Why working from home can be a trigger for empowerment in India

India has seen an astronomical growth in the field of education in the last two decades and this means crores of educated young Indians. It is a humongous workforce. Unfortunately only a fraction of this vast educated population gets stable jobs. The situation is grimmer in case of women population. Very few of educated or semi-educated women manage to get a job and become financially independent. This means, there is a vast hidden women workforce out there waiting to be tapped.

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However India continues to see a wide gap in the employable and the employed. Creating jobs is one way to break that deadlock. However a longer term effort would be to empower women to use their own skills and put them into an enterprise, no matter how small. This way women from semi urban and rural cities can also be engaged. Additionally, entrepreneurship is a good way to support them financially and it facilitates employment opportunity in their hometown.

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That women and men still play traditional roles in India is a notion that needs to break. Opportunities to work from home will hasten that process. Empowering women to build skills, engage in self employment or jobs in their own city and region and help them build confidence and meaningfully contribute to the economic growth process. India's economic history is marred with challenges with many girls being restricted from traveling for work, getting married too soon, leave education in the middle, or not pursue what they trained to in their college and so on. Given these challenges which will take some time to unshackle, working from home is a very real opportunity. One that can further the process of empowerment and economic upliftment.

According to a survey released in 2013 by a research company Gallup Inc in US. India has the highest  gender gap in employment rates. However companies in service sector are employing more and more women these days. Nevertheless though there are lot of job portals generating employment  in India few are really helpful for women and providing flexible job opportunity. GharSeNaukri is one such job portal targeting women who are looking for flexible employment options. Proportionately there is a huge workforce of women which are still untapped. A lot of job opportunities like Content Writing, Lead Generation, Customer Support Executives, Digital Marketing, Web Development, Graphics Designer, Interior Designers, Fashion Designers, Tutors are open to women, irrespective of location or formal office structures. 

Picture Credit: FastCoExist

Pratibha Sharma is the HR Officer & Cofounder of GharSeNaukri.com