Women and Work in India: Descriptive Evidence and a Review of Potential Policies

“Yet, nearly one-third of Indian housewives express an interest in working ( Fletcher, Pande, and Moore 2018 .”

“The discourse on women’s unpaid work is exclusively pertinent in the Indian context because women’s labor force participation rate is very low and has seen a declining trend over the last decade probably because majority of them are moving into the domain of ‘domestic duties’ (Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“2 impact on mothers’ labor supply, which is not surprising given the low levels of female labor force participation in India (Afridi et al. (2016), Fletcher et al. (2017)).”

“This issue is particularly salient in rural India, where female labor force participation has been documented to be remarkably low, and falling (Afridi et al., 2018; Fletcher et al., 2017) over the last several decades, despite increasing levels of education.”

“This perceived marriage market return to education may be important in understanding why both female education and age of marriage in India has continued to increase while female labour force participation has fallen further from an already low base (Fletcher, Pande, and Moore 2017).”

“This finding is consistent with small short-run effects reported in Fuhr et al. (2019) after our data collection began. This may be because the control group in the THPP trial shows high rates of spontaneous recovery, leaving little room for further reductions in depression. Perinatal depression may be more likely tha…”

“In contrast to women, there is a positive relationship between education and men’s LFP (Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“, 1990) and that a significant reason for low labour force participation of women are often factors on labour demand side, including the nature of work available rather than the woman’s or her household’s characteristics (Fletcher et al., 2017; Verick, 2014).”

“An important feature of the Indian labormarket today is the presence of large gender gaps in labor force participation (Fletcher, Moore, and Pande 2018).”

“12 literature indicates that women prefer jobs near home due to mobility restrictions, safety concerns and the need to balance care work with market work (Fletcher et al., 2019) as well as a guaranteed job (Dhingra & Machin, 2020).”

“Thus, augmenting ICDS staffing by providing jobs for women in the same village (as done in this study), may also increase female labor force participation, which is especially low in India (Moore, Fletcher, and Pande 2018).”

“Introduction With just under a quarter of women in the labor force, India has one of the lowest rates of female labor force participation (LFP) in the world (Fletcher, Pande, and Moore 2017; Lahoti and Swaminathan 2016).”

“The decline is larger in rural India among women with secondary education (Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“An important feature of the Indian labor market today is the presence of large gender gaps in labor force participation (Fletcher et al. 2018).”

“This perceived marriage market return to education may be important in understanding why female education in India has continued to increase while female labor force participation has fallen further from an already low base (Fletcher, Pande, and Moore 2017).”

“Therefore, lower access to assets might lead to lower female entrepreneurial activity.3 Such lack of asset ownership among women is pervasive in developing countries (Duflo, 2012; Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“Further support comes from Indian labor force data where one-third of housewives state a preference to work; bringing these women into the labor force would double female labor force participation rates (Fletcher et al., 2018).”

“Despite these patriarchal norms, women themselves are quite willing to work and the men in the household are supportive of it (Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“About one-third of married Indian women out of the workforce expressed their desire to work, and just bringing these women to the labor force could raise female labor force participation by 80% (Field et al. 2016b; Fletcher, Pande, and Moore 2018).”

“, 2019) and significantly increased work force participation by women (Desai & Joshi, 2019) in response to workfare support this notion and point towards job creation, reinforced by overall growth (Pande et al., 2017),(3) as a key to higher female labour force participation (Chatterjee, Murgai, & Rama, 2015).”

“Most of the women's work goes unpaid as the major contribution is towards unorganized and unprotected sector (Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“A study by Fletcher et al. (2017) also pointed out that women at all levels of education and those with vocational training were more likely to be part of the workforce than those with no vocational training.”

“This is an important policy question which countries like India have recently been grappling with (Fletcher et al, 2018).”

“From a policy perspective, our study explores the space of collectivist strategies to improve women’s work participation in India, which remains one of the lowest in the world (Lahoti and Swaminathan 2016; Fletcher, Pande, and Moore 2017).”

“The literature presents many explanations for why Indian women have been withdrawing from the labor force (Rangarajan et al., 2011; Chowdhury, 2011; Himanshu, 2011; Kannan and Raveendran, 2012; Neff et al., 2012; Kapsos et al., 2014; Chatterjee et al., 2015; Klasen and Pieters, 2015; Sorsa et al., 2015; Andrés et al.,…”

“Fletcher, Pande, and Moore (2017) also pointed out that women across all levels of education and those with vocational training were more likely to be part of the workforce than those without any vocational training.”

“1 It has been of great interest to researchers and policy-makers on how to enhance female labour force participation in these countries (Fletcher, Pande, and Troyer 2017; Dean and Jayachandran 2019; Shonchoy, Fujii, and Raihan 2019; Jayachandran 2020; Chatterjee and Sircar 2021; Makino forthcoming).”

“However, female labor force participation is quite low in India due to relatively restricted economic opportunities for women (Fletcher et al. (2017), Afridi et al. (2016)); therefore female education may not have high perceived returns on the labor market.”

“Institutional factors such as laws limiting employment to certain shifts or total hours (Fletcher et al., 2019) can reduce women’s employment, but are also reflective of wider aims to limit female mobility and may reflect societal norms or perceptions of acceptable female behavior.”

“It is argued that access to information about jobs is a constraint and social norms often dictate that women devote most of their time to domestic duties rather than looking for work (Fletcher et al. 2018).”

“Related Literature Our paper builds on a large literature documenting the pervasive-ness of gender gaps, in particular in developing countries (Jayachandran, 2015; Fletcher et al., 2019; Jayachandran, 2021; Duflo, 2012; Klasen, 2019; Agte et al., 2024; Gottlieb et al., 2024).”

“On the demand side, studies contend that the sectors that hired women workers have witnessed slower expansion (Klasen & Pieters 2015; Chatterjee et al. 2015; Mehrotra & Sinha 2017), which limited employment opportunities for women in India (Fletcher et al. 2017).”

“…public, which is observed in South Asian countries), patriarchy, and Islam are often considered as reasons for the low rate of women ’ s paid-work participation in these countries (Dildar 2015; Fletcher, Pande, and Troyer 2017; Bernhardt et al. 2018; Dean and Jayachandran 2019; Jayachandran 2021).”

“Identifying ways to reverse or at least arrest this decline is thus a priority for policy (Fletcher et al. 2017) and especially so in light of current”

“Preceding this, a pilot survey was conducted in 1998-99, encompassing a transformative 20-year period characterized by rapid urbanization, population surges, and economic expansion (Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“India has witnessed a secular decline in women ’ s labor market participation, despite a continual increase in girls ’ schooling over time (Afridi, Dinkelman, and Mahajan 2018; Fletcher, Pande, and Moore 2017).”

“This can be explained by the higher percentage of men practicing social work in these countries (Addati et al., 2018; Fletcher et al., 2017; Understanding Gender Equality in Zimbabwe, 2020).”

“Women in India are less likely to pursue employment and demonstrate a more significant mismatch (compared to male counterparts) between the skills possessed and the jobs they demand (Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“This aligns with previous research showing that marriage is one of the most important predictors of the labor force status of women, perhaps even more important than childbearing status (Fletcher et al., 2018).”

“Premarket factors and labor market exclusion in the Indian labor market 44 compared to domestic work, non-domestic work is more likely to be correlated with empowerment (Fletcher, Pande, and Moore 2018).”

“…2011), increasing household incomes (Himanshu, 2011), lack of employment opportunities in rural areas (Mazumdar and Neetha, 2011), prevailing cultural and social constraints (Chowdhury, 2011) and increasing involvement of women in unpaid domestic and caregiving activities (Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“In India, for example, women’s participation has stagnated or even declined, illustrating that improvements in human capital alone cannot overcome restrictive norms, structural barriers, and limited labor market opportunities [3, 4].”

“Even in countries like India, where women’s labor force participation is low—and declining overall (Fletcher et al. 2018)—the number of women entering the informal economy has been increasing (ILO 2020; Mitra 2005).”

“According to the World Bank (2023), India’s female labor force participation rate (hence-forth FLFPR) is 32.7%, which ranks 165th among 187 countries worldwide, and this rate has seen a secular decline between 2004 and 2012.”

“These are likely to apply to households with less educated, low-wage women, consistent with empirical evidence as documented above and in recent literature (Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“The importance of this finding arises from the fact that effective labour market engagement of young educated women may gradually incentivise educated women from other age-cohorts to enter the labour force (Fletcher et al., 2017).”

“Nevertheless, an increasing body of literature has discussed the low and declining involvement of women in the labour force in recent years (Fletcher et al., 2017; Mehrotra & Parida, 2017).”

“A plethora of studies tried to understand this secular drop in the Indian context (Afridi et al. 2018; Mehrotra and Parida 2017; Fletcher, Pande and Moore, 2017; Andres et al., 2017; Heath and Jayachandran, 2016; Chatterjee, Murgai and Rama, 2015; Neff, Sen and Kling, 2012).”

“…disparities are present in labor markets, where women face lower salaries than men, participate less in the labor force, work fewer hours, or in less attractive occupations (Blau and Kahn, 2003, 2007; Olivetti and Petrongolo, 2008; Klasen and Lamanna, 2009; Blau and Kahn, 2013; Pande et al., 2017).”

“Given that India is among the countries with the lowest labour force participation rates of women worldwide (see Fletcher, Pande, and Moore 2018), research to further decode the barriers in place is much needed.”

“Pande, Moore, and Fletcher (2017) demonstrated that a significant proportion of women in urban India are willing to take up paid employment but were not counted as unemployed because they had abandoned or were not actively searching for jobs.”

“Statistics show that women make up 19.9% of India’s total labour force [2].”

“However, infrastructure improvements alone do not necessarily lead to higher labor force participation if there is weak labor demand or persistent social barriers to female employment (Chen et al., 2014; Fletcher et al., 2017 ; Narayan et al., 2021 ).”

“Demand for part-time but regular work is the preference of middle-aged women, while full-time work is likely to be preferred by younger women (Fletcher et al., 2017; Jensen, 2012).”

“…continue to face unique obstacles to their labour force participation, including cultural norms, domestic responsibilities, and age-related biases (Fletcher et al., 2017). thus, exploring the differences in labour force participation and life satisfaction between older males and females becomes…”