Less-educated women drove India’s female workforce growth: Icrier | Economy & Policy News

The increase in India’s female workforce participation has been driven largely by women with lower levels of education, while women with higher secondary education remain less likely to participate in the workforce, a new report by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (Icrier) said.

 

The report, The Participation Paradox: Women’s Work and Time-Use in India, 2017-18 to 2025, puts the female worker population ratio (WPR) at 45.3 per cent among women educated below the primary level in 2025, compared with 19.8 per cent among women with higher secondary education.

 

The rise since 2017-18 was also concentrated among women with lower levels of education.

  

The WPR increased by 19.9 percentage points among women educated below the primary level, 20.1 percentage points among literate women without formal schooling and 18.1 percentage points among those with primary education. In comparison, the increase was 7.2 percentage points among graduates and 5.5 percentage points among postgraduates.

 

“The recent rise in women’s workforce participation has been driven disproportionately by those with lower levels of education,” the report said.

Household responsibilities remain the main reason for non-participation

Childcare and personal commitments at home remained the most frequently cited reasons for women’s non-participation in the workforce, the report said. In 2025, 60 per cent of women outside the labour force cited these responsibilities. The corresponding share among men was around 1 per cent, as per the report.

 

The proportion of women citing household responsibilities was 59 per cent in 2021-22, indicating little change over the period. Lack of training or qualifications accounted for 0.8 per cent of women’s responses, while the non-availability of work at a convenient location accounted for 0.7 per cent.

 

Among men outside the workforce, 55.3 per cent wanted to continue their studies, while 37.5 per cent cited health- or age-related reasons.

 

Marriage was also associated with a substantial difference in workforce participation. In 2025, 37.3 per cent of married women were in the workforce, compared with 87.6 per cent of married men. Women’s participation increased from 20.9 per cent in 2017-18, while men’s rose marginally from 85.7 per cent. The gap narrowed from 64.8 percentage points to 50.3 percentage points over the period.

Agriculture accounts for most of the increase in women’s employment

The number of women in employment increased from 104 million in 2017-18 to 201 million in 2025, while the female WPR rose from 22 per cent to 38 per cent.

 

The increase was concentrated in rural areas, where the WPR rose from 23.7 per cent to 44.9 per cent. In urban areas, it increased from 18.2 per cent to 25.9 per cent.

 

Agriculture accounted for most of the rural increase. The share of rural women employed in the primary sector rose from 70.7 per cent in 2017-18 to 73.3 per cent in 2025. Their shares in secondary and tertiary activities declined from 14 per cent to 12.9 per cent and from 15.3 per cent to 13.8 per cent, respectively.

 

The number of women employed in crop and animal production more than doubled, from 54 million in 2017-18 to over 100 million in 2025.

 

The increase was also concentrated in own-account and unpaid family work rather than regular salaried jobs. In rural areas, the number of women working as own-account workers rose from 13.9 million to 56 million. Unpaid family workers increased from 28.8 million to 49.3 million.

 

Regular salaried employment among rural women grew from 7.9 million to 13.9 million. However, its share in rural women’s employment declined from 10.5 per cent to 9.3 per cent.

Rural women earn 45% of men’s monthly wages

The expansion in women’s employment has not been accompanied by comparable gains in earnings, the report said. In 2025, rural women earned an average of ₹6,596 a month, against ₹14,632 for rural men. In 2017-18, the corresponding figures were ₹4,676 and ₹8,877.

 

Rural women’s average monthly earnings fell from approximately 53 per cent of men’s wages in 2017-18 to 45 per cent in 2025. The absolute wage gap increased from around ₹4,200 to more than ₹8,000 a month.

 

“Rural women occupy the bottom of the wage distribution on both margins. They earn the least, and their wages grew the slowest,” the report said.

 

In urban areas, men earned an average monthly wage of ₹25,565 in 2025, compared with ₹15,646 for women. In 2017-18, the corresponding figures were ₹16,324 and ₹10,379.

 

Men’s wages increased faster than women’s in both rural and urban areas. Rural male wages rose by approximately 65 per cent during the period, compared with 41% for rural women. In urban areas, men’s wages increased by 57 per cent, against 51 per cent for women.

Women’s paid work has not reduced their unpaid workload

Women’s average weekly working hours declined between 2017-18 and 2025, despite the increase in workforce participation. Rural women’s working hours fell by a little over six hours a week. The decline was around four hours for rural men and approximately two hours for both men and women in urban areas.

 

In 2025, rural women worked an average of 34 hours a week, compared with 47 hours for rural men. In urban areas, women worked 45 hours a week, against 56 hours for men.

 

The gender gap was also visible in manufacturing. In rural textiles, the difference between men’s and women’s average weekly working hours increased from 11 hours in 2017-18 to 21 hours in 2025. In wearing apparel, it widened from 19 to 21 hours.

 

The difference in unpaid domestic and caregiving work remained substantial. According to the Time Use Survey data analysed in the report, women spent an average of 320 minutes a day on household services for their own consumption in 2024, compared with 97 minutes for men. These activities included household maintenance, cooking and cleaning.

 

Women also spent 144 minutes a day on caregiving for children, the elderly and other household members, compared with 81 minutes for men. This meant women spent 286 minutes, or nearly five hours, more than men on these two categories of unpaid work every day.

 

“Women’s paid work has expanded without redistributing their unpaid work,” the report said.

India’s Viksit Bharat vision hinges on women’s workforce participation

The report said expanding women’s participation in the workforce would be critical to India’s Viksit Bharat vision for 2047.

 

The report estimated that expanding women’s workforce participation to around 400 million could contribute close to $14 trillion to the economy by 2047. Its executive summary said this would require nearly doubling the female workforce from its 2025 level of 201 million.

 

The Time Use Survey figures, used in the report, represent the average time spent by individuals aged 15-59 who participated in the respective activities. The report compared Periodic Labour Force Survey data for 2017-18 and 2025, and Time Use Survey data for 2019 and 2024.