‘Returnship programmes are underutilised’
The Hindu
A new study notes that hiring women on a career break is still abysmally low in India; and that back-to-work initiatives usually flounder for want of a right design structure
For all the buzz around returnship programmes for women, they remain an “underutilised trump card” in the war for talent — that is the main finding of a new study by Zinnov, a management consulting and strategy advisory firm.
The study notes that while over one lakh qualified women professionals in India have left the workforce in the last five years for various reasons, only two per cent of them have been reintegrated into it.
In a vast number of cases, there is no returnship programme for women; where they exist, only a handful of them are really effectual.
More than 2.6 lakh village and ward volunteers in Andhra Pradesh, once celebrated as the government’s grassroots champions for their crucial role in implementing welfare schemes, are now in a dilemma after learning that their tenure has not been renewed after August 2023 even though they have been paid honoraria till June 2024. Disowned by both YSRCP, which was in power when they were appointed, and the current ruling TDP, which made a poll promise to double their pay, these former volunteers are ruing the day they signed up for the role which they don’t know if even still exists