June 1, 2022 • 20 mins
Even before the pandemic, the proportion of women in India's workforce was falling. Covid made it so much worse. This episode of The Pay Check looks at where India's working women went during the pandemic, why they haven't come back to the workforce, and why that's a blow to the country's broader economic ambitions. Archana Chaudhary and Ronojoy Mazumdar travel to a girls school on the Ganges with one primary mission: Keeping girls in school, often at odds with families that would prefer to get them married.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Archena Sahai runs a twenty four hour helpline from a
tiny call center in the Indian city of beau Pal.
It's called Childline India and it gets hundreds of calls
a day horror stories from kids who tell Archina and
her staff that they're being abused, are forced to work,
or are in a number of other bad situations. When
(00:32):
Archina can, she sends in help, calling in government services
or the police helloa, what are you. When the pandemic hit,
Archina was prepared for the helpline to be inundated, and
(00:54):
it was. Some of the calls were what she expected
from already vulnerable kids. Others caught her by surprise. Suddenly
we started getting a lot of calls about child marriage.
Child marriage. These calls were coming from girls, sometimes as
young as twelve years old. They said their parents were
(01:14):
forcing them to get married, even though child marriage is
illegal under Indian law. Archinda tried to intervene, sometimes traveling
to remote villages with her staff. We tried to talk
to people and we said, keep why are you getting
such young girls married. Many of the girls they didn't
want it to get married. But when we tried to
stop the community people. They said, why are you? People
(01:37):
are stopping Let it happen. Across India, officials observed a
similar trend in marriages among teenagers and young adults surged
by as much as in some states. But Archinda noticed
something else. The calls from young girls to child line
would surge when death rates were highest. First logdown, they
(01:59):
were around trip before marriages will be stopped. The second
lockdown we found more of the marriages because there was
so much of detrit parents thing. Once we give the
girl married, at least my daughter is safe now. Archna
had a theory in the poorest and most desperate places,
marriage was seen as a lifeline. Dobless claims coming in,
(02:23):
I mean really jumping from the week before pretty brutal.
Three point two million record six point six million Americans
filed for unemployment last week. Engian working women abo the
worst impastage by the pandemic. We believe that we are
the impacting one girl, one family, one village, one country
(02:44):
at the time. Well, now to the billionaire boom. According
to Bloomberg, supriocht charters are up over three d and
a billionaire was created every six hours during this pandemic.
No one not waiting in line for a of the test.
With the public growth, it is time for a wealth
(03:04):
tax in America. Welcome back to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield.
One of the biggest and most devastating economic stories of
the pandemic has been how it just decimated women. Women
(03:25):
are more likely to face unemployment. Right now, the economy
is still bouncing back from the pandemic, but for working
women and mothers, it's a slow climb. This doesn't board
very good for the future. As things have started to
open up, the big question is when and how will
women recover. In India, things don't look good. Even before
(03:46):
the pandemic, it had one of the lowest labor force
participation rates for women. Just by March that fell to
less than ten This would be bad news anywhere. Getting
more people in the workforce helps economies grow, but the
scale is particularly stunning in India. Economists estimate that a
(04:10):
female employment were brought on par with male employment, India's
gross domestic product could expand by almost a third. But
encouraging Indian women to work starts by prioritizing school and
career over an early marriage. In some parts of the country,
that campaign starts with girls as young as twelve. Archana Chaudhry,
(04:31):
a reporter in Bloomberg's New Delhi bureau, has the story.
Every morning, more than two thousand girls traveled to the
Paddi Educational Society. It's in the banks of the Ganges
in the town of Badadadadi means great grandfather, great grandmother,
(04:58):
calling back to tradition, but the campus is actually modern
with computer labs and basketball cords. Since two thousand, the
school has tried to create opportunities for girls in the
surrounding villages. This is it comes a bit of pocket
of in there. Most families earn a few dollars that
they're working as farmers. One room hugs are common. A
(05:23):
single water buffalo might be a family's most valuable possession.
For many of these families, girls can be seen as
a financial burden, another amount to feed. That's where Paddada
Padad comes in. It's goal is to keep girls in
school against cultural forces that would have them get married
(05:44):
in their teens. To date, more than three d students
have graduated and gone on to lucrative jobs in I
or the government. When I visited the campus on a
recent day, one of the first signs I saw read
I will select my future husband. Before the day began,
(06:06):
students gathered in the courtyard. They sang in old Bollywood
hymn about walking on the side of righteousness. They decided
the Indian national anthem, and then together they made a promise,
Very harry, it is I pledge that I will not
(06:33):
marry before I'm twenty one years old. There in that courtyard,
that's where I met Mother Shama. She was smiling and
chatting with students. She has worked as a Hindi teacher
at Padada Padadi for more than a decade. She grew
up near the school in a family of educators. She
(06:53):
knows the complicated tangle of factors that hold women down.
Students at Padada pad they look up to mother, who
they see her as their guardian, as a kind of
surrogate mother. One student, a sixteen year old, said she
called motherho last year after her grandfather pressured her to
get married. He was worried he might get sick during
(07:15):
the pandemic and not live to see it. She spoke
to me during her lunch break in a small classroom
as other students shuffled around the hallway. There I was
very upset. I couldn't focus on anything. So I told
ma'am that my folks are pushing me to get married
and I want to study. She said, I will come
(07:37):
and talk with them. They cannot force you to get married.
She came home and spoke to my grandfather. I also
told him that I want to study, that I want
to join the army. After all our efforts. He agreed.
But Madhu Sharma told me, but Dadda Padadi's mission has
become harder during the pandemic, when girls could no longer
(07:59):
rely on the protect the bubble of the school. Administrators
purchased tablets for older students to ease the transition to
remote learning, and the school appointed teachers to visit villagers
to collect assignments since most students did not have regular
internet access or even phones. But as the lockdown went on,
(08:20):
girls found ways to call mother. They were tearful and panicked.
They told her their parents who are trying to get
them married. Mother, who spoke to the girl's parents on
their behalf part of her job is to dissuade them
from following through with weddings. Families told her they had
no other option. They worried that Grandma would get sick
(08:43):
and not leave to see an exchange of vows. Money
was also a factor. Restrictions and gatherings meant families could
avoid the massive multi day weddings in favor of smallest
ceremonies at home. There was also less pressure to be
a large dowry. Since most businesses shut, brides had an
(09:04):
easy excuse not to buy gifts for the groom's extended family.
The tradition is illegal, but still coming across in there
getting lockdown. During the lockdown, people thought that since children
weren't going to school, we wouldn't find out what's going
on for the students at Dada Padadi. The consequences of
(09:25):
getting married before they finished school are especially pronounced. When
a woman marries, she typically moves in with her husband
and in laws. Mother said, women become dependent and lose
ownership over their lives. A middle class woman in India
doesn't have a home to call her own. At the
(09:46):
husband's place. For every small thing, the mother in law says,
is this what you've learned from your mother? And the
husband tells her to leave his home after every little tiff,
so that home isn't hers either in old age the
home belongs to the sun. In two thousand fifteen, Prime
(10:07):
Minister Moody started a campaign called Batti Bat, which roughly
means save our daughters, Teach our daughters manunder It's an
(10:29):
initiative aim at keeping girls in school and reducing sex
selective abortion. The government has also tried to eradicate child marriage.
Last year, Movies administrations passed a proposal to raise the
legal marriage as for women from eighteen to twenty one,
which is what it is for men. But in many
villages the national laws are abstract and far away. Local
(10:52):
customs are set and enforced by local punch arts, which
is essentially a group of elders almost all men. And
while movies campaign to educate India's daughters received lots of publicity,
recent government audits found that much of the initiatives funds
remained unspent. I spoke to chargeon Joe's who manages the
(11:15):
Pa Dada Padi school. He said that initially when the
school is founded, administrators encountered resistance. Families didn't understand why
teachers cared so much about educating daughters. They will spend
on any amount of money on boys, but they will
not spend money on girls, even for food like milk.
(11:39):
If they are buying one litter of milk, and if
there are three girls and one boy, the boy will
get the major portion of the milk. He's a boy.
Girds are not supposed to how all these things, Chardon said,
Marriage is an intense pressure point for families in the district.
And while India's literacy rates arising and the number of
(11:59):
people being in absolute poverty has decreased, when it comes
to working women have lost ground. Mind cal Tranager Mazunda
dug a little deeper into the numbers. What did you
find drawn? It's interesting Archina, because what we're saying is
that female labor participation fell by about a third in
(12:22):
the years during the pandemic. In two thousand five, two
of women were in the labor market, and by two
thousand nine it dropped to around that's lower than any
other country in the G twenty except for Saudi Arabia.
As India's economy has grown, the women at the middle
and top of the income ladder have stopped working for them.
(12:46):
It's perceived as a marker of status. On the other hand,
women at the lowest rungs of society is still are
seen as potential earners. They often work menial or unpaid
jobs that are far from the former economy. In other words,
their labor isn't even counted. Rosa Abraham is an economist
(13:06):
at a zen Braimes University in the city of Bengaluru.
She said that either way, women have little choice in
the matter. It is the unfortunate situation that the position
to work is often not in the hands of the woman,
who said, it is negotiated by social structors, by patriarchy.
But the picture got even worse during the pandemic. During
(13:29):
the first lockdown in women were several times more likely
to lose their jobs than men. Rosa study which tracked
the career trajectories of twenty thousand Indians during the pandemic
found that many of the women never came back, so
women there was no return to work. In fact, what
we find was that if women lost work during the lockdown,
(13:54):
they were eleven times more likely than men do not
return to work. Rosa said things like increased domestic duties,
the lack of child care options, and school shutdowns all
help explain why women struggle to recover jobs and for
young girls who were pushed out of classrooms and into marriage,
their dreams of independence or a well paid office job.
(14:17):
We were replaced with what Rosa calls distress led employment
that means unpaid work in the home or taking care
of relatives. It's not that women are entering salaried workers
or as weege workers. They're not starting businesses. They are
simply entering into their existing family farm. Back at the
(14:50):
Padada Padadi Educational Society, Duma told me she understands that cycle.
Intimately before the Bandama, she said that school might see
only three child marriages a year. Over the past year,
Mother says she's prevented a dozen. She recalled a fifteen
year old who called her the peak of infections. In
(15:11):
one the girl was sobbing her parents had decided to
get her married, I say, Mother said. I went to
her place and spoke with her mother and father. I
first said, she's a small child and you don't have
to pay any expenses on her behalf. You're lucky to
have found a school where all you have to do
(15:32):
is send her there, So why are you snatching away
her dreams? Mother told me she stopped this marriage after
one conversation, but others a trick here. Sometimes she has
to go to the police or a district magistrate for help.
In one instance, a family refused to reconsider its plans
(15:52):
to marry off their fourteen year old. The school could
go to the government's child welfare office, but they would
need proof. They came up with a plan. The girl
would hide a copy of the wedding invitation in the
folds of her ka or a tunic and pass it
on to another student, who would bring it to mother
who soon after Mother who got a call from a
(16:15):
young man who refused to give his name. He told
mother who he had regardings of her phone conversations with
a girl. Ah, he said, madam, this is not a
good thing that you have done. He said the family
was backed into a corner, that they've been preparing for
the wedding, and her meddling would bring shame to the family.
(16:39):
He threatened to blackmail her and turned the community against
her if she continued. He said she'd regretted. Ah. He said,
you are going to find out in a few days
who I am and how strong I am. Mother, who
was used to death threats. In one instance, a family
had threatened to shoot her. This time, she wondered if
(17:02):
the entire village would come after her. When she went
to the police station, Mother said, officers told her not
to worry. The next day, the young man called again,
and mother Who drew him into a conversation. She was
surprised by what she learned. He was just a teenager
himself a farmer. He hadn't even finished school. I said, child,
(17:28):
then it is not your fault. I spoke to him
with a smile and told him that the problem was
his lack of education. After that call, Mother told me
the threats stopped. The wedding was called off, and the
girl went back to school. Of fourteen weddings planned during
the pandemic, Mother Who and other administrators stopped all but two.
(17:52):
Many girls, say Mother Who gives them permission to imagine
a different future for themselves, to strive for a life
of independent and freedom, to seek out fulfilling jobs, and
to live with dignity. When girls stole their education at
Badada Badai, they each blunt is sattling on campus. Years later, indeed,
(18:14):
it turn as women with their own paychecks. Those seedlings
have sprouted into trees. The Pardada Partory School can't alone
fight the weight of the cultural expectations that millions of
(18:37):
Indian women face. Prime Minister Moti is trying to push
India into what he calls um writ call or a
golden era of growth. But in April of this year,
India reached a disconcerting milestone. The majority of its nine
million person labor force had stopped looking for jobs Entirely.
(18:58):
Many of those people we're women. Next week, on the Paycheck,
we had to a place that's owned almost entirely by
one man. One of my biggest fears is that the
people of this community will be the ones that would
be caring for the elite rich that can't afford to
actually live here one day. And that's our full purpose.
(19:20):
Thanks for listening to the Paycheck. If you like our show,
please head on over to Apple Podcasts or where ever
you listen to podcasts to rate, review and subscribe. This
episode was hosted by me Rebecca Greenfield and reported by
Archana Chaudrey and Rona Joy at Mazoomdar. It was edited
by Kai Schultz and Janet Paskin, with help from Francesca Levi,
Rakhia Soluja, and Met We also had editing help from
(19:44):
Danielle Balbi, Shelly Banjo, Kristin V. Brown, Gilda de Carly,
Nicole Flato, and Elisa McDonald. This episode was produced by
Gilda de Carly and sound engineered by Matt Guime. Our
original music is by Leo Sidrin. The voiceovers you heard
were by Marry Joseph and Tamina Balvarda mooned special thanks
(20:04):
to Magnus Henrickson beginnin to Keeper, Margaret Sutherland, and Stacy Wong.
Francesca Levy is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. See you next week.
Archena Sahai runs a twenty four hour helpline from a
tiny call center in the Indian city of beau Pal.
It's called Childline India and it gets hundreds of calls
a day horror stories from kids who tell Archina and
her staff that they're being abused, are forced to work,
or are in a number of other bad situations. When
(00:32):
Archina can, she sends in help, calling in government services
or the police helloa, what are you. When the pandemic hit,
Archina was prepared for the helpline to be inundated, and
(00:54):
it was. Some of the calls were what she expected
from already vulnerable kids. Others caught her by surprise. Suddenly
we started getting a lot of calls about child marriage.
Child marriage. These calls were coming from girls, sometimes as
young as twelve years old. They said their parents were
(01:14):
forcing them to get married, even though child marriage is
illegal under Indian law. Archinda tried to intervene, sometimes traveling
to remote villages with her staff. We tried to talk
to people and we said, keep why are you getting
such young girls married. Many of the girls they didn't
want it to get married. But when we tried to
stop the community people. They said, why are you? People
(01:37):
are stopping Let it happen. Across India, officials observed a
similar trend in marriages among teenagers and young adults surged
by as much as in some states. But Archinda noticed
something else. The calls from young girls to child line
would surge when death rates were highest. First logdown, they
(01:59):
were around trip before marriages will be stopped. The second
lockdown we found more of the marriages because there was
so much of detrit parents thing. Once we give the
girl married, at least my daughter is safe now. Archna
had a theory in the poorest and most desperate places,
marriage was seen as a lifeline. Dobless claims coming in,
(02:23):
I mean really jumping from the week before pretty brutal.
Three point two million record six point six million Americans
filed for unemployment last week. Engian working women abo the
worst impastage by the pandemic. We believe that we are
the impacting one girl, one family, one village, one country
(02:44):
at the time. Well, now to the billionaire boom. According
to Bloomberg, supriocht charters are up over three d and
a billionaire was created every six hours during this pandemic.
No one not waiting in line for a of the test.
With the public growth, it is time for a wealth
(03:04):
tax in America. Welcome back to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield.
One of the biggest and most devastating economic stories of
the pandemic has been how it just decimated women. Women
(03:25):
are more likely to face unemployment. Right now, the economy
is still bouncing back from the pandemic, but for working
women and mothers, it's a slow climb. This doesn't board
very good for the future. As things have started to
open up, the big question is when and how will
women recover. In India, things don't look good. Even before
(03:46):
the pandemic, it had one of the lowest labor force
participation rates for women. Just by March that fell to
less than ten This would be bad news anywhere. Getting
more people in the workforce helps economies grow, but the
scale is particularly stunning in India. Economists estimate that a
(04:10):
female employment were brought on par with male employment, India's
gross domestic product could expand by almost a third. But
encouraging Indian women to work starts by prioritizing school and
career over an early marriage. In some parts of the country,
that campaign starts with girls as young as twelve. Archana Chaudhry,
(04:31):
a reporter in Bloomberg's New Delhi bureau, has the story.
Every morning, more than two thousand girls traveled to the
Paddi Educational Society. It's in the banks of the Ganges
in the town of Badadadadi means great grandfather, great grandmother,
(04:58):
calling back to tradition, but the campus is actually modern
with computer labs and basketball cords. Since two thousand, the
school has tried to create opportunities for girls in the
surrounding villages. This is it comes a bit of pocket
of in there. Most families earn a few dollars that
they're working as farmers. One room hugs are common. A
(05:23):
single water buffalo might be a family's most valuable possession.
For many of these families, girls can be seen as
a financial burden, another amount to feed. That's where Paddada
Padad comes in. It's goal is to keep girls in
school against cultural forces that would have them get married
(05:44):
in their teens. To date, more than three d students
have graduated and gone on to lucrative jobs in I
or the government. When I visited the campus on a
recent day, one of the first signs I saw read
I will select my future husband. Before the day began,
(06:06):
students gathered in the courtyard. They sang in old Bollywood
hymn about walking on the side of righteousness. They decided
the Indian national anthem, and then together they made a promise,
Very harry, it is I pledge that I will not
(06:33):
marry before I'm twenty one years old. There in that courtyard,
that's where I met Mother Shama. She was smiling and
chatting with students. She has worked as a Hindi teacher
at Padada Padadi for more than a decade. She grew
up near the school in a family of educators. She
(06:53):
knows the complicated tangle of factors that hold women down.
Students at Padada pad they look up to mother, who
they see her as their guardian, as a kind of
surrogate mother. One student, a sixteen year old, said she
called motherho last year after her grandfather pressured her to
get married. He was worried he might get sick during
(07:15):
the pandemic and not live to see it. She spoke
to me during her lunch break in a small classroom
as other students shuffled around the hallway. There I was
very upset. I couldn't focus on anything. So I told
ma'am that my folks are pushing me to get married
and I want to study. She said, I will come
(07:37):
and talk with them. They cannot force you to get married.
She came home and spoke to my grandfather. I also
told him that I want to study, that I want
to join the army. After all our efforts. He agreed.
But Madhu Sharma told me, but Dadda Padadi's mission has
become harder during the pandemic, when girls could no longer
(07:59):
rely on the protect the bubble of the school. Administrators
purchased tablets for older students to ease the transition to
remote learning, and the school appointed teachers to visit villagers
to collect assignments since most students did not have regular
internet access or even phones. But as the lockdown went on,
(08:20):
girls found ways to call mother. They were tearful and panicked.
They told her their parents who are trying to get
them married. Mother, who spoke to the girl's parents on
their behalf part of her job is to dissuade them
from following through with weddings. Families told her they had
no other option. They worried that Grandma would get sick
(08:43):
and not leave to see an exchange of vows. Money
was also a factor. Restrictions and gatherings meant families could
avoid the massive multi day weddings in favor of smallest
ceremonies at home. There was also less pressure to be
a large dowry. Since most businesses shut, brides had an
(09:04):
easy excuse not to buy gifts for the groom's extended family.
The tradition is illegal, but still coming across in there
getting lockdown. During the lockdown, people thought that since children
weren't going to school, we wouldn't find out what's going
on for the students at Dada Padadi. The consequences of
(09:25):
getting married before they finished school are especially pronounced. When
a woman marries, she typically moves in with her husband
and in laws. Mother said, women become dependent and lose
ownership over their lives. A middle class woman in India
doesn't have a home to call her own. At the
(09:46):
husband's place. For every small thing, the mother in law says,
is this what you've learned from your mother? And the
husband tells her to leave his home after every little tiff,
so that home isn't hers either in old age the
home belongs to the sun. In two thousand fifteen, Prime
(10:07):
Minister Moody started a campaign called Batti Bat, which roughly
means save our daughters, Teach our daughters manunder It's an
(10:29):
initiative aim at keeping girls in school and reducing sex
selective abortion. The government has also tried to eradicate child marriage.
Last year, Movies administrations passed a proposal to raise the
legal marriage as for women from eighteen to twenty one,
which is what it is for men. But in many
villages the national laws are abstract and far away. Local
(10:52):
customs are set and enforced by local punch arts, which
is essentially a group of elders almost all men. And
while movies campaign to educate India's daughters received lots of publicity,
recent government audits found that much of the initiatives funds
remained unspent. I spoke to chargeon Joe's who manages the
(11:15):
Pa Dada Padi school. He said that initially when the
school is founded, administrators encountered resistance. Families didn't understand why
teachers cared so much about educating daughters. They will spend
on any amount of money on boys, but they will
not spend money on girls, even for food like milk.
(11:39):
If they are buying one litter of milk, and if
there are three girls and one boy, the boy will
get the major portion of the milk. He's a boy.
Girds are not supposed to how all these things, Chardon said,
Marriage is an intense pressure point for families in the district.
And while India's literacy rates arising and the number of
(11:59):
people being in absolute poverty has decreased, when it comes
to working women have lost ground. Mind cal Tranager Mazunda
dug a little deeper into the numbers. What did you
find drawn? It's interesting Archina, because what we're saying is
that female labor participation fell by about a third in
(12:22):
the years during the pandemic. In two thousand five, two
of women were in the labor market, and by two
thousand nine it dropped to around that's lower than any
other country in the G twenty except for Saudi Arabia.
As India's economy has grown, the women at the middle
and top of the income ladder have stopped working for them.
(12:46):
It's perceived as a marker of status. On the other hand,
women at the lowest rungs of society is still are
seen as potential earners. They often work menial or unpaid
jobs that are far from the former economy. In other words,
their labor isn't even counted. Rosa Abraham is an economist
(13:06):
at a zen Braimes University in the city of Bengaluru.
She said that either way, women have little choice in
the matter. It is the unfortunate situation that the position
to work is often not in the hands of the woman,
who said, it is negotiated by social structors, by patriarchy.
But the picture got even worse during the pandemic. During
(13:29):
the first lockdown in women were several times more likely
to lose their jobs than men. Rosa study which tracked
the career trajectories of twenty thousand Indians during the pandemic
found that many of the women never came back, so
women there was no return to work. In fact, what
we find was that if women lost work during the lockdown,
(13:54):
they were eleven times more likely than men do not
return to work. Rosa said things like increased domestic duties,
the lack of child care options, and school shutdowns all
help explain why women struggle to recover jobs and for
young girls who were pushed out of classrooms and into marriage,
their dreams of independence or a well paid office job.
(14:17):
We were replaced with what Rosa calls distress led employment
that means unpaid work in the home or taking care
of relatives. It's not that women are entering salaried workers
or as weege workers. They're not starting businesses. They are
simply entering into their existing family farm. Back at the
(14:50):
Padada Padadi Educational Society, Duma told me she understands that cycle.
Intimately before the Bandama, she said that school might see
only three child marriages a year. Over the past year,
Mother says she's prevented a dozen. She recalled a fifteen
year old who called her the peak of infections. In
(15:11):
one the girl was sobbing her parents had decided to
get her married, I say, Mother said. I went to
her place and spoke with her mother and father. I
first said, she's a small child and you don't have
to pay any expenses on her behalf. You're lucky to
have found a school where all you have to do
(15:32):
is send her there, So why are you snatching away
her dreams? Mother told me she stopped this marriage after
one conversation, but others a trick here. Sometimes she has
to go to the police or a district magistrate for help.
In one instance, a family refused to reconsider its plans
(15:52):
to marry off their fourteen year old. The school could
go to the government's child welfare office, but they would
need proof. They came up with a plan. The girl
would hide a copy of the wedding invitation in the
folds of her ka or a tunic and pass it
on to another student, who would bring it to mother
who soon after Mother who got a call from a
(16:15):
young man who refused to give his name. He told
mother who he had regardings of her phone conversations with
a girl. Ah, he said, madam, this is not a
good thing that you have done. He said the family
was backed into a corner, that they've been preparing for
the wedding, and her meddling would bring shame to the family.
(16:39):
He threatened to blackmail her and turned the community against
her if she continued. He said she'd regretted. Ah. He said,
you are going to find out in a few days
who I am and how strong I am. Mother, who
was used to death threats. In one instance, a family
had threatened to shoot her. This time, she wondered if
(17:02):
the entire village would come after her. When she went
to the police station, Mother said, officers told her not
to worry. The next day, the young man called again,
and mother Who drew him into a conversation. She was
surprised by what she learned. He was just a teenager
himself a farmer. He hadn't even finished school. I said, child,
(17:28):
then it is not your fault. I spoke to him
with a smile and told him that the problem was
his lack of education. After that call, Mother told me
the threats stopped. The wedding was called off, and the
girl went back to school. Of fourteen weddings planned during
the pandemic, Mother Who and other administrators stopped all but two.
(17:52):
Many girls, say Mother Who gives them permission to imagine
a different future for themselves, to strive for a life
of independent and freedom, to seek out fulfilling jobs, and
to live with dignity. When girls stole their education at
Badada Badai, they each blunt is sattling on campus. Years later, indeed,
(18:14):
it turn as women with their own paychecks. Those seedlings
have sprouted into trees. The Pardada Partory School can't alone
fight the weight of the cultural expectations that millions of
(18:37):
Indian women face. Prime Minister Moti is trying to push
India into what he calls um writ call or a
golden era of growth. But in April of this year,
India reached a disconcerting milestone. The majority of its nine
million person labor force had stopped looking for jobs Entirely.
(18:58):
Many of those people we're women. Next week, on the Paycheck,
we had to a place that's owned almost entirely by
one man. One of my biggest fears is that the
people of this community will be the ones that would
be caring for the elite rich that can't afford to
actually live here one day. And that's our full purpose.
(19:20):
Thanks for listening to the Paycheck. If you like our show,
please head on over to Apple Podcasts or where ever
you listen to podcasts to rate, review and subscribe. This
episode was hosted by me Rebecca Greenfield and reported by
Archana Chaudrey and Rona Joy at Mazoomdar. It was edited
by Kai Schultz and Janet Paskin, with help from Francesca Levi,
Rakhia Soluja, and Met We also had editing help from
(19:44):
Danielle Balbi, Shelly Banjo, Kristin V. Brown, Gilda de Carly,
Nicole Flato, and Elisa McDonald. This episode was produced by
Gilda de Carly and sound engineered by Matt Guime. Our
original music is by Leo Sidrin. The voiceovers you heard
were by Marry Joseph and Tamina Balvarda mooned special thanks
(20:04):
to Magnus Henrickson beginnin to Keeper, Margaret Sutherland, and Stacy Wong.
Francesca Levy is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. See you next week.
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides.  Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer  Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.