MWG 011 Solved Guess Paper: Women in the Economy for MAWGS and MA Economics (MAEC)

Sample Question 1: Discuss the framework of the UN System of National Accounts (SNA) for measuring women's economic activities. How can unpaid work be valued?

Answer: The UN System of National Accounts 1993 is the international standard for measuring economic activity. It splits unpaid work into two groups. Some unpaid work sits inside the SNA production boundary and counts as economic work. The rest is non-SNA work, seen as useful to society but not to the "economy".

Unpaid work inside the SNA boundary includes:

1. Building fixed assets for the household, such as a house.
2. Subsistence farming, animal husbandry, forestry and fishing for own use.
3. Collecting water and fuel wood.
4. Collecting raw materials for crafts and small manufacturing.
5. Unpaid family work for the market, like food processing for sale.

Non-SNA work covers cooking, cleaning, shopping, and caring for children, the sick and the elderly. In 1993 the SNA accepted this work as productive and suggested satellite accounts linked to GDP; Germany was among the first to prepare them.

Valuation methods: the input method multiplies time spent by a wage rate (replacement wage or opportunity cost), while the output method multiplies units produced, such as meals cooked, by a per-unit rate (Hirway, 2005). The input method is preferred because longer walks for water show up as more time, even when output stays the same.

Conclusion: India's first Time Use Survey (1998-99, six states, 18,591 households) and critics like Margaret Reid and Marilyn Waring show that time-use data and satellite accounts are needed to make women's full work visible.

Sample Question 2: What is meant by mobilisation and resistance? Explain resistance movements of women workers with national and international case studies.

Answer: Mobilisation and resistance mean women workers coming together for collective action against unfair work, low pay and dead-end jobs. Most women work in the unorganised sector with no labour law cover, which pushed them to organise outside male-dominated trade unions (Mclean, 2011).

Why women organised less often: gender-divided labour markets, the male "family wage" demand, flexible production since the 1970s and norms of female docility all made protest risky (Kabeer, Sudarshan and Milward, 2013).

1. SEWA, India: members from more than 80 occupations; its own bank in 1975; lobbied the ILO for the 1996 Convention on home-based work.
2. Domestic workers, Brazil: the first association came up in Campinas in 1936, and their rights entered the 1988 Citizens' Constitution.
3. Domestic workers, Bangalore: the Karnataka Domestic Workers' Union (2004) worked to change the image from "servants" to "workers".
4. Historical cases: the 1860 New England shoe strike and the 1938 National Dollar Stores strike in San Francisco.

Conclusion: Cultural barriers and informal work limit women's organising, yet SEWA and domestic workers' unions prove that collective action can move from the grassroots to the policy table.

Sample Question 3: With suitable examples, discuss the determinants of migration and their relationship with gender.

Answer: Migration is spatial mobility that changes a person's usual place of residence across an administrative boundary. It is shaped by push factors at the place of origin and pull factors at the destination.

1. Economic: better pay and jobs pull people; shortage of land and work pushes them.
2. Social: schools, networks, relatives who moved earlier, and marriage.
3. Political: war and oppression force mass movement, as seen at Indian independence.
4. Environmental: floods, famine, earthquakes, and displacement by dams and roads.
5. Demographic: an area reaching its carrying capacity, or epidemics.

Gender link: Ravenstein noted women tend to migrate over shorter distances. Sylvia Chant (1998) explains gender-selective migration through de jure and de facto female-headed households. Marriage migration in India is mostly rural to rural, and a wife following her husband is sequential migration because her choice is rarely asked.

Conclusion: A gender lens shows both the risks women face as migrants and their role as agents of social change.

Sample Question 4: Discuss the distinctive features of MGNREGA and its impact on women's empowerment.

Answer: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 gives every rural household a legal right to 100 days of unskilled work near home. It came from a people's movement for the right to work and builds on the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme.

Features: gram sabha planning, panchayat supervision, social audits and a village "transparency wall" (Dey, 2011).

Provisions for women:

1. At least one-third of workers must be women.
2. Equal wages for men and women.
3. Women on vigilance committees and social audits.
4. Single women treated as a separate household.
5. Crèches at worksites and work closer to home.

Impact: women's share of work rose from 40 per cent in 2007-08 to 52.44 per cent in 2012-13. The NFIW study of 776 women found more cash in their hands, more confidence and less distress migration. Weak points remain: low awareness, missing worksite facilities and late wages.

Conclusion: MGNREGA gave rural women income and a public role, but fuller empowerment needs better facilities and more women in Panchayati Raj Institutions.

Sample Question 5: Discuss the Washington Consensus and its impact on women workers. How has the New International Division of Labour led to feminisation of the labour force?

Answer: The Washington Consensus is a strongly market-based policy approach, often called neo-liberalism. Williamson's ten prescriptions centred on trade liberalisation, privatisation, removing subsidies and deregulation, and were attached to World Bank and IMF loans through the 1980s. Joseph Stiglitz criticised it as a "one size fits all" formula.

Impact on women: cuts in health and education spending, a push into the unorganised sector outside the Maternity Benefit Act and Equal Remuneration Act, heavier load on female-headed households, and a rise in unpaid work.

New International Division of Labour: MNCs relocated production to India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, relying on sub-contracting, home-based work and cheap, flexible female labour.

Feminisation of labour: in Southeast Asia women's employment rose from 25 to 44 per cent after 1970, but young women were often laid off after marriage. The UN called this "feminisation of employment": more women in work, in more insecure jobs.

Conclusion: Women gained jobs in number, not in quality.