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The NCAER Gender Hub and FESDIG (Feminist Economics Saturday Discussion Group) jointly organised a hybrid discussion on “What is Women’s Work? Challenges of Measurement for Policy Design” on 12 June 2023, at NCAER.

Despite the strong policy interest in women’s low and declining work participation in India, data and research on this subject continues to show contrasting and puzzling results. This discussion explored these puzzles and examined how far the definition of women’s work and its measurement are consistent with policy needs.

The discussion was held in two parts. During the first hour, participants from different backgrounds briefly offered their perspectives on definitions and measurement of women’s work, including work in the digital economy, the informal sector, and data biases in collection. The second hour was devoted to an open discussion on the topic.

The discussion was hosted by Sonalde Desai, Professor, NCAER; Pallavi Choudhuri, Senior Fellow, NCAER; and Bina Agarwal, Founder, FESDIG.

The other eminent participants in the discussion included Renana Jhabvala, SEWA Bharat; Poonam Muttreja, Population Foundation of India; Nayantara Sarma, World Bank; Deepita Chakravarty, Ambedkar University, Delhi; Shiva Kumar, Harvard Kennedy School;  Paromita Sen, SEWA Bharat; Bornali Bhandari, NCAER; Aiman Haque, SEWA Bharat; Saba Ahmed, SEWA Bharat; Nandini Dey, SEWA Bharat; Rosa Abraham, Azim Premji University; Ellina Samantroy, V.V. Giri National Labour Institute; Aasha Kapur Mehta, Institute for Human Development; Jeemol Unni, Ahmedabad University; Amaresh Dubey, NCAER and Jawaharlal Nehru University; Kieran Walsh, ILO; Ratna Sudarshan, former Institute of Social Studies Trust; and Sona Mitra, IWWAGE, Krea University.

Register to participate^*

NCAER’s National Data Innovation Centre (NCAER-NDIC) is hosting a webinar entitled, “DataTalk: An Online Conversation between Data Journalists and Data Producers”, on Thursday, 15 June 2023.

In recent years, the field of data and statistical journalism in India has grown in sophistication and depth. However, this also puts substantial demands on data systems. At the same time, data systems have faced tremendous challenges, particularly with the absence of face-to-face data collection during the pandemic. As we recover from the pandemic, we have a unique opportunity to build a more robust data infrastructure and empirically grounded public discourse. This will also enable us to return to some of our traditional data collection activities while utilising innovations and tools developed during the pandemic. However, this is only feasible if we can create a common ground between data producers and journalists.

The panel discussion hosted by NCAER-NDIC with eminent data journalists and leading data producers will focus on the challenges and opportunities faced by both sides. Some of the questions of interest will include: How do journalists cope with deadlines when deciding which data to report and how? How can data producers work with data journalists to place information in the public domain without fearing being misquoted? What skill sets do both sides need to make this a fruitful collaboration? What are the constraints under which each side operates?

The panellists in this discussion include some of India’s leading statistical journalists and data producers.

*After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with details about joining the webinar. Invitations are tied to your email ID. During the webinar, please submit your questions using the Q&A box on your screen.

Moderator:

Sonalde Desai is a Professor at NCAER with a joint appointment as Distinguished University Professor in Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland. She directs the NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC). She is an internationally known demographer whose work deals primarily with human development in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. At present, she is leading the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), India’s only nationally representative panel study spanning two decades.

Panellists:

Rukmini S. is an independent data communicator based in Chennai, India. Her work focuses on inequality, gender, caste, and politics. She was earlier National Data Editor of The Hindu and HuffPost India, and has written for a range of Indian and international publications. She won the Likho Awards for Excellence in Media in 2019. In 2020, she received an Honourable Mention for the Chameli Devi Jain Awards for an Outstanding Woman Journalist. Her pandemic podcast, The Moving Curve, won an Emergent Ventures COVID-19 India Prize in 2020. Rukmini’s work on estimating COVID deaths in India won a 2022 Sigma Award, the global data journalism awards, and a Jury’s Special Mention (Investigative Reporting) at the Asian College of Journalism Awards 2022. Her first book, Whole Numbers & Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India, was published by Westland in December 2021. It won the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award (Non-Fiction) 2022. Her second book will be published by Westland in 2023.

Pramit Bhattacharya is a columnist who writes on statistics and economics. His Truth, Lies, and Statistics column appears in Mint, and the Simply Economics column in Hindustan Times. He was earlier the data editor at Mint, where he helped set up one of the country’s first data journalism units, Plain Facts in 2014. He won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award 2015 in the ‘Commentary and Interpretative Journalism’ category.

Mahesh Vyas is Managing Director and CEO of Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt Ltd. (CMIE). He has been an observer of the Indian economy over the past four decades. He is the chief architect of CMIE’s databases including, Prowess, CapEx and Consumer Pyramids Household Survey. Prowess is India’s largest database on the performance of Indian companies, CapEx is India’s largest database on the implementation of investment projects to create new capacities in India, and the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey is India’s largest panel household survey. Mahesh writes regularly on the Indian economy for CMIE’s Economic Outlook service. His writings focus on labour markets, consumer sentiments, performance of enterprises, and capex investments. 

Abhishek Singh is a Professor in the Department of Public Health and Mortality Studies at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, India. He has published more than 100 research papers in peer-reviewed national/international journals. His areas of interest are mortality analysis (including maternal mortality), maternal and child health, gender issues, designing, implementing, and analysing large-scale surveys, among other things. He was instrumental in designing and implementing NFHS-4 (2015-16). He was visiting faculty as a Gates Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and during the 2011-2012 academic year, was a recipient of the prestigious Leverhulme Fellowship to collaborate on research with faculty and students of the School of Health Sciences and Social Care University of Portsmouth UK. He is currently heading the Centre of Demography of Gender at IIPS and leading the Gender Equity and Demography Research (GENDER) project. He is also a co-Principal Investigator of NFHS-6.

P.C. Mohanan was a member of the Indian Statistical Service till 2015. He has worked in various capacities in the Central Statistical Office and the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). In the NSSO, he was involved in surveys on employment and unemployment, migration, literacy, and housing, among others. He also worked extensively for making government data open to research access. He was also a member of several Government Committees like the Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee, Expert Committee on Agricultural Statistics, Technical Group for Estimating Housing Shortage, and Committee on the Slum Index. He has published papers on various topics, including employment, migration, and housing conditions. He also contributes to newspapers on statistical issues. After retirement, he worked as a short-term consultant for international agencies like FAO, UNDP, and ILO. He was appointed as a member of the National Statistical Commission in 2018. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Kerala State Statistical Commission.

Jayant Banthia is former Registrar General and Census Commissioner who retired as Chief Secretary, Maharashtra. He has extensive experience with housing and population censuses, in both India and a range of developing countries such as Nigeria, Myanmar, and Lebanon. As a member of the Indian Administrative Service, in addition to being a demographer trained at the London School of Economics, he brings both an academic and a policy perspective to this discussion.

After decades of feminist advocacy, it is now accepted as a part of conventional wisdom that all data collection systems should provide gender-disaggregated data. However, this ‘add gender and stir’ approach often fails to capture data that is critical for developing gender-friendly policies, especially data on care responsibilities, access to public spaces, and, discrimination in employment. NCAER organised a discussion on re-imagining data systems from a gendered perspective to celebrate International Women’s Day, March 8, 2022.

In recent years, national data collection systems in India have faced considerable challenges. Lack of data, particularly at a time when data are most needed, have hampered both the evaluation of public policies and an understanding of women’s lived realities. The panellists at this discussion comprised a diverse group having extensive experience with the data and evidence ecosystem. They drew upon their past experiences to discuss the importance of gender data and strategies for ensuring its efficient collection and optimal use.

Broadly, the seminar address the following questions:

•  How can the existing data systems be re-imagined?
• What data should be collected and from whom?
• Who should collect it?
• How do we enable feminist advocates to move beyond data gatekeepers to access pertinent data?

The event was held in a hybrid mode, in-person and virtual. Speakers at this forum included the following:

Panellists:

Rukmini S. is an independent data journalist based in Chennai. In 2004, she began covering Mumbai city for the Times of India. Since 2010, she has specialised in data journalism. She was the first Data Editor of an Indian newsroom, initially at The Hindu and then at Huffpost India. She now writes for a range of publications, including Mint, IndiaSpend, and The Guardian. Her pandemic podcast, The Moving Curve, won an Emergent Ventures India COVID-19 Prize in 2020. She was awarded the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Mediaperson (Honourable Mention) in 2020 and the Likho Awards for Excellence in Media in 2019. She has a post-graduate Diploma in Social Communications Media and an MSc in Development Studies.

Diva Dhar, Deputy Director (Data and Evidence), Women’s Economic Empowerment, leads the global strategies at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and oversees investments on strengthening the gender data architecture and deepening research and evidence for women’s economic empowerment programming and policymaking. Prior to joining the team in 2019, she anchored research and evaluation portfolios for the foundation on nutrition, health systems, ICT, youth and gender in India. Previously, she worked for over a decade in public policy research and design for J-PAL, Innovations for Poverty Action, World Bank, Planning Commission of India, and other non-profit organisations in India, Morocco and Bangladesh. Diva is currently a doctoral candidate in Public Policy at the University of Oxford. She has a Master’s in International and Development Economics from Yale University.

Mayra Buvinic, an internationally recognised expert on gender and development, is a Senior Fellow with Data2X and a Senior Fellow Emeritus with the Center for Global Development. Previously, she was Director for Gender and Development at the World Bank. She also worked at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) where she headed the Social Development Division and was founding member and President of the International Center for Research on Women. She has a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jeemol Unni is Professor of Economics at Ahmedabad University. Earlier she was Director at Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) and RBI Chair Professor of Economics at IRMA. She holds a PhD. and MPhil in Economics and was a post-doctoral Fellow at Economic Growth Center, Yale University. She is currently a member of the Standing Committee on Economic Statistics constituted by the Government of India. She is on the Editorial Board of The Indian Journal of Labour Economics and Journal of Development Policy and Practice. Her research addresses issues of informal labour, returns to education, social protection and women entrepreneurship. Her latest co-authored book is titled Women Entrepreneurship in the Indian Middle Class (Orient Blackswan, 2021).

Pallavi Choudhuri is a Fellow at the NCAER-National Data Innovation Center (NDIC). At NDIC, her work focuses on methodological innovations in measuring income, consumption, and women’s time use. Prior to joining NCAER, Choudhuri taught courses in Economics and Finance at the Grand Valley State University as a Visiting Assistant Professor and as an Instructor at the University of Wyoming. She has a PhD in Economics from the University of Wyoming.

Sonalde Desai is a Professor at NCAER with a joint appointment as Distinguished University Professor in Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland. She directs the NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC). She is an internationally known demographer whose work deals primarily with human development in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. At present, she is leading the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), India’s only nationally representative panel study conducted in two rounds in 2004–05 and 2011–12. Preparations are currently on for the next round of IHDS.