The contentious decision by the Donald Trump administration to impose a one-time, $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa petitions will reshape workforces in the United States of America and India. After all, Indians, data reveal, have been one of the highest beneficiaries of the H-1B visa programme. But an important distinction seems to have been lost in all the ensuing noise: the rise in the fee is expected to have a disproportionate adversarial impact on women applicants from India. Men already outnumber women applicants for the H-1B visa by 3:1. Women also earn significantly lower wages than their male counterparts in this programme even though the women applying are, on an average, more educated than their male peers. This means that the cost of the new visa will consume most, all or even more than the expected annual pay of women workers, making it economically unviable for employers to employ them. Worse, many smaller or mid-sized tech firms or start-ups may altogether withdraw from sponsoring new H-1Bs after the cost shock. Incidentally, women are overrepresented among smaller firms or non-traditional career trajectories and will thus face the challenge of a shrinking field of opportunities. There is another revealing facet. Parsing similar datasets from China would reveal that the number of male and female applicants for H-1B visas from that country are almost on a par, ensuring that it would be merit and not gender that would decide the fates of the new applicants. The problem with India, thus, starts at home. India’s tech industry has a significant gender gap, with women making up just 34% of the tech workforce, holding fewer senior leadership positions, and experiencing slow career progression. In fact, the United Nations Women had found that the H-1B visa programme was one of the few channels through which Indian women working in the IT sector could expand their opportunities, gain exposure, and negotiate for higher pay.
The long-term consequence of this avenue closing will be a deepening of the already entrenched gender gap. With employment opportunities drying up, women will be further discouraged from pursuing a career in tech. American firms could respond creatively, absorb the costs for promising women candidates or commit to transparent audits of whom they sponsor so that the fee does not become an excuse to perpetuate gender biases. Indian policymakers, on the other hand, must consider countermeasures by crafting special grants for women choosing to work in tech. That could offer a shield against Mr Trump’s blow.