India’s female workforce boom hides a precarious reality

India’s female labour force participation rate is finally making headlines, surging from 30 per cent in 2019-20 to a striking 40 per cent in 2025.

The numbers, revealed by the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), are real, but they tell only half the story. While a rising rate measures who is showing up for work, it remains silent on what they are actually doing, how much they earn, and the security they have. When we peel back the headline statistics, a stark divide emerges between the jobs driving rural growth and those taking root in our cities.

In rural India, participation leaped by nearly 13 percentage points to hit 45.9 per cent. Yet beneath that boom lies a precarious reality: over 70 per cent of these women are self-employed, with nearly a third trapped as unpaid contributing family workers in household enterprises. Only a sliver — just 9.3 per cent — hold a regular wage or salaried job. Urban India presents a near-mirror opposite, where more than half of working women hold salaried roles, even as overall urban participation crawls upward at a much slower pace.

What factors do you think are driving these vastly different employment trajectories for women across rural and urban landscapes?

What these figures do not reveal

These figures do not show that rural work is necessarily worse than urban work. Self-employment can provide income and independence, while salaried employment is not always secure. The point is that women in wage employment, self-employment, or unpaid family work are all counted in the labour force, although their economic positions differ. The headline participation rate does not show this.

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The comparison between 2019-20 and 2025 also needs care. It covers the Covid-19 pandemic, when many workers lost urban jobs, returned to villages, and moved into agriculture and household enterprises. Some of the increase in rural women’s participation may, therefore, reflect pandemic-related disruption rather than permanent structural change. The annual PLFS series should be examined rather than relying only on the two endpoints. The comparison must also account for changes in the PLFS sample design and questionnaire introduced in 2025.

Urban participation shows a different pattern. Rajasthan recorded the highest average annual increase at 2.30 percentage points, followed by Gujarat at 2.26, Uttarakhand at 1.88, and Kerala at 1.76. Tamil Nadu recorded an increase of 0.76 points, while Goa recorded a decline of 0.50. Kerala had a relatively high urban participation rate at the beginning and still recorded a substantial increase.

Why is growth slower in urban India?

The urban data raises another question. Urban India has a much larger share of women in regular wage or salaried employment than rural India, yet participation remains considerably lower and has grown more slowly. The existence of jobs, therefore, is not enough to bring more women into the labour force. Commuting distance, safety, working hours, and childcare responsibilities may matter, but these factors should be tested rather than assumed.

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PLFS already asks people outside the labour force about their reasons for not working. Future reporting should make greater use of these responses, particularly by rural-urban location and state. If childcare, household responsibilities, lack of suitable work, education, or other reasons account for a large share of urban women’s non-participation, policy can be directed accordingly. The aim should be to use information already collected to test explanations rather than rely on assumptions.

What about economic distress?

The rural increase also needs to be examined from another angle. While it may reflect expanding opportunities, it may also reflect economic distress. Research on rural labour markets has shown that when household incomes fall, women may enter work to compensate for lost earnings of other household members. The explanations are not mutually exclusive: A woman may enter the labour force because work has become available and because her household needs the income.

Therefore, future analysis should combine participation data with indicators of rural economic conditions, including trends in real agricultural wages and demand for MGNREGA work. If participation rises alongside stronger wages and new economic activity, that would be consistent with an opportunity-based explanation. If it rises when wages weaken and demand for public employment increases, that would be consistent with distress-driven participation. Neither pattern would establish causation, but both would indicate what needs closer investigation.

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The data also points to changes in how women’s employment is reported. PLFS already collects information on employment status, hours worked, and earnings. These indicators should receive greater prominence alongside LFPR, particularly for rural women and contributing family workers. A rise in participation accompanied by very low earnings or limited hours means something different from one accompanied by higher earnings and sustained employment.

Rural livelihood missions should similarly report not only the number of women enrolled in self-help groups but also their earnings and whether those incomes have increased. Enrolment measures reach, but not economic outcomes.

Comparison among states needed

States with large increases in both rural and urban participation also deserve closer study. Rajasthan and Gujarat, for example, could be compared with states where participation has risen more slowly to examine whether differences in transport, industrial location, childcare, skill training, or other local policies are associated with the outcomes.

Such studies should identify factors that can be tested and replicated rather than assume that any particular policy caused the increase.

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In conclusion, the rise in female labour force participation is important, but the numbers alone cannot tell us whether women are getting better opportunities, responding to household distress, or shifting between forms of work. India already collects much of the data needed to answer these questions. Progress should, therefore, be judged not only by how many women enter the labour force, but also by the work they do, what they earn, how much they work, and whether participation is sustained.

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)