While working on the property tax project in Chennai, I connected with a graduate student who is also interested in working with the Tamil Nadu government on projects related to female labor force participation. We had some exploratory conversations with officials in the Labor Department who suggested that we focus on the garment industry which employs a large number of women.
We learned that Tamil Nadu has an extensive network of Industrial Training Institutes providing vocational training in different sectors, including garment manufacturing, textile manufacturing, electronics, IT etc. These institutes offer full-time training programs lasting 1-2 years. Some of these training institutes are exclusively for women while others have 25% seats set aside for female students. However, vocational training does not always translate into stable employment, specially for women. In 2016, Evidence for Policy Design implemented a survey of 2,600 former vocational trainees who had participated in a large government-funded, skills training and job placement program in India. They found that 74% of respondents who accept a job after training leave this job within 9 months, and only 20% of these individuals who left their initial job were employed. For young women, family concerns were the primary reasons for leaving the job whereas men were likely to leave due to dissatisfaction with compensation or personal preferences.
To learn more, we also travelled to Coimbatore and Tiruppur (two of the largest hubs for garment/textile manufacturing in Tamil Nadu). Coimbatore is known as the “Manchester of South India” while Tiruppur is home to some of Asia’s largest garment manufacturing companies, supplying to major buyers such as H&M and Walmart etc. Through conversations with employers’ associations, factory owners, and workers in the garment/textile industry we learnt that high rates of attrition among female employees is a major concern. The majority of young female workers in this industry are migrants from northern India who typically work for 2-3 years before returning to their hometowns for marriage. As a result, most of the supervisors in these factories tend to be men since female employees don’t stay long enough to be promoted. We learned a lot from these conversations and are excited to brainstorm project ideas!
