The more women work, the worse the gender parity?

First, the good news: India’s employment figures have soared since 2017–18, with the ministry of labour and employment reporting a rise from 475 million jobs to 643.3 million in 2023–24 — a net gain of 168.3 million new jobs. The government has hailed these numbers, especially the sharp increase in women’s labour force participation rate (LFPR) — from 23.3 per cent in 2017–18 to 41.7 per cent in 2023–24 — as progress toward its vaunted Viksit Bharat 2047 vision, reports a Business Standard analysis.

Now, the bad news: Beneath the glorious headlines being reported on a fast-closing gender gap, the reality is one of persistent disparities and tenuous availability of quality jobs (at least, for those who have the privilege to pick and choose). For the most abhorrent question here is whether ‘LFPR’ holds any meaning when women are forced to participate in unpaid labour, in their own homes or elsewhere.

Because yes, close to half the employment for women is actually unpaid ‘employment’ — hardly even worthy of the name; ‘exploitation’ sounds more like it, really.

Record gains — but gender gaps persist

Women’s LFPR has nearly doubled in the six years, climbing from 23.3 per cent in 2017–18 to 41.7 per cent in 2023–24, and the worker population ratio (WPR) has reached 40.3 per cent. Despite this remarkable growth, when you compare it to the men’s LFPR of 78.8 per cent, the gender gap remains stark.

Meanwhile, India’s female workforce participation also continues to lag behind global benchmarks: the national rate of 41.7 per cent is still short of the global average of 49 per cent, per the World Bank.

And remember, that 49 per cent is an average — of developed and developing nations, of more progressive and more frustratingly misogynistic contexts. After all, there’s really not much to crow about in being better than Pakistan (25 per cent) or Afghanistan (5.1 per cent), is there?

So let’s look at a more credible, if not always comparable neighbour and rival: China’s LFPR for women is 60 per cent. And, heavens forfend, but Bangladesh has as handily beaten at 44.2 per cent.

Further afield, both Brazil and South Africa — and perhaps surprisingly Russia — share the same women’s LFPR: 53 per cent.

Most gains from rural jobs and informal employment

The LFPR improvement is strongest in rural India, where it grew from 24.6 per cent to 47.6 per cent over the period, while urban women’s LFPR rose more modestly, from 20.4 per cent to 25.4 per cent. Yes, you read that right: just about a quarter of women in cities are working — apparently, socio-economic privilege comes with shocking socio-economic disprivilege. (Remind us again what the whole point of ‘Beti bachao, beti padhao’ was? Financial and social independence, was it? Maybe not... maybe we misunderstand...)

The bulk of rural women, meanwhile, are engaged in agriculture — a sector associated with low productivity and pay. Is it possible that the ‘increase’ in part an acknowledgement finally that women are ‘employed’ in agriculture — that they are not just engaged in ‘women’s work’ like threshing and winnowing and pounding of grain?

Furthermore, the majority of new jobs women have taken up are classified as ‘self-employment’ (which rose from 51.9 per cent to 67.4 per cent among women), casual work or unpaid family labour. They are not finding much of this ‘greater employment’ in the way of secure, formal-sector jobs. Or, to put it another way: women are working more; they are not being hired more. The old taboos and prejudices clearly persist in scads.

There's worse: Many women who moved from on from merely ‘domestic duties’ have apparently shifted to work in household enterprises — but this is unpaid work! Government surveys now count this unpaid work as ‘employment’, apparently, rather mendaciously overstating actual economic empowerment of women (and girls — remember, particularly in the domestic or household work context, it is legal to employ children as young as 14).

Job security still lacking, entry into the formal economy continues to elude females

While formal and salaried roles for women have grown in number, more than half of female wage workers are in fact labouring without written contracts or access to social security benefits. Informal and precarious jobs are the default lot for women, especially in lower socio-economic strata — which is where, thanks to the financial imperatives of their families, they are more likely to ‘get’ to work at all (though it’s really more that they have little choice but to eke out a livelihood for themselves and their children).

The net addition of female subscribers to the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) — 3.02 lakh more women in June 2025, 2.8 lakh in July — does show a positive shift, but the overall structure of women’s employment remains informal and insecure for most.

Among women in salaried jobs or women who are wage-earners, over half have signed no actual written contract. Even for educated women, the trend persists: 39.6 per cent of postgraduates and 23.9 per cent of women with higher secondary education are nominally ‘employed’, suggesting they contribute considerably to those ‘improved’ LFPR figures — but they are the minority, clearly, within their cohorts, where too it is informal labour that persists as the norm.

Women as drudges, aka ‘unpaid employment’

And this does not even begin to address the fact that even the government acknowledges that the ‘lion's share’ of caregiving — from newborns to senior citizens — falls to women (84 per cent of caregiving work is theirs in the 15–59 age group, and yes, children were included because see what we said about girls and child labour). A 2024 Time Spent survey actually found 41 per cent of women in this age group are caregivers, but only 21 per cent of men, with women spending on average 140 minutes per day at it and men only 74. In addition, in the same age range, women spent 305 minutes a day on unpaid domestic duties (men gave these jobs their all too — at 19 minutes a day).

Then there’s this curiosity: for women who are not engaged in any ‘economic activities’ — i.e., those who are not ‘working women’ or ‘labouring classes’ — the participation in unpaid domestic duties was 44.9 per cent in the rural context for (note, these might be older women or those with disabilities, and not by choice necessarily, before we get too excited; or those with no time or energy left after their actual ‘economic activities’). But in the urban context, where presumably many households actually employ domestic help as a norm, there are still 36.3 per cent of women doing unpaid domestic work, bringing our national average to 38.7 per cent.

Then consider this other puzzler:

• In the rural context, women’s employment in industries (as opposed to agriculture or services) was 13.6 per cent of all workers in 2017–18 — which has fallen slightly, to 12.5 per cent in 2023-24.

• The percentage of rural women in agriculture has gone up instead from 73.2 per cent to 76.9 per cent in that same period

• In services, rural women have fallen from 13.2 per cent to 10.5 per cent of the workforce.

• In the urban context, women went from 30.1 per cent of workers in industries in 2017–18 to 27.7 per cent in 2023–24.

• Urban women workers in the service industry, formal or informal, went from 25.2 per cent to 20.2 per cent of the total.

• While 57 per cent of the urban workers in agriculture (somehow) were women in 2017–18, they became a whopping 64.4 of the urban agricultural workforce in 2023–24.

Consider not just what this means for women’s place and prospects in ‘progressive’ New India. Consider also what this means about employers attitudes to employing women over men. So much for period policies and maternity benefits and support for parenting duties...

Credit to the Govt of India for its policy and reform agenda?

The substantial rise in female workforce participation has been credited to flagship government programmes such as the Mudra Yojana, Skill India, Start-Up India and Stand-Up India, which support female entrepreneurship and skill development — at least on paper.

And sure, some of these schemes have contributed some promising ‘headline statistics’. But they clearly have yet to close the persistent gender and wage gaps, address the informalisation of the female workforce or counter occupational gender apartheid. Deep penetration into the job market, actual enforcement of labour and gender and child protection laws is lagging... and clearly there has been a perhaps-intuitive lacuna in addressing urban inequalities and gender stereotypes.

Bottomline: Women’s work in India still not keeping pace with ‘progress’

India’s labour market is structurally transforming, sure, with historic increases in total job creation and women’s participation. Yet, the quality and inclusiveness of these opportunities are out of step with our ‘Viksit Bharat’ vision, surely?

Most new jobs for women are still in low-paid, informal sectors. Deep gender gaps remain, reflected in lower participation rates compared to global peers — and painfully high unpaid ‘employment’. True progress toward meaningful inclusion and equality will rely not just on job growth, but on reforms advancing workplace security, wage parity and equal access for women in every sphere of economic life.

India’s historic job gains and the women’s workforce surge are steps towards a broad social and economic transformation, certainly. Yet, the struggle for gender parity, dignified employment and secure livelihoods continues — belying statistics of apparent progress.

Deepening gender disparities and unexpected urban disprivilege along gender lines are among the statistics less often showcased in discussions of the ‘world’s third-largest economy’.

Meaningful progress will require not only more jobs, but better jobs for women — and a continued national commitment to closing the gender gap, formalising all forms of employment, ensure employment is actually financially compensated and at a fair rate (enough for a woman to make a living wage, and not just bring in a supplemental income) and making workplaces truly inclusive for all.