This factsheet is drawn from an ongoing IWWAGE-ISI study that seeks to examine the profile and background of women workers in contemporary industrial and urban landscapes – the kinds of opportunities available, barriers to participation, and aspirations and expectations from industrial employment. The study uses data collected from a survey of garment factory workers in Delhi NCR.The data is supplemented with more detailed information on current or aspiring women workers obtained through focus group discussions and interviews with women workers, and interviews with factory owners/managers, labour contractors, and so on.

This section draws from an ongoing Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE) and Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) study that aims to understand the impact of structural transformation in agriculture on female employment over time, by assessing the role of women farm managers. This study uses data from the India Human Development Survey (2004-05, 2011-12) to understand the rise in female farm management, its variation along demographic dimensions, and the differences between cultivator households managed by men and those managed by women.

The methodology involves assessing the causal effect of switching to LPG on women’s outcomes by construction of a comparison group of households that are not eligible for or did not participate in PMUY. The study uses self-reported health status, and a time-use survey of women to measure the effect of LPG usage on time released for other activities. The results from this exercise would be used to design an experiment wherein information on long-term health benefits of LPG usage and the financial incentive under PMUY would be disseminated in randomly selected villages. This would be conducted by Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers by visiting randomly sampled households in ‘treatment’ villages on a monthly basis, and responses of women in targeted villages would be compared with those of other women at the end of a year. The study is being conducted in Indore region of Madhya Pradesh.

This study builds and tests a structural model that explains observed changes in FLFP using data on urban, married women from the Time Use Survey (1998) and various rounds of the National Sample Survey (NSS). The model focuses on women’s work participation, educational attainment, other characteristics, and time spent in the labour market, home production, and leisure.

Madhya Pradesh (MP) is the only state in India to have witnessed a rise in workforce participation rates (WPRs) of women in both rural and urban areas between 2011-12 and 2017-18. The increase in women’s WPR in MP was driven largely by increase in self-employment in the rural areas and regular employment in the urban areas. According to the Periodic Labourforce Survey in 2017-18, more than half of the female workforce in the state is self-employed, with a higher incidence of self-employment in rural areas. While approximately 88 percent of the rural self-employed women in MP are engaged in unpaid work, the share of women in own account enterprises is substantially high in urban MP. The distribution of casual women workers suggests very few women engaged under MGNREGA and other public works as 96 percent women in casual employment were engaged in non-public works, with very little security or guarantee of payment

Women’s labourforce participation rates (LFPR) reveals some interesting trends for Maharashtra. As per the figures from the labourforce surveys, the LFPR is significantly higher than the all-India figures, largely driven by higher than average rural employment. The state also shares a decline in self-employment and casual employment and a shift towards regular wage work for both rural and urban women. In Maharashtra the urban areas witnessed a consistent rise in regular wage work of women since 2004-05. More than 60 percent of women are employed as regular workers – 70 percent of which is concentrated in the services sector such as education, health and retail. In rural areas, the share of casual workers is considerably higher at around 42 percent, followed by 52 percent in self-employment. The incidence of unpaid family workers among self-employed women exceed 80 percent. While the urban areas show considerable diversity of women workers across occupations and sectors, women in the rural areas remain concentrated as manual workers in agriculture or within construction work.

Bihar has the lowest female workforce participation rate (FWPR) among all states at 2.8 percent. The decline in FWPR has been shaper in rural areas as compared to urban areas, pushing a large number of women out of the workforce since 2007-08. With the decline in women workforce, there has been a substantial increase in the share of women in regular employment, in line with the national trend, and a significant decline in the share of self-employed, which is greater than the decline observed at the all India level. Women’s self-employment in Bihar is characterised by high incidence of own account work and low share of unpaid work, in contrast with all India figures.

In Andhra Pradesh, the rise in urban women’s work participation rates are exceptional. The state shows high incidence of self-employment among women in both rural and urban areas. However, almost 66 percent of such women in rural areas work as unpaid helpers in household enterprises. In the urban areas, the incidence of women’s entrepreneurship in self-employment is visible. Among wage workers, MGNREGA has been an attractive option apart from other construction, manufacturing and service employment. The urban areas show some diversity in women’s engagement, while in rural areas women work in agriculture, construction and low productive manufacturing sectors

Bihar has the lowest female workforce participation rate (FWPR) among all states at 2.8 percent. The decline in FWPR has been shaper in rural areas as compared to urban areas, pushing a large number of women out of the workforce since 2007-08. With the decline in women workforce, there has been a substantial increase in the share of women in regular employment, in line with the national trend, and a significant decline in the share of self-employed, which is greater than the decline observed at the all India level. Women’s self-employment in Bihar is characterised by high incidence of own account work and low share of unpaid work, in contrast with all India figures.

Despite high economic growth, decline in fertility, and rise in schooling of girls, the Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR) in India has declined in rural areas and stagnated in urban areas since the late 1980s. This is contrary to the global experience, where similar factors resulted substantial increase in the FLFPR. The recently released Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18 confirms the declining trend and shows FLFPR declined in all states with the exception of Madhya Pradesh and Goa. Women’s engagement in unpaid work is high in rural areas and while a majority of women are employed in regular wage work in urban areas, there are substantial wage differentials between men and women, most of the regular work of women is in the informal sector, and non-wage benefits are poor.  

Santosh Kumar Mehrotra is Professor of Economics, Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was Director-General, Institute of Applied Manpower Research, Planning Commission (in the rank of Secretary, Government of India) (2009-2014). He is a human development economist, whose research and writings have had most influence in the areas of labour/ employment, skill development, child poverty, and the economics of education. He brings a combination of professional experience: with the Indian government as a policy maker and adviser, with international organisations as a technical expert, having lived on three continents and travelled to 63 countries providing technical advice to governments; and as an academic whose research work has been translated into Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German. Dr S Mehrotra has an MA in Economics from the New School for Social Research, New School University, New York (1981), and Phd in Economics in Cambridge (1985). Was Associate Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 1988-91. He spent 15 years with two UN agencies – UNICEF and UNDP (Chief economist of UNDP’s global Human Development Report (2002-05), New York; led the research programme on developing countries at Unicef’s global research institute, the Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, Italy (1999-2002).

Renana Jhabvala has been working with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) since 1977. Renana Jhabvala has served a number of roles within SEWA and has overseen the movement’s expansion and diversification. Renana Jhabvala is also one of the founding members of WIEGO, HomeNet South Asia, and has served on a number of public committees and task forces. Currently, Renana also serves as the Chair of the WIEGO board, Chair of the SEWA Bank, Executive Trustee of Mahila Housing Trust, and serves on the United Nations High Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment. She is the recipient of several awards, including, the Padma Shri Award (1990), Lifetime Achievement Award from FICCI (2017), and Outstanding Work in Social Service from the Vineet Gupta Memorial Trust. Her most recent publications include The Progress of the World’s Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty with Martha Chen, Joann Vanek, Francie Lund, James Heintz and Christine Bonner; Informal Economy Centrestage: New Structures of Employment, which she co-edited with Ratna M. Sudarshan and Jeemol Unni; and The Unorganised Sector: Work Security and Social Protection, which she co-edited with R.K.A. Subramanya.

Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK. Prior to this, she was Director and Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University, where she continues to be affiliated. Educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Delhi, she has held distinguished teaching and research positions at many universities, including Harvard, Princeton, Michigan, Minnesota (as the Winton Chair), and the New York University School of Law. She was Harvard’s first Daniel Ingalls Visiting Professor and later a Research Fellow at the Ash Institute, Kennedy School of Government. She has also been a fellow of Radcliffe’s Bunting Institute at Harvard.

Silky Raheja is Head – SANKALP (A World Bank Initiative) and Planning at National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) a Public Private Partnership firm with 49% shareholder as Government of India through Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE).

At NSDC, she has managed large scale projects, up to $500 million, aimed at building institutional and training infrastructure capacity at the national level. She currently spearheads skill development programme of the World Bank (SANKALP) which follows the Program for Results (P4R) financing for funding projects to enhance institutional mechanisms for skill development and increase access to quality training. In the past, she led Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendra, a flagship project for Ministry of Skill Development under PM’s Skill India mission, to develop skill centers in every district of India.
As a head of corporate planning, Silky contributes to the strategic growth of the organisation, developing the long-term vision and action plans. She works on identification critical issues to business performance and communicates around strategy, progress, and results across organizational boundaries and levels.

Trained as a Marketing Professional, Silky is a strategy and program management leader with over 11 years of experience in product development, project implementation, strategic planning, transaction management, institutional capacity building and designing PPP models for TVET space of India. She has multi-sector experience with premier credit rating and research organisation such as CRISIL and only Public Private Partnership (PPP)in Skills Space under the Government of India
Silky is a recipient of Standard and Poor ACE Awards for team and client spirt and has been recognised and awarded as a Best performer for executive effectiveness and service excellence by CRISIL Group. She has done MBA from ICFAI Business School and her graduation in science Ramjas College, Delhi University.

Sabina Dewan is Founder and Executive Director of the JustJobs Network, which she co-founded with John Podesta in 2013. She is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Policy Research in India, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Before this, Ms. Dewan served as a Senior Fellow and Director for International Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC.

Ms. Dewan’s research focusses on strategies for job creation and workforce development. Within this domain, her research examines how technology, climate change and the restructuring of trade into value chains are upending traditional employment models and the differential impacts of these forces on women and different socio-economic groups. Ms. Dewan works closely with governments, businesses, multilateral, and grassroots organizations providing critical labor market insights to help generate more employment, cultivate employability, and promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth fit for the 21st century.

Ms. Dewan’s vast experience includes working with institutions including the World Bank, the International Labour Organization, and the European Commission, as well as grassroots organizations in Sierra Leone, India and Western Samoa. She has appeared in several international media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, US News and World Report, CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, TimesNow and NDTV.

Ruchika Chaudhary is an economist with over eight years of experience at the national as well as the international levels. She has worked extensively on the issues of labour and employment and specifically in the areas of gender equality and non-discrimination in Asia and the Pacific. She specializes in large-dataset and micro-dataset management, econometric analysis and modelling. She has a doctorate in Economics from the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her doctoral thesis explored the complex issue of women’s work in India, in which their labour force participation behavior was examined. This included interviewing and elaborated analysis of domestic workers, as an important group of urban women workers.

Before joining IWWAGE, Ruchika has worked with the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Regional office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, and ILO’s Decent Work Team for South Asia and Country Office for India, New Delhi. She has also worked for the University of Manchester’s research project on ‘Use of Blockchain in ending Child labour’, taught undergraduate courses on economics at the University of Delhi, and conducted research on ‘urban poverty’ at the Institute of Economic Growth, and the National Institute of Urban Affairs. She has been awarded University Grants Commission’s Junior Research Fellowship in Economics. She has published her research in journals, edited books, and participated in various national and international forums.

Rituparna Chakraborty is an accomplished business leader with multi-faceted experience, passion for excellence, and a proven ability to drive growth at scale. She has business experience of 21 years and as Co-Founder and EVP of TeamLease, she has been instrumental in making TeamLease India’s largest people supply chain company. She leads TeamLease’s staffing business. She also spearheads India’s first PPP Apprenticeship Programme—National Employability through Apprenticeship Programme (NETAP), which is a transformative initiative to solve India’s employability problem. She is the only person from Asia to be included in the Global Power 100 and International 50 Woman in Staffing and is the winner of the Telstra Business Woman in Asia Award. She also won the Femina Super Achievers Award 2018. She was conferred distinguished alumnus award at 10th Indian Management Conclave, 2019.

Rituparna believes customer-centricity, capability building and doing well by doing good are the top three factors responsible for the scale and sustainability of TeamLease. She is recognized by the industry as a voice for formal job creation in India. As the founding trustee and the current president of the Indian Staffing Federation – she is today tirelessly driving labor reform agenda in collaboration with industry, academia and the policymakers. She extensively dialogues with media, analysts, academia and industry platforms on various issues of labor, women, and industry. She has represented the Employers of India at International Labour Organization (ILO) twice on issues of Ethical Recruitment Practices and Labour Welfare.

Rituparna is an Economics graduate from Banaras Hindu University with an MBA from Goa Institute of Management, India. She is an eternal people optimist and a salesperson at heart who enjoys interacting with people and building lasting relationships. She is driven by TeamLease’s vision of ‘Putting India to Work’ and providing the youth of the country a job of dignity is at the heart of what she aspires for. She always says, “Not sure whether we can solve all of India’s job problems, but we shall die trying.”

Gillian Dowie is a Senior Program Officer on the Employment and Growth team at the International Development Research Centre’s Asia regional office in Delhi. She manages a portfolio of research on innovative social and economic development interventions with a focus on women’s economic empowerment across South and Southeast Asia, which includes a new initiative called Women, Work and the Gig Economy, generating evidence on gender and digital platforms from 7 countries across the region. Previously, Gillian worked with J-PAL’s policy team in Sierra Leone on using evidence to scale policies, and led programming on youth employment with the ILO in Indonesia.

Abhay Mathur heads the Finance Function at UrbanCompany – he is also responsible for driving partner welfare initiatives on the platform. Urban Company is India’s largest online market place for Home & beauty services. Established in 2014, urban Company today offers services in 18 India cities and 4 countries. Urban Company offers professionals a chance to become entrepreneurs and scale up their earnings.

Abhay joined Urban Company in February this year – prior to this, He has spent 15 years with Hindustan Unilever across various finance & supply chain roles across India. He is a Chartered Accountant by training.

At Urban Company, Abhay led the Company wide initiatives for partner welfare during the COVID crisis – providing business advances to partners, tying up with charitable foundations for partner welfare, negotiating loans tenors and interest waivers with funders and clearing significant investments in PPE for partner safety.

Panel Discussion on Women’s Economic Empowerment: Evidence, Policy and Practice in India

Organised by the World Bank South Asia, 12 March, 2020

As a part of the “South Asia Women in the Workforce Week”, a panel discussion was organised by the World Bank South Asia Regional Gender team in collaboration with the India Gender Platform to celebrate International Women’s Day.

The panel focused on the evidence base for policies, programs and interventions that aim to promote women’s economic empowerment in India. The panel highlighted the evidences and lessons from successful interventions, i.e. “what we know” and the existing research gaps in women’s economic empowerment in India and potential opportunities for innovation, i.e. “what’s missing”. The panel responded to some crucial questions on the evidence on women’s economic empowerment in India, and the need for more evidence. The discussion also revolved around innovative ideas for future research, policy, and practice and the lessons to be learned from other countries and regions.

Speakers also shared their motivation that gives hope and drive and to continue their respective invaluable work. They also shared examples of efforts in South Asia and India that inspires a shift in the current thinking and practice on women’s economic empowerment.

The panellist included, Rohini Pande (Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics, Director of the Economic Growth Center, Yale University), Jayati Ghosh (Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University), Jorge Coarasa (Program Leader, World Bank), Yamini Atmavilas (India Lead, Gender Equality, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), and Soumya Kapoor (Head, IWWAGE)