5 min readJul 10, 2026 06:25 AM IST
First published on: Jul 10, 2026 at 06:25 AM IST
There are two things worth cheering about in the latest report of the National Statistics Office on India’s million-plus cities. First, female labour force participation has climbed from 19.8 per cent in 2017-18 to 27.2 per cent in 2025, showing the sharpest gain of any group. The second is entrepreneurship — in 32 of the 46 million-plus cities, more than 20 per cent of unincorporated establishments are now run by women. Cities have become India’s biggest centres of opportunity for women — and increasingly, it isn’t only the big metros. In Surat, Vadodara and Pune, 40 per cent of unincorporated establishments are run by women.
Both numbers deserve celebration, but they come with a catch. Female LFPR, even after this gain, is still barely a third of the male rate of 75.9 per cent. Startlingly, despite the shift in aspirations, nearly 70 per cent of women outside the labour force still cite childcare and home commitments as the reason, proof that this is far from a solved problem.
For the rest, however, four gaps explain why the LFPR gap is not closing faster. Every system that touches a woman’s working life — how she gets to work, whether she can occupy public space with the same ease as men, whether she rises once she’s in an organisation, whether a bank or an investor will fund her — is designed around a male default.
Mobility: For men, the labour market begins at the workplace. For many women, it begins much earlier — on the street, at the bus stop, at the train station. ORF’s Women on the Move study found that over half of women reported experiencing harassment on public transport, and a similar share perceive it as unsafe. Women also rarely have linear commutes — their journeys are “chained”, dropping children to school, managing errands, on the way to or back from work — while our transport systems are still built around a simple home-to-office trip. If transport isn’t reliable, safe or built for how women actually move through a city, labour supply shrinks before an employer ever sees the candidate.
Public spaces: The deeper problem is beyond the commute. Look at our public spaces — you rarely see women simply sitting in a park alone, lingering in a café, or spending time on a street without a clear purpose. Women feel they must be doing something legitimate to justify their presence in public space. That’s a very different problem from safety alone, and it’s one policing can’t fix. The answer is designing cities that assume women are full participants in public life — not those who need a reason to be there.
Career progression: Even women who clear the first two hurdles run into a third: They don’t rise at the rate they enter. Only 5 per cent of NSE-500 companies are women-led. For years, the explanation has been maternity breaks and caregiving. That narrative is tired and incomplete — it explains some exits, but not why so many women who stay still don’t progress into leadership.
A large part of the answer is unconscious bias. Successful women are often less liked than successful men, because traits like assertiveness and driving accountability conflict with longstanding expectations that women be accommodating and nurturing. A firm view from a man reads as conviction; from a woman, as sharp. Women are asked to deliver outcomes while continuously managing tone and perception — and that shapes self-belief and choices, sometimes unconsciously. That is why, as one report showed, men apply for roles when they meet 60 per cent of the qualifications, while women wait until they meet nearly all of them.
This is where the conversation usually runs into a familiar objection — that supporting women somehow means compromising merit. Far from it. Promoting women isn’t anti-merit; it’s how you actually give yourself the chance to uncover more of it. Organisations that effectively exclude half the workforce aren’t protecting standards. They’re narrowing them.
Funding: The fourth gap is capital. Women-led MSMEs in India face a credit gap of around 35 per cent, held back by inadequate collateral, lower property ownership and financial literacy. Further up the ladder: Less than 5 per cent of India’s VC funding goes to start-ups with a woman founder. Part of the reason is pitch-room dynamics. Studies have shown that investors ask women founders more “prevention” questions — about risk, safety, what could go wrong — while men are asked “promotion” questions, about growth and scale.
Cities have opened a door for women that didn’t exist a decade ago. But walking through it still means clearing a commute, a public square, a boardroom and a bank. Until all four are rebuilt for her, closing the gap with men will take far longer than it needs to.
The writer headed Crisil and ONI
Cities have opened a door for women that didn’t exist a decade ago. But walking through it still means clearing a commute, a public square, a boardroom and a bank. (AI-generated image) 
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