The ability of women to participate in the labour force is the outcome of various economic and social factors including educational attainment, fertility rate and the age of marriage, economic growth/cyclical effects, and urbanization. In the recent years, India has scored significant gains in some of these parameters, including:

• The Indian economy is anticipated to be one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The IMF estimates India’s GDP to grow at around 9 percent in FY22.
• India’s total fertility rate (TFR) has declined from 2.2 in 2015-16 to 2.0 in 2019-21, indicating the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime has decreased.
• Female literacy rate has been increasing every decade with 8.86% in 1951 to 65.46% in 2011.

However, the country’s Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR) remains amongst the lowest in the world. The FLFPR declined steadily from 47.1 percent in 1987-88 to 23 percent in 2017-18, reaching its lowest since Independence. While it rose to 32.5 percent by 2020-21, it is still far below the 77 percent for men. The reasons for the decline are as follows:

• Unpaid work: Indian women were spending about 8X more hours on care work as compared to men, according to data released in 2019.
• Lack of care infrastructure: In India, women’s unpaid work is valued at 3.1 percent of the country’s GDP and yet, public sector expenditure on care infrastructure stands at less than 1 percent of the GDP.
• Reduced opportunities for work: Mechanization of farm and non-farm activities have also reduced opportunities for work. Nearly 12 million Indian women could lose their jobs by 2030 owing to automation, according to a McKinsey report.
• Income effect: With increasing household incomes, especially over the last three decades, the need for a “second income” has reduced. Consequently, families have withdrawn women from labour as a signal of prosperity.
• Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: It had a disproportionate impact on women’s employment compared to that of men. By April 2020, 37.1 percent of adult women in the workforce had lost their jobs, against 27.7 percent of men. The pandemic debilitated women-led enterprises and discouraged unemployed women from seeking work.

Measures to improve FLFPR in India:

• Establishing care facilities for children (e.g., Anganwadi centres) and elderly persons, and upgrading existing ones, with a strong focus on creating rural care infrastructure.
• Recognising ASHAS, ANMs, and AWWs as employees to ensure inclusion of their economic contribution in the calculation of India’s GDP.
• Employers should provide a range of flexible work arrangements including flex-time, reduced working hours, job-sharing etc. to nurture a more inclusive and accommodative culture.
• The government should organise sensitisation and awareness programmes aimed at inculcating gender-equitable attitudes and behaviours, and engaging men and boys on the issue of redistribution of domestic work.
• Establishing gender-based employment targets for urban public works and considering introducing wage subsidies to incentivise hiring women in MSMEs.
• Firms and NGOs should come together to invest in bridging the digital gender divide and offering long-term training to women. .

To chart a gender-sensitive socio-economic development, the government, private sector, media, and the social sector need to work together to improve the working conditions of women, reduce wage gaps, increase opportunities for women across sectors, and bring about behavioural change in society.