The death of Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old Chartered Accountant based in Pune, has led to intense discussions about the workload of professionals in India. According to a letter by Anna’s mother, Anita Augustine, the young professional at Ernst & Young (EY) lost her life due to “work stress”.
Ms. Augustine said in her letter to the Chairman of EY that Anna would be assigned “work at night with a deadline [the] next morning”. She added that this was a “systemic issue and goes beyond managers and teams”. According to her, the workload, the new environment, and the long hours took a toll on her daughter. She also alleged that no one from the office turned up at Anna’s funeral.
Ms. Augustine’s anguished letter went viral, eliciting a reply from the Chairman of EY India, Rajiv Memani, who “truly regretted” the fact that employees of the company were absent at Anna’s funeral. “The well-being of our people is my top-most priority,” he said.
The incident has put the spotlight on how the increasing workload in India especially impacts young women who work in male-dominated environments.
Data show that Indian women who have jobs similar to the one that Anna had work for the longest hours globally. In fact, the younger the professional, the more number of hours they work.
Chart 1 shows the mean weekly hours that Indian women work across various job types in 2023.
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Indian women workers in information and communication jobs, which includes IT professionals and journalists, worked 56.5 hours every week in 2023, the most for any job type in India. If we consider a work week of five days, that amounts to more than 11 hours of work a day, or in the case of a six-day work week, it amounts to more than 9 hours of work a day. Women working in professional, scientific and technical activities in India do 53.2 hours a week. Anna belonged to this category. In comparison, a female teacher works 46 hours a week in India.
Chart 2 shows the mean weekly hours of across various ages in 2023.
It shows that the hours increase if only younger workers are considered. For instance, Indian women IT/media workers who are aged 15-24 put in 57 hours every week. Indian women in professional, scientific and technical fields aged 15-24 put in 55 hours of work, the highest among all age groups.
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The 56.5 hours and 53.2 hours of work that Indian women do every week in information and communication jobs and in professional, scientific and technical jobs, respectively, is the highest such share among similar jobs globally.
Chart 3 shows the mean hours of work done by women weekly for these two job types across nations.
India and other BRICS countries are highlighted. The 56.5 hours done by Indian women in IT and media are the highest in the world. In Germany, for instance, women in IT and media work for 32 hours, and in Russia, for 40 hours.
Chart 4 shows share of women in the total workforce across job types in India.
Not only are Indian women working the most number of hours globally in such jobs, but they also work in offices dominated by men. Only 8.5% of the Indian workforce in professional scientific and technical jobs are women, and only 20% of the Indian workforce in information and communication jobs are women.
Such an imbalance in these two types of jobs was less pronounced in many other countries. Indian women’s share of 8.5% in professional scientific and technical jobs is 15th from the bottom in a list of 145 countries.
Source: International Labour Organisation
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Data | In India, women do seven hours of housework, men under three hours
Published - September 24, 2024 08:00 am IST
