This piece was originally published in Feminism in India on 21 May 2024.
India's female labour force participation rate has remained stubbornly low for decades — a paradox in an economy that has otherwise seen substantial growth. This article examines why that stagnation persists, and what a more honest policy response might look like.
The starting point is gender norms. India's social fabric assigns women an outsized share of domestic and caregiving responsibilities, and this is not merely a cultural observation — it has direct economic consequences. Data consistently shows that women in India spend approximately six hours per day on unpaid domestic chores, compared to under one hour for men. This asymmetry effectively prices women out of formal employment, not because they lack capability or ambition, but because the economy refuses to account for the labour that sustains it.
Labour law compounds the problem. The dominant framework in Indian employment regulation is built around what labour economists call the "Standard Employment Relationship" — full-time, continuous, formally contracted work. This model was designed with a particular worker in mind, and that worker was not a woman responsible for a household. The result is that informal workers — who are disproportionately women, particularly in agriculture and domestic service — fall outside the protections and visibility that formal labour law provides.
The analysis also points to demand-side failures: employer discrimination, occupational segregation, and the absence of workplace infrastructure (safe transport, crèches, flexible hours) that would make formal employment viable for women with caregiving responsibilities.
Corrective policy measures require intervention at multiple levels — from reforming the legal definition of "worker" to recognise informal and part-time employment, to investing in care infrastructure, to addressing discriminatory hiring practices through targeted incentives and accountability mechanisms.
Read the full article on Feminism in India.