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Women remain significantly under-represented in India’s growing platform economy despite the country having virtually closed the gender gap in basic bank-account ownership, with gaps in digital financial capability and access to credit continuing to constrain their participation, according to a joint policy brief by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) released on Monday.
The report said India’s platform workforce rose from an estimated 7.7 million in 2020 to 12 million in FY25 and is expected to reach 23.5 million by 2029-30. Yet women remain largely absent from location-based platform work such as delivery and ride-hailing. In one study cited by the report, women accounted for less than 1 per cent of two-wheeler delivery drivers in urban India.
The brief said this under-representation persists even as the traditional gender gap in access to formal bank accounts has almost disappeared. The share of women with a bank or similar financial institution account rose from 43 per cent in 2014 to 89 per cent in 2024, while the corresponding share for men rose from 62 per cent to 88 per cent.
“The principal constraint facing women has consequently shifted from whether they possess a formal account to whether they can use financial services actively, independently and effectively. Holding a traditional bank account does not automatically translate to the digital access required for platform work,” the report said.
Only 25.2 per cent of women aged 15 and above could conduct online banking transactions, compared with 47.1 per cent of men. In comparison, 18 per cent of women had the combination of digital skills used by the report to measure digital financial capability, against 30.1 per cent of men.
In rural India, only 17.1 per cent of women could undertake online banking, compared with 39.2 per cent of men.
The financial barrier begins even before women enter platform work, with about 52 per cent of women lacking capital for investments needed to enter the sector, compared with 40 per cent of men. The report said women also accounted for only 22.9 per cent of outstanding bank credit to individuals in March 2023.
“Once in the platform economy, women face volatile earnings, which are further compounded by unpaid care responsibilities, algorithmic penalties, and health shocks. To survive this volatility without falling into poverty, active platform workers need customized micro-insurance and accessible savings to build cash buffers,” the report said.
To sustain themselves and advance within the platform economy, women require sustained access to higher-value working capital to upgrade their assets, but a lack of formal credit history becomes a critical barrier to scaling and advancing, leaving them locked in low-earning segments, the report added.
The report argued that the digital nature of platform work could also provide a way to address this financing constraint. Payments and records of completed gigs generate a digital income trail that could allow lenders to assess workers on cash flow rather than conventional collateral. This could be particularly relevant for women, who are less likely to own land or property in their own names, it said.
However, this potential is not yet fully realised. Platform aggregators are not currently permitted to share data through the Account Aggregator framework, while worker earnings records are not included in the categories of financial information covered by the framework.
The report said integrating platform earnings data with India’s digital public infrastructure could make such financial profiles portable across lenders.
The authors called for financial products designed around women’s income patterns, stronger safeguards for worker data and repayment flexibility during periods of low income. They also recommended regulatory sandboxes to examine whether platform earnings and social-protection records could eventually be used to improve workers’ access to credit.
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