This is the final of a three-part series. Read the first and the second.
In 2018, Ifrat Rashid completed her post-graduation in education from Kashmir University, becoming the first in her family to get a Master’s degree.
The 29-year-old from Ganderbal town was confident it would lead to a government job. But her applications for vacant government posts were rejected. With the August 2019 lockdown and two back-to-back lockdowns putting a deep freeze on recruitments in Jammu and Kashmir, Rashid grew increasingly frustrated.
In 2019, she enrolled in a tailoring course at a vocational training institute in Ganderbal district. “I wanted to earn, and I realised that waiting indefinitely for a government job wasn’t an option,” Rashid said. “I was worried about what people would think. I even avoided telling anyone about it.”
Nevertheless, stitching garments soon became a source of income for Rashid. But she did not give up on her ambition and enrolled into another postgraduate degree in science.
Four years later, Rashid did manage to find a job, not because of her two post-graduate degrees but her skills as a tailor. “A private training institute approached me to teach tailoring to young girls,” she said.
Rashid soon realised she was not alone. “When I joined the course, I was surprised to see highly qualified women doing the same,” she said. “Similarly, I have had students who are learning tailoring because they are struggling to find jobs. The highest-qualified student I have taught so far has two Master’s degrees.”
As Scroll has reported in this special series, Jammu and Kashmir has been in the grip of an acute unemployment crisis that has worsened in the last five years. For women, the challenge to get a job is many times harder.
Young educated women in Jammu and Kashmir like Rashid are increasingly dropping out of the white-collar job market for precarious low-paying jobs or home-based work.
Scroll’s analysis of data from the annual Periodic Labour Force Survey reveals that the share of women in the service sector has consistently shrunk between 2017-’18 and 2023-’24, with most women being pushed out to the primary and secondary sectors. The trend is markedly visible among urban women with more women shifting from the service sector to primary sectors like agriculture, animal production, forestry and fishing.
Gender and unemployment
In the last seven years, the unemployment rate in Jammu and Kashmir among women in the 15-29 age group has consistently been nearly double the national average, according to Periodic Labour Force Survey data.
In 2022-23, the unemployment rate among urban women was 52.6 % in Jammu and Kashmir. In other words, every other urban woman in the age group of 15-29 is without a job. The national average stood at only 21.7 %.
The situation is no different in rural settings of the union territory. Last year, the rate of unemployment for rural women in the 15-29 group was 23%, contrasted with the national figure of 8.2 %.
Cultural constraints
Economic experts said cultural reasons were partly to blame – compared to other parts of India, fewer women in Kashmir have sought jobs outside the region, even as government jobs became saturated.
“Women are unable to move out because of cultural and social constraints,” said Professor Nisar Ali, who has been associated with Jammu and Kashmir’s economic policy-making for decades. He was referring to the reluctance of families to allow women to work outside the region, as well as the anxiety of women being targeted for their Kashmiri identity in mainland India. “As a result, the proportion of unemployment and underemployment among women is on the higher side.”
For example, 29-year-old Zaara Reshi is a trained civil engineer with an exceptional academic record through school and college. But seven years after she graduated, she is still in search of a government job.
“Five years ago, I even got a decent opportunity in the private sector in Delhi but I didn’t take it because I can’t shift owing to my personal reasons,” she said.
According to Professor Ali, this often results in women ending up employed in less-paying jobs. “Since they cannot move out, women prefer to remain underemployed in some private schools or other private organisations.”
Twenty-five-year-old Rabia Bhat is a trained engineer. But she earns Rs 2,000-2,500 a month as a private tutor to schoolchildren. “I teach school kids up to Class 8. Since they come from a lower middle class, they can’t afford to pay high fees,” said Bhat.
Like Rashid, Bhat is loath to look for jobs in the private sector. “As a woman, I am not okay in relocating outside Kashmir,” said Bhat.
Other reasons
The high numbers of jobless women reflects a structural crisis in the local economy, said a scholar of economics in Srinagar, who declined to be identified.
While in most economies, workers move from agrarian to industrial employment, the absence of an industrial sector in Jammu and Kashmir created a “strange phenomenon”, she said. “The shift was direct from agriculture to the service sector.”
But now with the stagnation of jobs in the service sector, “a reverse migration” is taking place.
“The service sector is not generating any jobs at all,” the scholar said. “It’s stagnating. What’s happening is a reverse migration and people who had moved to these sectors are switching back to primary sectors like agro-based industries or small skill-based jobs like tailoring and handicrafts.”
As service sector jobs are not paying high wages, women now prefer to take up jobs closer to home. “They think it is better to do home-based work which pays them the same wage they would be earning in a service sector job," she said.
Undoing women empowerment
More women settling for low-paying jobs or dropping out of the job market has a negative multiplier effect on their status.
“In our patriarchal society, education and economic empowerment are foundational for a woman to be seen as an equal of a man,” explained the scholar of economics in Srinagar. “Earning your own money gives much needed weight to a woman’s voice. It makes her assertive.”
The lack of jobs often aggravates the mental health crisis among women. “Traditionally, women have been largely seen as a burden on families. An unemployed woman begins to question everything once she finds herself without any job after having studied so much,” the scholar explained. “She internalises the idea of being a burden.”
