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