India's Missing Women at Work: Unlocking the Key to the 'Viksit Bharat' Dream

The Main Explanatory

India’s ambition to achieve 'Viksit Bharat' status by 2047 hinges on sustained high economic growth, a goal that economists argue is unattainable without the full economic participation of its female population. However, the data on women's employment presents a complex and contested picture.

What is the scale of the challenge?

According to the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS 2022-23), India's Female Labour Force Participation Rate has risen to 37%. While an improvement from the low of 23.3% in 2017-18, this figure remains one of the lowest among major economies. It lags significantly behind neighbours like Bangladesh (40%) and China (61%), and is far below the OECD average of 57%. The challenge extends beyond mere participation to the quality of work. A large proportion of employed women are in low-productivity, informal, and unpaid roles, particularly in agriculture. Furthermore, unemployment among educated young women is a growing concern. Analysis by economists Santosh Mehrotra and Jajati Keshari Parida shows the number of young women (aged 15-29) not in education, employment, or training (NEET) grew from 84 million in 2012 to over 100 million by 2018.

Why has female work participation been historically low?

The decline in female WPR between 2004-05 and 2017-18 aligns with the 'U-shaped hypothesis' of Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin, which posits that female labour participation first declines and then rises as an economy develops. In India, the initial decline was driven by rising agricultural productivity reducing the need for manual labour, where women were concentrated. As household incomes rose, families could afford to withdraw women from strenuous farm work, a trend coupled with a positive increase in educational enrolment for girls. However, the expected 'uptick' of the U-curve, which should have been driven by women entering the formal non-farm sector, failed to materialise adequately. The structure of India's economic growth has been a key barrier. Growth has been concentrated in capital-intensive sectors like IT and finance, which create fewer jobs. Conversely, labour-intensive sectors that traditionally employ women—such as textiles, garments, and food processing—witnessed a fall in absolute employment between 2013 and 2019, according to Mehrotra and Parida.