BPOs, India and Women

During the Industrial Revolution outsourcing meant the shifting of production to countries providing cheap labour. Infact, the idea of outsourcing can be traced back to the Theory of Competitive Advantage propounded by Adam Smith in his magnum opus ‘The Wealth of Nations’ (1776). In today’s scenario, outsourcing is the process through which one company hands over part of its work to another company, making it responsible for the design and implementation of the business process under strict guidelines regarding requirements and specifications from the outsourcing company.

The liberalization and privatization policy of the Government of India heralded the golden era for the BPO/ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services) industry. Although the IT industry in India has existed since the early 1980s, it was the early and mid 1990s that saw the emergence of outsourcing. One of the first outsourced services was medical transcription, but outsourcing of business processes like data processing, billing, and customer support began towards the end of the 1990s when MNCs established wholly owned subsidiaries, which catered to the process off-shoring requirements of their parent companies. Some of the earliest players in the Indian market were American Express, GE Capital and British Airways. Despite its recent arrival on the Indian scene, the industry has grown phenomenally and has now become a very important part of the export-oriented IT software and services environment. It initially began as an activity confined to multinational companies, but today it has developed into a broad based business platform backed by leading Indian IT software and services organizations and other third party service providers. The spectrum of services offered by Indian companies has evolved substantially from its humble beginnings. Today, Indian companies are offering a variety of outsourced services ranging from customer care, transcription, billing services and database marketing, to Web sales/marketing, accounting, tax processing, transaction document management, telesales/telemarketing, HR hiring and biotech research.

Robust communication infrastructure, a large English-speaking workforce, low labour costs, appropriate time-zone difference with the West and the brand equity built by the software services sector are compelling reasons for choosing India as the BPO destination. To top it all a friendly tax structure places the ITES/BPO industry on par with IT services companies. Further outsourcing to India offers significant improvements in quality and productivity for overseas companies on crucial parameters such as number of correct transactions/number of total transactions; total satisfaction factor; number of transactions/hour and average speed of answer.

Most industry observers believe the Indian BPO industry is headed skywards.Despite being a fledgling in the global ITES/BPO industry, the Indian ITES industry recorded a growth rate in excess of 50% in 2002-03. During 2003-04, the ITES-BPO segment is estimated to have achieved a 54 percent growth in revenues as compared to the previous year. ITES exports accounted for US$ 3.6 billion in revenues, up from US$ 2.5 billion in 2002-03. The ITES-BPO segment also proved to be a major opportunity for job seekers, creating employment for around 74,400 additional personnel in India during 2003-04. The number of Indians working for this sector jumped to 245,500 by March 2004. By the year 2008, the segment is expected to employ over 1.1 million Indians, according to studies conducted by NASSCOM and leading business Intelligence Company, McKinsey & Co. Market research shows that in terms of job creation, the ITES-BPO industry is growing at over 50 percent.

In this backdrop, it is relevant to find out the conditions of women workers of these BPOs. In August 2005 Parliament passed an amendment to the Factories Act, 1948 allowing women to work the night shift in factories. BPO and health workers were already exempt from the earlier ban on working the night shift.

A report by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India entitled ‘Night Shift for Women: Growth and Opportunities’ assessed the BPO sector among four other different industries in terms of women’s perceptions of security and an adequate working environment that employers are obliged to provide them for working the night shift. The survey has aggregated women’s perception of their “security” in working the night shift and of other parameters such as adequacy of childcare facilities, transport facilities and in-house trainings on health and safety

issues, mental harassment by the employer, pay package, etc. In this urban survey covering 216 women workers and 56 employers in nine cities in the BPO, health, textile and garments and leather industries, the BPO sector fared best.

The survey throws up some other important findings. Childcare facilities across sectors remain extremely inadequate – only 7 per cent of all women were satisfied with them – although the Factories Act has stipulated their need since 1948. Women receive virtually no inhouse training on health and security related issues, even as

they suffer from a plethora of health problems ranging from sleep disorders, high blood pressure, menstrual problems, exhaustion, etc, that could well be related to working night hours.

http://anita-baruwa.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/08/bpos-india-and-women.htm