Women's labor force participation in rural India: Current status, patterns and drivers (original) (raw)
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Female Labour Participation in Rural and Urban India: Does Housewives’ Work Count?
Labour force participation in India responds to economic, social, cultural and demographic mechanisms. Employment, unemployment, and unpaid labour were all measured in the 1999/2000 Indian National Sample Survey. Men’s official labour-force participation stood at 85% and women’s at 35%. The overall rate of labour force participation among women had fallen since 1989. Furthermore, measurement issues create doubt about the real rates of change of women’s self-employment. Women’s domestic and farming work can sometimes arguably be classified as self-employment. However many women instead report themselves as housewives. The statistics reveal a U curve of female employment by education levels. A detailed measurement of both domestic work and other unpaid work is provided. Women in the Muslim cultural group do more extra-domestic work (and are more likely to be ‘inactive’) than women in other cultural groups. Economic poverty causes employment to be more likely. We provide a number of reasons which help explain both the work patterns and the housewifisation pattern. These include both subjective factors as well as economic and demographic factors.
Labour force participation in India responds to economic, social, cultural and demographic mechanisms. Employment, unemployment, and unpaid labour were all measured in the 1999/2000 Indian National Sample Survey. Men's official labourforce participation stood at 85% and women's at 35%. The overall rate of labour force participation among women had fallen since 1989. Furthermore, measurement issues create doubt about the real rates of change of women's self-employment. Women's domestic and farming work can sometimes arguably be classified as self-employment. However many women instead report themselves as housewives. The statistics reveal a U curve of female employment by education levels. A detailed measurement of both domestic work and other unpaid work is provided. Women in the Muslim cultural group do more extra-domestic work (and are more likely to be 'inactive') than women in other cultural groups. Economic poverty causes employment to be more likely. We provide a number of reasons which help explain both the work patterns and the housewifisation pattern. These include both subjective factors as well as economic and demographic factors. Note: all tables and graphs referred in this article can be found in the appendix 1.
The Decline in the Labour Force Participation of Rural Women in India: Taking a Long-Run View
The Indian Journal of Labour Economics
The significant fall in the labour force participation of rural women between 2004 and 2011 has been an issue that has generated considerable academic interest. In this paper, we look at thirty years of comparable NSS data from 1983 to 2011 of rural women's participation in the labour force using a variety of definitions of female labour force participation that capture both market and non-market work. We find a long-term slow decline in the participation of rural women in wage work and selfemployment, especially among dalit and adivasi women in poor agricultural labourer households. The more recent sharp decline in female labour force participation (FLP) in 2004-2011 has occurred both in market and non-market work, and across most categories of economically active women. Our analysis highlights the somewhat contradictory behaviour of rural FLP across different definitions and time periods, and across different correlates of female labour force participation, and suggests that more complex factors are at work than has usually been discussed in the literature.
Reconsidering women's work in rural India: analysis of NSSO data, 2004–05 and 2011–12
2017
The most recent data gathered by the National Sample Survey Office on work participation for women in India reveal a sharp decline, primarily due to the NSSO's conventional measures not accounting for economic activities undertaken by women for the benefit of households. Alternative definitional approaches to the production boundary, such as the Indian System of National Accounts and the United Nations System of National Accounts, somewhat better account for unpaid work by women for households' own consumption. An analysis of data from the part of the NSSO schedule on employment and unemployment (for 2004–05 and 2011–12) that enquires about various activities undertaken by individuals who report performing household activities as their principal activity, reveals a less dramatic decline than that presented by the more conventional measure of work participation. This finding contributes to a significant rethinking of how rural women's contributions to economic activities ...
Reproductive Work and Female Labor Force Participation in Rural India
Co-authored with Smriti Rao Abstract: The current debate over female labor force participation in India has failed to sufficiently account for the reproductive work of women. Using NSS data on reproductive labor, we investigate the possibility that a “reproductive squeeze” raises the opportunity costs of labor force participation for women. A variety of multinomial logit regressions reveal a robust positive relationship between the shares of non-discretionary food and non-food expenditure and the likelihood of performing reproductive labor, relative to being in the labor force. We also find that an indicator of greater social provisioning by the state is positively correlated with rural women’s labor force participation, all else constant.
The Puzzling Decline in Rural Women's Labor Force Participation in India: A Reexamination
The Indian journal of labour economics, 2012
GIGA Working Papers serve to disseminate the research results of work in progress prior to publicaton to encourage the exchange of ideas and academic debate. Inclusion of a paper in the Working Papers series does not constitute publication and should not limit publication in any other venue. Copyright remains with the authors.
2023
Based on unit-level data of three rounds of the Employment-Unemployment Surveys (68 th , 61 st and 50 th) and two rounds of the Periodic Labour Force (2017-18 and 2018-19) Surveys of the NSS, this paper examines trends in women's labour force and work force in the two Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal since 1993-94. A comparative analysis of women's participation in the labour markets of the two Indian states shows the significance of occupational diversification in explaining the varying trends in the pattern of female employment. It explores the relevance of the nature of female employment in understanding the sustainability of such employment pattern as exists over time. Our paper highlights the extreme vulnerability attached to the self-employed status of women, be it in farm or non-farm work that women in rural U.P. and W.B. engage in and urges on the importance of publicly sponsored employment generation programmes like MNREGA as a viable alternative employment option, especially for women in rural areas. Given the abysmally low levels of participation of women in the labour markets of both U.P. and W.B., does the explanation lie in economic factors such as lack of jobs alone or do gender biased cultural norms also play a role? Our analysis suggests that it is a combination of both these factors to which a low and declining women's participation in labour markets must be attributed to.
2018
Women's labour market decisions depend greatly on decisions taken at the household level. These decisions in turn are determined by social, economic, demographic, personal, religious, and cultural factors. This study investigates and identifies the covariates of rural female work participation using primary survey data from 2016-17 for three villages in the hill region of Darjeeling district (including Kalimpong subdivision) in the State of West Bengal. Based on a sample of 235 rural women, the study estimates two models using logistic regression analysis. We observe that women's participation in paid activities is significantly and positively related to the level of education, and significantly and negatively related to joint family structure, the presence of children below the age of six, and the extent of household landholding. For both paid and unpaid work on family farms, we observe that age has a non-linear effect on women's participation. Women belonging to a unitary family structure and agricultural households are more likely to participate in paid and unpaid work as family labour, controlling for other variables.