrounding villages. This is it comes a bit of pocket of in there. Most families earn a few dollars that

they're working as farmers. One room hugs are common. A single water buffalo might be a family's most valuable possession. For many of these families, girls can be seen as a financial burden, another amount to feed. That's where Paddada Padad comes in. It's goal is to keep girls in school against cultural forces that would have them get married in their teens. To date, more than three d students have graduated and gone on to lucrative jobs in I

or the government. When I visited the campus on a recent day, one of the first signs I saw read I will select my future husband. Before the day began, students gathered in the courtyard. They sang in old Bollywood hymn about walking on the side of righteousness. They decided the Indian national anthem, and then together they made a promise, Very harry, it is I pledge that I will not marry before I'm twenty one years old. There in that courtyard,

that's where I met Mother Shama. She was smiling and chatting with students. She has worked as a Hindi teacher at Padada Padadi for more than a decade. She grew up near the school in a family of educators. She knows the complicated tangle of factors that hold women down. Students at Padada pad they look up to mother, who they see her as their guardian, as a kind of surrogate mother. One student, a sixteen year old, said she called motherho last year after her grandfather pressured her to

get married. He was worried he might get sick during the pandemic and not live to see it. She spoke to me during her lunch break in a small classroom as other students shuffled around the hallway. There I was very upset. I couldn't focus on anything. So I told ma'am that my folks are pushing me to get married and I want to study. She said, I will come and talk with them. They cannot force you to get married.

She came home and spoke to my grandfather. I also told him that I want to study, that I want to join the army. After all our efforts. He agreed. But Madhu Sharma told me, but Dadda Padadi's mission has become harder during the pandemic, when girls could no longer

rely on the protect the bubble of the school. Administrators purchased tablets for older students to ease the transition to remote learning, and the school appointed teachers to visit villagers to collect assignments since most students did not have regular internet access or even phones. But as the lockdown went on, girls found ways to call mother. They were tearful and panicked. They told her their parents who are trying to get

them married. Mother, who spoke to the girl's parents on their behalf part of her job is to dissuade them from following through with weddings. Families told her they had no other option. They worried that Grandma would get sick and not leave to see an exchange of vows. Money was also a factor. Restrictions and gatherings meant families could avoid the massive multi day weddings in favor of smallest ceremonies at home. There was also less pressure to be

a large dowry. Since most businesses shut, brides had an easy excuse not to buy gifts for the groom's extended family. The tradition is illegal, but still coming across in there getting lockdown. During the lockdown, people thought that since children weren't going to school, we wouldn't find out what's going on for the students at Dada Padadi. The consequences of getting married before they finished school are especially pronounced. When a woman marries, she typically moves in with her husband

and in laws. Mother said, women become dependent and lose ownership over their lives. A middle class woman in India doesn't have a home to call her own. At the husband's place. For every small thing, the mother in law says, is this what you've learned from your mother? And the husband tells her to leave his home after every little tiff, so that home isn't hers either in old age the

home belongs to the sun. In two thousand fifteen, Prime Minister Moody started a campaign called Batti Bat, which roughly means save our daughters, Teach our daughters manunder It's an initiative aim at keeping girls in school and reducing sex selective abortion. The government has also tried to eradicate child marriage. Last year, Movies administrations passed a proposal to raise the legal marriage as for women from eighteen to twenty one, which is what it is for men. But in many

villages the national laws are abstract and far away. Local customs are set and enforced by local punch arts, which is essentially a group of elders almost all men. And while movies campaign to educate India's daughters received lots of publicity, recent government audits found that much of the initiatives funds remained unspent. I spoke to chargeon Joe's who manages the Pa Dada Padi school. He said that initially when the

school is founded, administrators encountered resistance. Families didn't understand why teachers cared so much about educating daughters. They will spend on any amount of money on boys, but they will not spend money on girls, even for food like milk. If they are buying one litter of milk, and if there are three girls and one boy, the boy will get the major portion of the milk. He's a boy.

Girds are not supposed to how all these things, Chardon said, Marriage is an intense pressure point for families in the district. And while India's literacy rates arising and the number of people being in absolute poverty has decreased, when it comes to working women have lost ground. Mind cal Tranager Mazunda dug a little deeper into the numbers. What did you find drawn? It's interesting Archina, because what we're saying is that female labor participation fell by about a third in

the years during the pandemic. In two thousand five, two of women were in the labor market, and by two thousand nine it dropped to around that's lower than any other country in the G twenty except for Saudi Arabia. As India's economy has grown, the women at the middle and top of the income ladder have stopped working for them. It's perceived as a marker of status. On the other hand, women at the lowest rungs of society is still are seen as potential earners. They often work menial or unpaid

jobs that are far from the former economy. In other words, their labor isn't even counted. Rosa Abraham is an economist at a zen Braimes University in the city of Bengaluru. She said that either way, women have little choice in the matter. It is the unfortunate situation that the position to work is often not in the hands of the woman, who said, it is negotiated by social structors, by patriarchy.

But the picture got even worse during the pandemic. During the first lockdown in women were several times more likely to lose their jobs than men. Rosa study which tracked the career trajectories of twenty thousand Indians during the pandemic found that many of the women never came back, so women there was no return to work. In fact, what we find was that if women lost work during the lockdown, they were eleven times more likely than men do not

return to work. Rosa said things like increased domestic duties, the lack of child care options, and school shutdowns all help explain why women struggle to recover jobs and for young girls who were pushed out of classrooms and into marriage, their dreams of independence or a well paid office job. We were replaced with what Rosa calls distress led employment that means unpaid work in the home or taking care of relatives. It's not that women are entering salaried workers

or as weege workers. They're not starting businesses. They are simply entering into their existing family farm. Back at the Padada Padadi Educational Society, Duma told me she understands that cycle. Intimately before the Bandama, she said that school might see only three child marriages a year. Over the past year, Mother says she's prevented a dozen. She recalled a fifteen year old who called her the peak of infections. In one the girl was sobbing her parents had decided to

get her married, I say, Mother said. I went to her place and spoke with her mother and father. I first said, she's a small child and you don't have to pay any expenses on her behalf. You're lucky to have found a school where all you have to do is send her there, So why are you snatching away her dreams? Mother told me she stopped this marriage after one conversation, but others a trick here. Sometimes she has to go to the police or a district magistrate for help.

In one instance, a family refused to reconsider its plans to marry off their fourteen year old. The school could go to the government's child welfare office, but they would need proof. They came up with a plan. The girl would hide a copy of the wedding invitation in the folds of her ka or a tunic and pass it on to another student, who would bring it to mother who soon after Mother who got a call from a

young man who refused to give his name. He told mother who he had regardings of her phone conversations with a girl. Ah, he said, madam, this is not a good thing that you have done. He said the family was backed into a corner, that they've been preparing for the wedding, and her meddling would bring shame to the family. He threatened to blackmail her and turned the community against her if she continued. He said she'd regretted. Ah. He said, you are going to find out in a few days

who I am and how strong I am. Mother, who was used to death threats. In one instance, a family had threatened to shoot her. This time, she wondered if the entire village would come after her. When she went to the police station, Mother said, officers told her not to worry. The next day, the young man called again, and mother Who drew him into a conversation. She was surprised by what she learned. He was just a teenager himself a farmer. He hadn't even finished school. I said, child,

then it is not your fault. I spoke to him with a smile and told him that the problem was his lack of education. After that call, Mother told me the threats stopped. The wedding was called off, and the girl went back to school. Of fourteen weddings planned during the pandemic, Mother Who and other administrators stopped all but two.

Many girls, say Mother Who gives them permission to imagine a different future for themselves, to strive for a life of independent and freedom, to seek out fulfilling jobs, and to live with dignity. When girls stole their education at Badada Badai, they each blunt is sattling on campus. Years later, indeed, it turn as women with their own paychecks. Those seedlings have sprouted into trees. The Pardada Partory School can't alone fight the weight of the cultural expectations that millions of

Indian women face. Prime Minister Moti is trying to push India into what he calls um writ call or a golden era of growth. But in April of this year, India reached a disconcerting milestone. The majority of its nine million person labor force had stopped looking for jobs Entirely. Many of those people we're women. Next week, on the Paycheck, we had to a place that's owned almost entirely by

one man. One of my biggest fears is that the people of this community will be the ones that would be caring for the elite rich that can't afford to actually live here one day. And that's our full purpose. Thanks for listening to the Paycheck. If you like our show, please head on over to Apple Podcasts or where ever you listen to podcasts to rate, review and subscribe. This episode was hosted by me Rebecca Greenfield and reported by

Archana Chaudrey and Rona Joy at Mazoomdar. It was edited by Kai Schultz and Janet Paskin, with help from Francesca Levi, Rakhia Soluja, and Met We also had editing help from Danielle Balbi, Shelly Banjo, Kristin V. Brown, Gilda de Carly, Nicole Flato, and Elisa McDonald. This episode was produced by Gilda de Carly and sound engineered by Matt Guime. Our

original music is by Leo Sidrin. The voiceovers you heard were by Marry Joseph and Tamina Balvarda mooned special thanks to Magnus Henrickson beginnin to Keeper, Margaret Sutherland, and Stacy Wong. Francesca Levy is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. See you next week.