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For a successful energy and mobility transition, multifaceted technologies, e.g., fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) are developed. Next to technical advantages, environmental, economic, and social aspects must be considered. Especially the social implications for various stakeholders are often neglected but are no less important. Thus, goal of this study is to identify possible social risks associated with the production of an FCEV in Germany, using the concept of Social Life Cycle Assessment. Social topics investigated are association and bargaining rights, trade unionism, fair salary, gender wage gap and w eekly hours of work. Results show that the proton exchange membrane fuel cell is a hotspot component, bearing 31–41% of the risk, which is mainly caused by the membrane. Germany is, next to China and India, the major hotspot country, depending on the social topic. Changes in component prices can have an influence on this, as can be seen at the example of the membrane. • Social aspects of fuel cell electric vehicles must be examined beside technology. • Social Life Cycle Assessment is used to identify social hotspots. • The proton exchange membrane fuel cell is a social hotspot due to the membrane. • China, Germany and India are social hotspot countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze the experiences of the world's largest all‐women community health workforce through the lens of liminality. Originally used to describe transition from one state to the other, the concept of liminality in the study of work and organizations can frame workers' experiences of being in‐between established structures and roles in varying degrees, times, and/or places. India's ASHAs, or Accredited Social Health Activists, are community women at the frontlines of the state's health care provisioning. But the state does not categorize them as workers or employees. ASHAs are considered volunteers. Instead of salaries, they are paid task‐based incentives. Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork, including 80 interviews, I find that ASHAs' liminal occupational status as 'paid volunteers' produces conditions of chronic underpayment and control for them, further lowering their already low wages. This has implications for how we understand the gender wage gap. I argue that we need to consider not just how much women are paid, but how the payment is structured, and how that places marginalized women workers in relation to others in the workplace. Moving beyond whether liminality is a negative or positive experience, future research should delineate the conditions under which liminality is negative or positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides estimates of returns to education by nature of employment by gender from 1993–94 to 2017–18 and also separates returns from vocational and general education in India. The paper addresses the sample selectivity issue arising from the endogenous choice of employment status in a Mincerian wage earnings equation using the multinomial-selection approach. The study found positive and incremental marginal returns with levels of general education accruing on self-employed workers, both male and female, albeit with a huge gender wage gap. The graduate level of education renders high returns for both male and female self-employed workers. On the other hand, vocational education and training (VET) is found to be beneficial only for self-employed men and not for self-employed women. Given the insignificant returns to VET for women, it is uncertain how women may benefit from the reforms in vocational education brought about through the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Unless there is a significant expansion in skilled jobs, no amount of policy reforms towards developing skills of labour force would fructify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using detailed monthly household panel data from rural India, I analyze sectoral wage gaps for men and women. I show that the wage gap across the non‐farm and farm sectors is much higher for women than for men. Relative to men, women also work less time in non‐farm wage employment than in farm wage employment. Taken together, these findings suggest that constraints are preventing women from reallocating their time to more remunerative wage employment opportunities. Women are less likely to work outside of their own village in the non‐farm sector, yet the wage gap is driven by higher caste and married women. These results are consistent with a lack of local non‐farm employment opportunities interacting with barriers to labor mobility for women but not men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims at analyzing the determinants of access to relief under social assistance programs among rural households during COVID-19 outbreaks in India. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on the data of COVID-19-Related Shocks Survey, which covered 5,200 rural households across 6 states of India namely Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. The access to relief has been assessed as relief-in kind (RIK) as a free special package of wheat, rice, and pulses, supplied through the public distribution system; and direct benefit transfer (DBT) in cash under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) Yojana and the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY). The association between demographic profiles of rural households and access to relief has been analyzed using the chi-square test. Further, marginal effects have been estimated to assess the determinants of rural households' access to relief. Findings: The results show a significant association between types of relief vis-à-vis demographic profiles of the rural households. A significant difference in access to relief among rural households is also evident across the states. Further, the analysis of the marginal effects indicates that female-headed households belonging to lower social class, depending on non-agricultural occupation with lower income, belonging to below poverty line families and seeking wage employment, are more likely to access relief as food grains; whereas male respondents with lower age, belonging to lower-income quartile with memberships in Self Help Groups are more likely to access the cash benefit transfers. Practical implications: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the food security and livelihood of many across the globe, which necessitated provisioning a package of support to everyone, particularly rural poor households. The World Bank undertook the COVID-19-Related Shocks Survey to provide a quick policy response for managing the risk of COVID-19 outbreak effectively. The results of this study provide timely insights for developing an effective relief strategy for rural households during a crisis. Originality/value: There is limited investigation on access to relief by rural households during the COVID-19 outbreaks and factors affecting the access to relief in terms of cash and kind. This study has utilized a reliable data source to analyze the access of relief packages by the rural communities during the coronavirus outbreak. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-10-2021-0632. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The paper intends to identify the factors that determine the variations in the gender pay gap and female workforce participation at low-skill manufacturing job across Indian states over the time period 2006–2014. Design/methodology/approach: Gender pay gap is measured in two ways: one is scale insensitive and second one is scale sensitive. To construct scale-sensitive gender pay gap measure wage discrimination index is used. For main analysis, a panel framework is used. Fixed effect model and random effect model are estimated along with all relevant diagnostic tests. Findings: Empirical analysis elucidates that male literacy rate, female literacy rate and gender parity index are important factors in explaining the variation in gender pay gap and women workforce participation at sub-national level in India. Female literacy rate significantly reduces the crude pay gap; however, it has insignificant effect on scale-sensitive gender pay gap in low-skill manufacturing sector. Educational enrolment widens up the crude wage gap but narrows down the other one. In case of workforce participation educational attainment and school enrolment both reduce women workforce participation in low-skill manufacturing job. Research limitations/implications: The present research suffers from two major limitations. Due to lack of information, the paper is unable to study the impacts of female representation in trade unions, availability of supporting infrastructure like day-care facilities for working mothers, etc. in explaining the variation in gender pay gap and women workforce participation. The second limitation is that the research fails to address the issue related to selection into employment. The present paper uses the macro-level state-specific statistics instead of micro-level data; hence the imputed wage for unemployed but potential workers cannot be calculated. Originality/value: The paper is unique in the sense that it highlights gender pay gap and female workforce participation issue in low-skill manufacturing sector at Indian sub-national level. There are no such papers that highlight these issues in the context of Indian manufacturing sector. Another contribution is that the present paper considers the scale-sensitive gender pay gap, whose determinants are different than crude gender pay gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the persistence of the gender earnings gap across diverged occupational groups and the workers owning diverged work status in India using the relevant information on 94 446 workers from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2017–18). The marginal mean earning of workers is estimated using GLM: ANCOVA. The findings report the persistence of significant gender earnings gap across the occupational structure and work status of workers. The elimination of demotivating factors leading to the gender earnings gap, removal of gender discrimination, enhancing the self-esteem of females, raising productivity potential by augmenting the professional/vocational education and policies for increased female work participation is the need of the hour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are growing debates and discussions on limitations of inequality of outcome to explain the widening income inequalities within the country across the world. In this context, the scholars and public policy advocates are taking keen interest in measurement of inequality of opportunity (IOp), which is based on the philosophical concept of distributive justice. In this article, we have discussed evolution of the IOp concept, its measurement, and provided empirical results on IOp in India based on data from labour forces surveys conducted by National Statistical Office (NSO). The analysis shows that around one-fifth of the consumption inequality, and one-fourth of income inequality is accounted by unequal circumstances in the country. The findings based on shapely decomposition reveals that parental backgrounds i.e., education and occupation contribute the most in unequal opportunities for regular salaried employment, while gender play a key role in explaining unequal earnings opportunity for casual wage employment, and self-employment. The regression inference tree-based results also indicate that parent's education is the most important variable that determine income or consumption inequality followed by locations (rural-urban), and place of birth (regions) and parents' occupation in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Limited economic opportunity for women reduces their household bargaining power and the economic value of daughters, amplifying son preference. This paper studies India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the largest workfare program in the world. Methods: In a setting where the gender gap in employment and wages are sizeable, NREGS represented both an income shock and a large relative improvement in the labor market for women. We use the staggered rollout of NREGS to show that districts that implemented the program earlier experienced an improvement in child sex ratios in favor of girls. Results: We find that impacts exist only in rural areas, not in the urban counterparts of the same district, where NREGS did not operate. Furthermore, effects are larger in middle‐income and upper income districts and districts with the most skewed initial sex ratios, results which are inconsistent with an alternative selection story. Finally, the effects appear only for rural youth sex ratios, not for adult sex ratios, suggesting endogenous migration is not driving the results. Conclusion: Our results suggest that the adoption of NREGS may have decreased pressures associated with sex selection in India, lessening skewed sex ratios in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent of gender wage gap and its determinants in urban labour market in India. The study finds that women's work is undervalued even in regular salaried jobs in India's urban labour market and female workers are getting substantially lower wages than their male counterpart in almost all sectors and occupations sub-categories despite controlling for differences in experience, education, geographical differences and other individual characteristics. When we disentangled the gender pay gap, we found that around two-thirds of the pay gap is attributed to pure labour market discrimination and only one-third is attributed to endowment difference. The extent of pay gap is higher at lower end of wage distribution which is primarily dominated by women from lower caste, Muslims and less skilled workers. The pay gap steadily declines towards higher end of wage distribution. This clearly indicates that there exists 'sticky floor' in India's urban labour market. Such persistent and high level of gender pay gap may pose a serious challenge on India's path to inclusive growth and achieving decent working conditions. Therefore, the paper calls for sustainable wage policy intervention to ensure fair treatment to workers, equal pay for work of equal value, social protection and social justice to workers and to promote decent work and inclusive growth in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the interrelation between two important dimensions of gender segregation: education and occupation. It further investigates the gender wage gap. Design/methodology/approach: The author uses a three-way additive decomposition of the mutual information index – an index based on the concept of entropy. A non-parametric wage decomposition method that uses matching comparisons is used for measuring the wage gap. Findings: The results show that the extent of gender segregation in India is higher in urban areas than that in rural areas. Most of the observed segregation in rural labour markets originates from educational outcomes, whereas in urban markets it is due to occupational profile of individuals. The findings of the wage decomposition analysis suggest that education in rural areas also explains a sizeable part of the gender wage differential. Nevertheless, a large share of the wage gap remains unexplained in both rural and urban areas. Originality/value: While much research has looked at occupational segregation, less attention has been paid to educational segregation. The paper uses a unique approach to understand the joint effect of occupation and education in explaining gender segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of gender wage differential in the overall labour market, public–private sectors in India by applying different decomposition techniques, using the National Sample Survey, 50th, 68th rounds of Employment and Unemployment surveys along with the recently released Periodic Labour Force Survey (2018–2019). The results show that the unexplained component explained the major part of the gap and occupational discrimination was considerably more important than wage discrimination. The increase in gender wage gap in the public sector is because of the implementation of various public employment schemes for nutrition, health and education and the increasing reliance on underpaid women workers in implementing the same. It had the perverse effect of intensifying gender discrimination in terms of occupational segmentation and gender wage gaps. Finally, the study recommends that public policy can play a major positive role in rectifying this distressing situation and a strong political will is required to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to address the growing inequality in wages between skilled and unskilled workers and between male and female workers in India due to a growing import surge from China. The study on wage movements of skilled versus unskilled workers helps us to understand how imports from India's largest trade partner have contributed to relative factor returns in the country's most abundant factor of production. The consideration of wage divergence between male and female workers helps us in determining how significant China's trade is in addressing gender inequality in India's labour market. Our analysis reveals that the import surge from China has minor effects on the growing wage difference between skilled and unskilled workers. However, the effect of the Chinese import surge on wage divergence between male and female workers is significant. The existing literature on the effects of international trade on India labour market is largely silent on the considered aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the features of rural labour markets in the contemporary period with a focus on women workers, based on secondary data as well as the PARI archive of village data. The first argument is that the low female work participation ratio, as reported by labour force surveys, may be misleading. The picture is very different with time-use data: the majority of women are found to be engaged in economic activity, with clear seasonal variations. Secondly, women workers are more dependent on agriculture than male workers. The relative absence of non-agricultural employment among women workers is consistent with the argument that women face constraints to physical mobility and prefer employment near their homes. The third notable feature of recent times is that large numbers of women, from different social groups and economic classes, participated in the employment generated under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. This evidence put together suggests that if appropriate employment opportunities are provided, the number and proportion of women workers will rise. The fourth striking feature of rural labour markets is the persistence of a large gender gap in wages. Lastly, Scheduled Castes typically comprised the major share of the rural female labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts at verifying the pattern of the wage gap between gender in India's urban labour market using NSS 50th (1993–1994), 61st (2004–2005), and 68th (2011–2012) Employment and Unemployment Surveys. The wage gap between sexes in the urban labour market is verified among the regular and casual workers over a period of two decades (1993–1994 to 2011–2012). Using Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition as well as Recentered Influence Function (RIF) quintile decomposition analysis, it is observed that there is a male bias in wages in both the categories, namely, regular and casual workers. Female workers are also at a disadvantaged position via-a-vis male counterparts, and there is considerable disparity exists with regards to employment and earning standard between sexes. The decomposition exercise shows that the role of the discrimination component effect is larger than that of the endowment component across the regular and casual workers. Controlling for characteristic homogeneity, it is observed that female workers have a systematic wage disadvantage against their male counterparts in the urban labour market of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This study analyzes how changes in overall wage inequality and gender-specific factors affected the gender wage gap in Chinese and Indian urban labor markets in the 1990s and 2000s. We observe the significant expansion of skilled workers and the increase in overall wage inequality in both countries over the period. Analyses of micro data present that contrasting evolutionary patterns in gender wage gap emerged over the period, showing a widened wage gap in China but a dramatically reduced gap in India. In both countries, female workers’ increased skill levels contributed to reducing the gender wage gap. However, increases in observed prices of education and experience worked unfavorably for high-skilled women, counterbalancing their improvement in labor market qualifications. Decomposition of changes in the gender wage gap shows that China’s widened gap was attributable to gender-specific factors such as deteriorated observable and unobservable labor market qualifications and increased discrimination, especially against low- and middle-skilled female workers. For India, gender-specific factors and relatively high wage gains of low- and middle-skilled workers reduced the male–female wage gap. Our study suggests that consideration of overall wage structure, unobserved skills, and gender-specific factors such as unobserved labor market qualification and discrimination against women should be included in designing policies to promote gender equity and inclusiveness in labor markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research note focuses on two key issues: crime against women and gender empowerment. It tries to find out, by correlation analysis, any existing relationship between the rising crime rate against women in India and various parameters for measuring the extent of gender parity. Statistics of National Crime Records Bureau and Gender Gap Reports constitute the dataset for the research note. This simple analysis is undertaken for a time period of eight years (2006–2013) and reveals that there is a negative, high, and significant correlation between the extent of violence that women face and female-to-male labour force participation rate. The note concludes that increasing political representation and educational opportunities for females will be ineffective in reducing gender-based violence, unless adequate measures are taken for reducing the gender gap in labour force participation and earned income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women workers generally face discrimination in the labour market during two stages: at the time of entry or participation in the labour market; and at the time of valuation of their work, that is, at the time of disbursement of wages. In the latter case, the gender gap, with female workers getting lower wages than their male counterparts, is a widely documented phenomenon in the world and has for long been central to research on gender inequalities in wage. Over the years, however, the gap in wages has decreased in the Indian economy, and the change in the female to male wage ratio observed between the years 1993-94 and 2009-10 further strengthens this belief. This paper presents the prime role of human capital in the determination of wages by the evidence of increasing returns to education and of significant returns to experience, for male and female workers in both rural and urban areas. The decomposition exercise reveals a higher average gender wage gap for regular workers in the rural sector and for casual wage labourers in urban areas. It has also been found that an increase in the share of women workers in a sub-sector or industry groups does not lead to a reduction in the gender wage, rather women get higher wages in sub-sectors /industries wherein their relative share is low. The estimated gender wage differences for different industries and occupations indicate significant male-female wage differences across sectors. The high discrimination component in both rural and urban sectors is a clear indication of significant gender-based wage discrimination. Our results suggest the importance of female education in bringing about an increase in women workers' wages and thereby have strong implications for reducing the male-female wage difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This study examines how increasing competitive forces from India’s trade liberalization have affected women’s relative wages and employment. Neoclassical theory implies that costly discrimination against female workers should diminish over time with increased competition. We incorporate this idea into a theoretical model of competition and industry concentration and test the model using repeated cross-sections of India’s National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) household survey data merged with trade and production data from 1983 to 2004. Estimates from ordinary least-squares (OLS) and fixed effects regressions at the industry-level indicate that increasing openness to trade is associated with larger wage gaps in India’s concentrated manufacturing industries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]