IIFT 2016 Question Paper

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions given at the end of each passage.

Typically women participate in the labour force at a very high rate in poor rural countries. The participation rate then falls as countries industrialise and move into the middle-income class. Finally, if the country grows richer still, more families have the resources for higher education for women and from there, they often enter the labour force in large numbers. Usually, economic growth goes hand in hand with the emancipation of women. Among rich countries, according to a 2015 study, female labour force participation ranges from nearly 80 percent in Switzerland to 70 percent in Germany and less than 60 percent in the United States and Japan. Only 68 percent of Canadian women participated in the workforce in 1990; two decades later, that increased to 74 percent largely due to reforms including tax cuts for second earners and new childcare services. In the Netherlands, the female labour participation rate doubled since 1980 to 74 percent as a result of expanded parental leave policies and the spread of flexible, part-time working arrangements. 

In a 2014 survey of 143 emerging countries, the World Bank found that 90 percent have at least one law that limits the economic opportunities available to women. These laws include bans or limitations on women owning property, opening a bank account, signing a contract, entering a courtroom, travelling alone, driving or controlling family finances. Such restrictions are particularly prevalent in the Middle East and South Asia with the world’s lowest female labour force participation, 26 and 35 percent respectively. According to the data available with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), between 2004 and 2011, when the Indian economy grew at a healthy average of about 7 percent, there was a decline in female participation in the country’s labour force from over 35 percent to 25 percent. India also posted the lowest rate of female participation in the workforce among BRIC countries. 

India’s performance in female workforce participation stood at 27 percent, significantly behind China (64 percent), Brazil (59 percent), Russian Federation (57 percent), and South Africa (45 percent). The number of working women in India had climbed between 2000 and 2005, increasing from 34 percent to 37 percent, but since then, the rate of women in the workforce has to fallen to 27 percent as of 2014, said the report citing data from the World Bank. The gap between male and female workforce participation in urban areas in 2011 stood at 40 percent, compared to rural areas where the gap was about 30 percent. However, in certain sectors like financial services, Indian women lead the charge. 

While only one in 10 Indian companies are led by women, more than half of them are in the financial sector. Today, women head both the top public and private banks in India. Another example is India’s aviation sector, 11.7 percent of India’s 5,100 pilots are women, versus 3 percent worldwide. But these successes only represent a small section of women in the country. India does poorly in comparison to its neighbours despite a more robust economic growth. 

In comparison to India, women in Bangladesh have increased their participation in the labour market, which is due to the growth of the ready-made garment sector and a push to rural female employment. In 2015, women comprised of 43 percent of the labour force in Bangladesh. The rate has also increased in Pakistan, albeit from a very low starting point, while participation has remained relatively stable in Sri Lanka. Myanmar with 79 percent and Malaysia with 49 percent are also way ahead of India. Lack of access to higher education, fewer job opportunities, the lack of flexibility in working conditions, as well as domestic duties are cited as factors behind the low rates. Marriage significantly reduced the probability of women working by about 8 percent in rural areas and more than twice as much in urban areas, said an Assocham report. ILO attributes this to three factors: increasing educational enrolment, improvement in earning of male workers that discourage women’s economic participation, and lack of employment opportunities at certain levels of skills and qualifications discouraging women to seek work. The hurdles to working women often involve a combination of written laws and cultural norms. Cultures don’t change overnight but laws can. 

The IMF says that even a small step such as countries granting women the right to open a bank account can lead to substantial increase in female labour force participation over the next seven years. According to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), even a 10 percent increase in women participating in the workforce can boost gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.3 percent. The OECD recently estimated that eliminating the gender gap would lead to an overall increase in GDP of 12 percent in its member nations between 2015 and 2030. The GDP gains would peak close to 20 percent in both Japan and South Korea and more than 20 percent in Italy. A similar analysis by Booz and Company showed that closing gender gap in emerging countries could yield even larger gains in GDP by 2020, ranging from a 34 percent gain in Egypt to 27 percent in India and 9 percent in Brazil.

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions given at the end of each passage.

PASSAGE 4

The Cyclopses according to mythology were a race of bad tempered and rather stupid one eyed giants. Not perhaps a great portend for a new generation of robots. But Andrew Davison a computer scientist at Imperial College, London, thinks one eye is enough for a robot, provided its brain can think fast enough. For a robot to work autonomously it has to understand its environment. Stereoscopic vision, integrating the images from two eyes looking at the same thing from different angles is one approach to achieve this, but it involves a lot of complicated computer processing. The preferred method these days therefore is Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) which uses sensors such as laser based range finders that see by bouncing beams of light off their surroundings and timing the return. Dr. Davison however wants to replace the range finders which are expensive and fiddly with a digital camera, which is small, cheap, and well understood. With this in mind he is developing ways to use a single moving video camera to create continually updated 3D maps that can guide even the most hyperactive robots on its explorations. His technique involves collecting and integrating images taken from different angles as the camera goes on its travels. The trick is to manage to do this in real time, at frame rates of 100-1,000 per second. The shape of the world pops out easily from laser data because it represents a direct contour map of the surrounding area. A camera captures this geometry indirectly and so needs more (and smarter) computation if it is to generate something good enough for a self - directing robot. The answer is a form of triangulation, tracking features such as points and edges from one frame to the next. With enough measurements of the same set of features from different viewpoints, it is possible if you have a fast enough computer program to estimate their positions and thus by inference the location of the moving camera. However, developing such a program is no mean feat. In the milliseconds between successive frames, relevant information from each fresh image must be extracted and fused with the current map to produce an updated version. The higher the frame rate, the less time there is to do this work.

Use the words in the table below to solve the questions.

Each question has explained the meaning of two words from the above table. Identify the correct matching words from the table.