Female labour force

participation in India
Resolving the conundrum

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 Conundrum
• High growth rates yet fall in female labour force participation since the mid
2000s.
• FLFP often related to
• 1.Changes in labour market structure
• 2. Social norms regarding women’s work and
• 3.Cultural factors such as religion, social mobility and family structure

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FLFP – Female Labour Force Participation
• Economic and demographic conditions should point to an increase in FLFP
• High economic growth, averaging between 6 and 7% in 1990s and 2000s
• Demographically, our share of working age population is currently the highest
• Fall in fertility allowing women to be free to work
• If women leave the labour force, economy and household well-being will suffer
• Raising the participation of women in the labour force can boost the growth rate by
2 percentage points over time

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 India and neighbouring countries
• India has one of the lowest female labour force participation rates
• International Labour Organisation ranks India’s FLFP rate at 121 out of 131
countries in 2013, one of the lowest in the world
• Lowest in South Asia, apart from Pakistan
• Ours 27%, China’s 63.9%, Bangladesh 57.4%, Nepal 79.9% and Sri Lanka
35.1%.
• Pakistan 23.3%
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 Decline; stagnation
• Consistent decline since the 1970s
• Fell from 35% to 27% between 1990 and 2016 (World Bank Study)
• NSS data for India show that LFP rates of women aged 25-54 have
stagnated at about 26-28% in urban areas, and fallen substantially from 57%
to 44% in rural areas, between 1987 and 2011.
• Latest 2011-12 NSS estimates – 25.3% in rural areas and 15.5% in urban
areas.

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 Feminization U hypothesis?

• FLFP high in lower income countries as well as upper- middle and high
income economies
• Low in lower middle income countries creating a U shaped relationship between
national income and FLFP.
• More women in labour force at lower levels of prosperity and education, decline,
then rises again.
• Weak U in India?
• FLFP rates are 22% points below their expected level in a feminization U curve.
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 Structural conditions affecting FLFP
• Separation of work from home
• Stigma against females working outside the home (generally, or in particular
sectors)
• Societal norms that affect unmarried and married women
• Rural – purdah, seclusion, caste norms, (lack of counting of home-based,
unpaid work)
• Urban - Night shifts, safety and security issues, distance from home

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 Education and FLFP
• At present, a rising trend of women in education for longer periods
• Gender Parity in enrollment in secondary school
• Leads to their absence from the LF
• Once more women have more education, they are likely to return to the labour
force
• However, conflict between marriage and work kicks in at this point
• Also lack of “respectable” jobs
• Does education play other roles?
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 Declining child labour (6-14 age group)
• Fell from 10.6 million in 1999-2000 to 3.7 million in 2011-12
• Fewer female child labourers in the workforce

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 Changing domestic responsibilities
• Decline highest in the age cohort 30-34 yrs followed by 35-39 yrs
• In rural areas, the percentage of women engaged in domestic duties
increased from 51.8% to 59.7%
• As female children and young girl move into education, mothers have to
shoulder more work.
• An effect of gendered duties – women’s unpaid domestic work increases

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 Contd.
• Nuclearization of families; less support from other family members
• India’s gender chore gap (amount of housework done by women vs men) is
the largest of any country for which data is available.
• Another factor:
• Fall in fertility means women will have more time to devote to work
• Would lead to a fall in unpaid workers
• But decline would be for younger women who are in education now
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 Rural areas
• Chatterjee, Raveendran and Kannan
• Stagnation in agriculture
• Non-availability of non-farm rural jobs
• Lack of availability of ag and non ag jobs in rural areas reason for declining
participation

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 Mechanization of agriculture
• Increasing use of seed drills, fertilizer drills for sowing and planting. Power
weeders for weeding, harvesters and threshers
• Much of this work was traditionally handled by women –
• Men take over mechanized work displacing women, especially of marginal
and subsistence households.

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 Decline in household level animal farming
• Activities by women:
• Raising cattle, buffaloes, goats, sheep
• Production of milk, and other dairy products, production of eggs etc.
• No. of rural women engaged in these activities declined absolutely by half from 16
to 8 million in seven years. (2004-5 to 2011-12)
• Loss of common property resources
• On the other hand, dairying is becoming more popular – but mostly undertaken by
better-off farmers; even if wage employment in this sector grows, it won’t be for
women
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 Fall in demand for labour-intensive products

• In any crisis women face increased competition from men for scarce jobs
• Post the global economic crisis in 2008, negative export growth – trade
contraction
• Demand for Agro products like cashews, oil-meal, processed food
handicrafts, textile products etc. in which women participate more declined

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 Structural factors
• Growth has been in service sector that requires higher level skills and few
women possess these
• Female entrepreneurship has been rising in manufacturing and services yet
most of these are in the subsistence sector like street vendors etc.

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 Women specific hazards in the workplace
• Patriarchal society
• Male bosses
• Sexual harassment
• Workplaces are built with a male worker in mind
• Absence of toilets for women and other infrastructure – leaving them open to
harassment
• However, these have been around for ever so cannot explain recent fall in FLFP
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 Are so many women really missing from the
workforce
• Hirway – not missing but are in sectors that are difficult to measure
• Hard to demarcate from unpaid family work
• Time-use surveys can give us a better idea

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 Income effect
• Rising household income; rising rural wages from 2006-07
• Opportunity cost of domestic work increases while that of paid labour
decreases
• Hence “withdrawal from the labour force”
• Srinivas – “status trap”

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 Rising family earnings (income effect) and
Status production
• Income effect of husband’s earnings (upward mobility of family, status
considerations)
• Women withdrawn from work
• “Status production”
• “Concerted cultivation”
• Effect of doing only unpaid house and care-work resulting in
hidden/uncalculated value of human capital production

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 Unpacking upward family mobility
• Occupational as well as geographic mobility of husband
• Marriage migration of women and compulsory patrilocality
• Appropriate jobs not available for women
• “Respectable jobs” – in public sector not private sector, salaried, in sync with
household duties etc.

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 Gendered effects
• If women are not in paid/productive work their status is much lower
• We have to separate family status and woman’s status
• Results in dowry demands for ‘unproductive member’ being added to the
family
• Are there lower dowries for working women?

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 Gendered effects
• Lower status leads to unwantedness of daughters (seen as a burden)
• Relationship between rising incomes, family mobility and deteriorating sex
ratios since the late 1980s
• Daughters as burdens; daughter elimination

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 Role of policies
• Employment policies
• Role of macro, trade and structural policies
• Bangladesh – export oriented, manufacturing-centred growth strategy lead to
increasing female employment opportunities
• Same in China
• India’s growth strategy – has focused on high domestic demand and high
value service exports – generate too few opportunities for women
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 Facilitating FLFP
• Ensuring land rights, providing credit and extension services
• Expanding vocational training from just beauty business
• Increasing investments in health and education where a lot of women work
• Decreasing the double burden – home and work - and facilitating working women
• Child care facilities
• Hostel/housing facilities for single women
• Secure transport

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 Improvement in FLFP- some hopeful signs?

• Rising portion comes with receding stigma, high potential earnings of

women as their education improves further, fertility decline and better
options to combine work and family duties.
• More girls and women keen to work
• Role models in sport, media, science and technology etc.

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