Budget 2024: Implementation key to driving women empowerment schemes

The Union Budget 2024 has allocated ₹3 lakh crore for schemes benefitting women and girls. The allocation includes initiatives such as organising skilling programmes for women, enabling market access for women-led SHGs, and employing them in manufacturing. Industry experts call these a great step towards including more women in the formal work force. 

According to the Economic Survey, women's participation in the workforce has gone up to 37% in 2022-23 against 23% in 2017-18, but three-fourth of these workers are engaged in agriculture. There is a pressing need to enhance diversity in the workforce, but these initiatives would be a success only when the government and private sector join hands together, says industry stalwarts.

"The challenge is in the power of execution,” points out Madhura DasGupta Sinha, founder of Aspire For Her, which focuses on diversity-led hiring. “Most of these initiatives to skill women or empower women-led SHGs do start with good intentions, but they soon lose steam. If the government is spending so much money on skilling women, they should do it in a more structured way by getting on board partners who are 100% focused in ensuring that these initiatives yield results. The partner should have skin in the game."

Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder of Teamlease agrees. “Government allocating money for skilling women or giving market access to women-led SHGs isn’t enough, there should be a mechanism to get organisations to report how many women have been skilled.” The need to have a reporting mechanism in manufacturing is even more important, says Chakraborty. She articulates the need for the government to incentivise organisations that hire women for shop floor roles. “Just as manufacturing companies get production-linked incentives from the government, they should also be given diversity incentives. More importantly, the outcome of these incentives should be reported by organisations. This will not only increase the accountability of organisations, but also enthuse others to invest in diversity."

"A PLI or a tax break to an organisation if it manages a certain diversity percentage will positively impact its bottomline and encourage it to look at innovative hiring practices,” explains Sinha of Aspire For Her.

Vaishali Nigam Sinha, co-founder of Renew Power, says that just as the government made it mandatory for organisations with revenue above ₹1,000 crore to invest 2% of their profit in CSR, there should be a similar policy for diversity. “If there is a policy framework, India Inc. will mobilise itself to hire more women into its workforce."

The industry is clearly calling out for public-private partnerships. In fact, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, has called out for public-private participation in setting up working women’s hostels and creches in order to create an enabling environment so that women don’t exit the workforce after maternity. "The move to establish hostels for working women displays the government’s continued focus on improving gender diversity within India Inc., while ensuring women feel more independent, safe, and comfortable as a part of the workforce. Overall, this initiative addresses several key barriers that often deter women from pursuing employment opportunities. Industry partners can provide valuable insights into the specific needs of their workforce, help design facilities that cater to their requirements, and potentially contribute through CSR initiatives," says P.S. Viswanath, MD and CEO, Randstad India. 

Industry leaders in the Fortune India-SPJIMR Whitepaper on “Enhancing Women Leadership in India Inc.” launched in March this year, also batted for great public-private partnerships to make diverse workforces a reality in India.