Female Employment

Is the Rise in Female Work Participation due to an Odd Set of Instructions to Enumerators?

Given the high degree of informality in the Indian economy, national employment surveys have drawn up complex instructions to capture all those who work. This however also comes with the risk that…
▶10-Feb-2025
Aloke Kar, PC Mohanan

Stepping Out to Work

Gender-sensitive public infrastructure that enables women to balance care and market activities, is essential for work outside the home. Including a gender perspective in village-level infrastructure…
▶29-Jan-2025
Akash Sawarkar, Savita Kulkarni, Rajani Mathur
Book
Behind the Rise in Women’s Work-II

The Rise in Female Labour and Work Force Participation Rates

The increasing participation of women in work in recent years as revealed by official surveys, especially in 2023-24, appears to arise from definitional changes that now include groups of women as…
▶16-Jan-2025
Avanindra Nath Thakur, Priyanshi Chaudhary
Book
Behind the Rise in Women’s Work-I

What Does Self-Employment Mean for Women in India?

Contrary to official claims that we have “an equitable, vibrant labour market where women play a leading role”, there has been a decline in real incomes of self-employed women and falling real wages…
▶14-Jan-2025
Jayati Ghosh

Feminisation of Public Employment in India

A trend of feminisation of public employment is being observed in India. This could help achieve gender parity in employment and achieve higher human development levels. But high job quality is also…
▶28-Oct-2024
Dipa Sinha

A Field Study of Rajasthan’s Urban Employment Guarantee Programme

Rajasthan’s urban Indira Gandhi Shahri Rozgar Guarantee Yojana, launched in 2022, has worked well so far and should be continued. There is of course room for improvement. Implementation needs to be…
▶24-Jul-2024
Shiuli Vanaja, Niruj Deka, Amit Basole

Making Sense of Recent Developments in the Indian Labour Market

The PLFS for 2022-23 reports the highest workforce participation rate and the lowest unemployment rate in the last six years. This has been the result of the entry of an increasing number of women…
▶17-Oct-2023
Akshit Arora

Growth, Structural Change, and Opportunities: Who has Benefited?

While the connection between GDP and job growth in India has been poor, there has been a rapid increase of women in the modern services; while there has been greater job mobility, this has been very…
▶20-Sep-2023
Amit Basole, Akshit Arora, M. K. Shravan

What Do We Miss on Women’s Employment in Survey Data?

Women’s participation in work turns out to be much higher than usually estimated when modifications are made to the questions asked in surveys, the time period covered and, most important, who is…
▶21-Feb-2023
Rosa Abraham, Nishat Anjum, Rahul Lahoti, Hema Swaminathan

Making Sense of India’s Measures of Unemployment

The co-existence of seasonal and regular employment has posed a challenge over the decades for accurately measuring unemployment in India. An explainer and a discussion in the light of the puzzling…
▶09-Sep-2021
Rahul Menon