India is on the cusp of surpassing China to become the world’s most populous country, and its economy is among the fastest-growing in the world.
But the number of Indian women in the workforce, already among the 20 lowest in the world, has been shrinking for years.
The women’s employment rate peaked at 35% in 2004 and fell to around 25% in 2022, according to calculations based on official data, said Rosa Abraham, an economist at Azim Premji University. But official figures count as employed people who report as little as one hour of work outside the home in the previous week.
A national jobs crisis is one reason for the gap, experts say, but entrenched cultural beliefs that see women as the primary caregivers and stigmatize them for working outside the home.
The Center for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE), which uses a more restrictive definition of employment, found that only 10% of working-age Indian women in 2022 were either employed or looking for jobs. This means there are only 39 million women employed in the workforce compared to 361 million men.
Just a few decades ago, things seemed to be on a different track.
In 2004, India was still riding high from historic reforms in the 1990s. New industries and new opportunities were born seemingly overnight, sparking millions to leave their villages and move to cities like Mumbai in search of better jobs.
The number of working-age Indian women who don’t have jobs is staggering — almost twice the entire number of people in the United States. Experts say this gap could be a huge opportunity if India can find a way to plug it.
A 2018 McKinsey report estimated that India could add $552 billion to its GDP by increasing its female workforce participation rate by 10%.
Sheela Singh cried the day she handed in her resignation.
For 16 years, she had been a social worker in Mumbai, India's frenetic financial capital, and she loved the work. But her family kept telling her she needed to stay at home to take care of her two children. She resisted the pressure for years, but when she found out her daughter was skipping school when she was at work, it felt like she didn't have a choice.
“Everyone used to tell me my kids were neglected … it made me feel really bad,” Singh, 39, said.
When she resigned in 2020, Singh was earning more money than her husband, an auto-rickshaw driver whose earnings fluctuated day to day. But nobody suggested he quit.
“His friends used to taunt him that he was living off my salary,” Singh said. “I thought that clearly there was no value in me working so what’s the use?”
When Singh became a social worker in 2004
It felt life-changing. “I didn’t have a college degree, so I never thought it would be possible for someone like me to get a job in an office,” she said.
Even then, leaving home to work was an uphill fight for many women. Sunita Sutar, who was in school in 2004, said that women in her village of Shirsawadi in Maharashtra state were usually married off at 18, beginning lives that revolved around their husbands’ homes.
Neighbours mocked her parents for investing in her education, saying it wouldn’t matter after marriage.
Even as she prepares to leave her one-bedroom home, tucked deep inside a narrow lane in a Mumbai slum, Singh is determined to return to the city in the near future. She hopes to find a way to work again, saying she will take whatever job she can find.
“I never had to ask anyone for a single rupee (before),” Singh said, adding she feels shame every time she’s forced to ask her husband.
“I felt independent before. See, I lost a part of myself when I quit my job,” she said. “I want that feeling back.”
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