Female labour force participation rate rose during 2017-18 to 2022-23

It pointed out that even after excluding all those who worked as unpaid family workers or helpers in household enterprises from 2004-05 until 2022-23, the overall trends for increase in female LFPR remain the same as before. “In fact, we find that there has been a consistent rise in female LFPR post 2017-18 (even before the pandemic); and this rise is more pronounced in rural areas than in urban areas across India,” it said.

One of the criticisms of the rise in female LFPR over the recent years has been that the majority of the increase has been seen for unpaid family work.

In terms of marital status, the paper said that married men consistently exhibit higher LFPR across states and age groups, while marriage significantly reduces female LFPR, especially in urban areas. In terms of age, female LFPR forms a bell-shaped curve, peaking at 30-40 years of age and declining sharply after. The male LFPR, on the other hand, remains high (nearly 100 per cent) from ages 30-50, declining gradually thereafter, the paper said.

Among the northern states, Punjab and Haryana have recorded low female LFPR. Among the eastern states, rural Bihar had the lowest LFPR in the country, the paper said, adding that it has shown improvements in recent years, especially for rural married women. Among the northeastern states, there has been improvement in female LFPR in rural areas with Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh leading among the states of the region.

The paper also made a mention of the various government schemes such as Mudra loans, the Drone Didi scheme and Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana, which have been focused on women-led development. While pointing out that their analysis shows an increase in female LFPR between 2017-18 and 2022-23 across many states, it said rigorous future research would be needed to assess the impact of the government schemes.

“These initiatives reflect the government’s intention to further the women-led development model. Rigorous future research would be needed to assess the impact of these programmes. However, our descriptive analysis does document a dramatic increase in female labour force employment between 2017-18 and 2022-23 across many states of India and particularly within rural areas,” it said.