Exploring the impact of policy mediated technological change on female workforce representation in occupations across industries in India

Abstract

Technology evolution historically had implications on the demand for workforce in different occupations, but its effects on such occupations are often mediated by industrial policies of a country which shape the way technologies diffuse across different industrial sectors. In this study we explore the indirect relationship between technological upgradation triggered by liberalization reforms of the 1990s and the representation of workforce in occupations across different industrial sectors, with a particular focus on female workforce representation. Relying on NSSO surveys on employment and unemployment, we illustrate this relationship by showcasing patterns of workforce representation before and after the reform period at an aggregate and a disaggregated level. At an aggregate level we follow extant literature to group occupations into four major categories - 1) routine manual, 2) nonroutine manual, 3) routine cognitive, and 4) non-routine cognitive. We observe a routine-biased effect of technological upgradation owing to the 1990 reforms, which shows an increased representation in non-routine cognitive occupations. Such occupations at the aggregate were also found to accommodate women workforce at least proportionately relative to their representation at higher education levels. Adopting a network-based method we conduct a disaggregate-level analysis within these non-routine cognitive occupations across industries and observe that occupations that better accommodated female workforce were largely assorted into one industrial sector and such a pattern did not significantly alter post the reform period. Our findings broadly pointed us to the need for tackling gender representation at sectoral level through selective industry-specific female-friendly policies.