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In 2014, four women founded a social enterprise called Coppre, which revived a 400-year-old tradition of handcrafted metalware to help create livelihoods for artisans across India by selling their unique products online. Coppre has no physical store. Dirty Feet is another interesting project led by two Indian women who built a company that offers hands-on, rural field trips to primary school children. The entire operations are conducted on social media.
There are many such women entrepreneurs using the Internet to build businesses while also managing to hurdle over the top three reasons that make women leave the workforce – family pressures, wage disparity and fear of owning and growing a business. Yet, in 2018, while jobs for men increased by 0.9 million, 2.4 million women dropped out of the workforce in 2017, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.
According to an IndiaSpend report, 25 million women have left the Indian labour force in the past 10 years and only 27% of Indian women are currently part of the country’s labour force. There are many reasons why this trend of women leaving the workforce is worrying. If women participated in the economy at pace with men, India's GDP would increase by up to 60%, or $2.9 trillion, by 2025. Women currently contribute merely 17% to the GDP, way below the global average of 37%. What's ironic is that the 2011 National Sample Survey found that over a third of women in urban India and half in rural areas who engage mainly in housework actually want a paying job. What is holding them back is a combination of societal pressures, not being trained or skilled and a lack of mobility – in the sense that many women are not allowed to leave home without permission from the men in their family.
Digital media can be the equaliser for women and give women access to new opportunities, new markets, new ideas - all from their own home. Bringing more and more women into the digital workspace can be part of the solution.