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American fast-food chains have become an unlikely source of female employment and empowerment in India, a country where traditionally most women are kept
from working outside the home.
from working outside the home.
The increasingly female face of a new Indian workforce shines at suburban Delhi’s Mall of India. Close to half the employees in its five floors of newly opened food and fashion outlets are women. Just across the street in the old shopping district, females are few and far between. Even the women’s clothing stores are almost entirely manned by men.
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable working with so many other men there,” said Poonam Rawat, a 21-year-old woman who works at Wendy’s in the mall. “Besides, my family would never give me permission.”
Despite great progress in recent decades, India is still a tough place to be a woman. The country has one of the most-skewed sex ratios in the world, with men significantly outnumbering women, the result of selective abortion and infanticide.
Girls suffer disproportionately from malnutrition and are less likely than in most other countries to be found in the best universities, parliament or the boardroom. They are even missing from the internet: There are three Indian men for every Indian woman on Facebook, for example, partly a result of women being denied access to technology.
Girls suffer disproportionately from malnutrition and are less likely than in most other countries to be found in the best universities, parliament or the boardroom. They are even missing from the internet: There are three Indian men for every Indian woman on Facebook, for example, partly a result of women being denied access to technology.
The female participation rate in India’s labor force is among the lowest in the world. It has slid nine percentage points over the last 10 years to 27 per cent of the workforce as safety concerns have soared and economic expansion has failed to generate many good jobs for women.
Women in traditional families often stay at home to do housework and raise children. Families want their daughters, wives, sisters and mothers in the house to shield them from crime, meeting the wrong kind of men and being tempted to try new things such as eating meat.
Chanchal Karhana’s mother wouldn’t even step inside the KFC where she worked because it serves meat—blasphemous for most Hindus. She had to be sure it wouldn’t corrupt her daughter, so she stood in front and peered in.
“She saw other women working, so she felt assured it was a safe place,” said 21-year-old Karhana.
A vast majority of the country’s working women are employed on farms and as domestic workers. Women typically account for less than one in five employees in other sectors. Roughly 16 per cent of those employed in retail are women, while only 14 per cent of the food-service segment is female.
American fast-food chains—many of which have set up shop in India in just the past few years—are trying to bring better balance to these lopsided statistics.
They say it is more than diversity they are after. Women are great for business, executives at several chains say, because they are generally more hygienic, customer-friendly and loyal—a rare attribute in a segment where employee turnover is high.
Western chains have gone way beyond other employers in India and even further than they do at home to build workplaces that are conducive to women and acceptable to their conservative families.
Western chains have gone way beyond other employers in India and even further than they do at home to build workplaces that are conducive to women and acceptable to their conservative families.
“We can’t have stores full of men,” said Seema Arora, who heads human resources for Hardcastle Restaurants Pvt, the company that manages about 200 McDonald’s outlets in India. “People in the US won’t believe the kinds of things we do” in India to cultivate female employees.
Burger King Corp. teaches self-defense to its women. Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell run a mentorship program to help women become managers. Domino’s Pizza Inc has gender sensitization classes for new recruits and offers rewards to stores that attract the most women. Some outlets at these chains are run solely by women; others let all-female crews run the morning shifts so they can wrap up before dark.
McDonald’s invites parents to visit its stores. Fifty parents of new McDonald’s employees gathered in June at a new outlet in the beach-resort state of Goa.
They were to try a Maharaja Mac and fries for the first time and also to find out whether their daughters would be safe.
McDonald’s managers assured parents their daughters were learning more than only how to flip burgers. They were now part of a multinational company that respected and promoted women, the managers said.
One of the new employees, Rita Desai, 21, is the first woman in her family to work outside the home, something her relatives, mostly farmers, wouldn’t have been comfortable with if she were working for a local company. Her parents and even her uncles and cousins showed up at her new workplace to investigate.
“It’s a big step for the family,” said her father, Raoji Desai. “So, we all wanted to be assured she’s in good hands.”
To make women and their families happy, McDonald’s appoints a female confidant at every outlet, aiming to enable women to talk more freely about their personal lives or family problems—topics they may be hesitant to discuss with male counterparts.
It gives mothers more flexible hours and tries to keep women on after they get married by helping them transfer to a new branch if they move to their husbands’ homes. When some families had concerns about their daughters wearing trousers, McDonald’s tweaked its uniforms at select outlets to make them looser and allowed women to wear their shirts untucked, so their attire could mimic traditional clothing.
It gives mothers more flexible hours and tries to keep women on after they get married by helping them transfer to a new branch if they move to their husbands’ homes. When some families had concerns about their daughters wearing trousers, McDonald’s tweaked its uniforms at select outlets to make them looser and allowed women to wear their shirts untucked, so their attire could mimic traditional clothing.
Yum Brands Inc which runs Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell, pays recruiters higher commissions for female candidates. It holds workshops for women on topics ranging from accounting to management. Now, more than 40 per cent of its female employees are managers.
“When families visit and see women supervising the store, they will feel emboldened to let their own daughters work,” said Aman Lal, Yum’s human-resources head in India.
Fast-food chains say women’s salaries are comparable to those of men.
Certainly, the international fast-food jobs are only scratching the surface; most cities in India don’t even have one global food chain. And the global brands that do have many outlets say they need to do better—right now, they tend to have less than 40 per cent female staff.
Still, that is more than twice the average for the food industry in India. Many women who have worked in international chains are now making a career out of it, and can even support their families.
Ruhi Khanam’s father at first was resistant about her working at McDonald’s but warmed to the idea once he felt confident about the safety of her workplace.
He died last year, making her the sole bread winner.
“My mother couldn’t have survived without me,” said Khanam, who switched to a new job at Wendy’s for a bump in pay. “I can take care of everything now.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
