Women and work in India

According to the NCW India Report 2009, on night shift for women growth and opportunities. The liberalization policy of the last 15 years has yielded good results. The textiles, garments and leather sectors have flourished as a result of liberalization policies of the government. In the same way information technology (IT) sector has boomed and now India is among the top IT hubs in the world. It has become a major centre for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). The business has grown tremendously and has given excellent opportunities to women to think beyond the four walls of traditional households.

The attitude of the society is changing, though slowly. Women are not seen with suspicious eyes as before; she is more liberated now and can lead a peaceful family life and support it economically as well. The World Bank has stated that the only surest way to lift India out of poverty is to educate and enhance the status of women. Women’s health and skill are important for any family as they also contribute to the income of the family. And hence steps are being taken to uplift her position, health, education and ability.

In our country, in this era of globalization education is playing the pivotal role to bring women up and use their resources for regional and national development. The female literacy rate has increased from 8.86% in 1951 to 54.16% in 2001. It is noticed that the female literacy rate during the period 1991-2001 increased by 14.87% whereas male literacy rate rose by 11.72%. Although the female literacy rate increased by 3.15% more compared to male literacy rate (National Literacy Survey).

The participation of women in the organized sector is only 19.5% including 12% in public and 27% in private sector as compared with men. This figure could be increased if a more helpful working environment is created for women in the workplace.

2.4 Women in Hotel Industry

During the past decade there has been a dramatic increase in the number of women who have entered the work place in both developed and developing countries (Davidson & Burke, 2004). One contributing factor is, the increasing amount of education women have pursued, coupled with increasing number of women undertaking professional studies.   This has resulted in greater number of women pursuing professional managerial careers.

The proportion of women in jobs overall has also increased substantially in recent years.   Over the past several decades, women have become a larger percentage of the workforce: 33% in 1960, 43% in 1980 and 45% in 1990.   In2003, 40% of the world’s 2.8 billion workers were women, an increase of about 200 million compared to the last decade, according to an analysis of female employment by the international labor office (ILO, 2004).Women comprise about 20-25 per cent of the total organized workforce in India (Business Standard , 2010).Also there has been an improvement in the numbers of women promoted to higher positions: women represented 20% to 40% of management positions in about 60 countries (ILO).

The hospitality industry has experienced tremendous growth within the past
decade and it is expected to continue beyond the year 2010. As a result, the industry overall faces a worldwide shortage of trained hospitality staff (Robinson, 2007) and job opportunities are continuing to increase.   Although the hospitality industry has embraced many aspects of modern technology, the provision of services in hotels has not hanged radically from the last century.  They are dependent on the critical human elements of service and what (Korzensky, 2002) calls ‘customer sovereignty’ to ensure a successful and profitable operation.

 
With a lot of hotels opening up in the country, India is being touted as the next

destination for the hospitality industry.  As shown in figure 1 the foremost contribution
of the organized hotel industry comes from 5 star hotels. According to figures from
the World Travel and Tourism Council, by 2019, there would be 275 million jobs
pertaining to the hospitality industry. Though there are still opportunities in the west, a
lot of jobs will be generated in countries which include Brazil, Russia, India and China.

The present and future of the hospitality industry is in these countries. At present, in India, there are about 90,000 hotel rooms and given to the new hotels coming up, these numbers are bound to increase. The figures could go up to over 2, 40,000 hotel rooms in India, which would also mean a lot of opportunity for hotel management graduates (The Hindu, Sep 6, 2010)

Katie Benson, managing director of the Langham London – and group regional vice-president, Europe and North America – also believes things have changed. "Originally, senior women were almost only ever found in HR, housekeeping, and occasionally sales and marketing," she begins.

"There are now new ways of balancing private and work lives and women are perhaps more ambitious than they once were. The globalised nature of hospitality also means there are so many more opportunities out there: people with concrete goals are getting bigger and better chances of realizing them. That works for men and women alike, but it also creates a more level playing field."

Robinson & Barron, 2007). In the 21st century, hotels remain labour intensive, fragmented, and multi-faceted service organizations. This operational structure reflects an entrenched tradition of twenty-four hour, seven day week service to the customer. On the one hand, functional, numerical and temporal flexibility are extolled by hotel management as necessary for survival in the global marketplace while on the other, are promoted to attract service orientated individuals through, for example, structured career pathways and a flexible work environment. Add to this the pervasiveness of gender-role stereotyping; it would appear that employment in this sector is advantageous for talented, career orientated women. Why then is the hotel industry overall struggling to retain staff and in particular, talented, female employees who wish to take advantage of the managerial career paths offered?

The 4-5 star hotel industry a place of opportunity for aspiring female managers or a further example of what Acker (2006, p. 450) terms, an “inequality regime”? The hospitality industry overall faces a worldwide shortage of trained hospitality staff (Barr, 2006; Chon, 2005;

The proportion of women in management overall increased in recent years has been explained by Powell (2000) offers some reasons for gains that women have enjoyed. Women have increased their human capital through increasing their education; Society norms regarding women roles have facilitated women’s move into management squall opportunity along with organizational programs that support women’s advancement have played a role in addition women senior levels influence the number of women at junior levels management. With this background, an effort was made to know more about career aspects of women at the management level of a professional field like hospitality by Dr Hamid Sheeba 2012. It was noted that even though women comprise 40% – 45% of star hotels’ workforce in Delhi, research literature on them is “practically negligible”, the study said. “It was also noticeable during the survey that women are largely visible at non-managerial positions as opposed to managerial positions in star hotels at Delhi. Women workers are mostly visible in guest relations’ and human resource departments. Managerial positions are mostly occupied by them in housekeeping, essentially considered to be a female forte and occasionally in guest relations and human resource department.