Abstract

Informed by studies that emphasize that women’s entry into non-traditional jobs is the key to increasing India’s low and declining female labour force participation rate, this study examines the factors that structure entry into non-traditional job training for young women from low-income households in Delhi (India). The study is based on 72 semi-structured interviews, primarily with young women training in the non-traditional jobs of taxi driving, electrician and electronic mechanic, and in the traditional job of beauty (salons).

This study finds (in chapter 3) that contrary to several studies on occupational aspirations that argue that aspirations tend to lead to their achievement, participants’ entry into the non-traditional training was not a result of their occupational aspirations. Instead, entry into the training created aspirations for the jobs. The study argues that to understand entry into non-traditional training, it is essential to look beyond aspirations, at those factors that are embedded in their immediate contexts -- information and social networks (chapter 4), sources of perceived self-efficacy (chapter 5), and parental support (chapter 6). Chapter 4 highlights that participants tend to have narrow social-networks and they are unable to access information about non-traditional jobs. However, the study finds counter-intuitively, that where participants are able to learn about non-traditional jobs, the narrow networks mean that they are unencumbered by the constraining effects of networks in entering the training. Chapter 5 discusses the role of perceived self-efficacy. It finds that while trainees in the non-traditional training had access to sources which engendered a sense of perceived self-efficacy towards it, trainees in the traditional training did not. Chapter 6, emphasizes the criticality of parents, especially mothers, in occupational training outcomes of participants. It finds that parents are the primary source of social support for the young women and provide all the four types of social support outlined by House (1981) – emotional, informational, instrumental, and appraisal – but in addition, they also provide moral support. The chapter thus suggests an additional category of social support crucial to entry of young women into non-traditional training.