It is a sad reality that despite having a very strong constitution as a backbone of our country, women are still facing employment issues in the form of low wages and fewer employment opportunities. Despite the fact that the directive principle of state policy and the fundamental right coming under Article 21, calls for equality in working opportunities with a guarantee for equal wages. But in the real world, the situation is beyond perfect as till today, after more than 70 years of independence, our women earn only 30% of what their male counterparts are earning for the same job.
The problem lies in many things. Firstly, we are still holding value to the old and archaic patriarchal system of society that still gives importance to the meaningless gender roles and how some roles are suited for a specific gender only. This reduces the employment opportunities for girls and in most cases, they don’t even get a basic education. In the workplace environment too, women have to face a hostile sexist culture, and they have ti at the mercy of their male bosses. Since they get work with great difficulty, they try to settle with whatever wages or salaries they are getting, and often they are at disadvantage. Most of the men who are running the workplace tend to dominate them. At home too, whatever they earn is taken away by their families as they consider women to be immature to be handling the monetary matters. This all compounds the problem and as a result, women have low employment and salary factor as compared to men.
The problem can be solved by solved through a tough policy change by the government. More important than that, we have to dismantle the old notions of the gender divide which is proving to be a roadblock in the present scenario.