Social insurance for women, particularly in the unorganised sector like agriculture is imperative, given the fact that the organised sector contributes to just 10 per cent employment. Moreover, it is a good business proposition, Joint Secretary in the AICC, Jairam Ramesh, highlighted this at the workshop on Finance and Investments organised by the FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO) in association with HDFC earlier this week.
Ramesh said that the social insurance package should include benefits like health insurance, provident fund, maternity insurance and accident insurance.
Ramesh said that traditionally, insurance companies like Life Insurance Corporation had been subsidising insurance schemes. But women in the unorganised sector had been targeted by Self-Help Groups (SHGs) like SEWA (Self Employed Women's Association) for promoting women entrepreneurs in the unorganised sector.
Therefore private sector banks could do profitable business offering Lines of Credit to SHGs, which would provide a spinoff to the insurance business and also help SHGs become commercially viable entities.
Citing the example of East Asian countries, Ramesh said women had gained recognition in the tertiary (skill intensive) sector. The boom in the software and the IT-enabled industry in India could bring forth a similar shift in the employment pattern of women in the country.
He said that India currently exported US$ 10 billion worth of software to the world and this was expected to rise upto US$ 50 billion in the next five years, therefore triggering a huge demand for employment. This would lead in turn to a paradigm shift in a micro economy.
