Policy Update
Madhur Thapar
Women’s labour has always been central to India’s economy. Yet it remains among the most undervalued and least recognised forms of work. From sustaining agricultural production and informal manufacturing to performing unpaid, domestic and care work, women contribute a lot to economic and social reproduction. However, these contributions are treated as natural extensions of gender roles rather than as labour deserving recognition and protection.
Over the last few decades, structural changes driven by economic liberalisation, urbanisation, and shifts in development policy have led to an increased participation of women in paid work. This phenomena is commonly described as the feminisation of labour. In the Indian context, feminisation does not simply mean more women working, it refers to the concentration of women in informal, insecure, underpaid, and flexible forms of employment that mirror existing gender hierarchies.
Feminisation of Labour in India can be understood through three interconnected lenses: the gendered structure of work, patterns of feminised employment across sectors, and the gender and development (GAD) framework. Together, these perspectives show how women’s increasing labour participation often coexists with persistent inequality.
https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2019/04/feminisation-of-employment
Gender structures of work in India
A critical distinction in understanding women’s labour is between productive and reproductive work. Productive work includes paid activities such as agriculture, manufacturing and services. Reproductive work encompasses unpaid, domestic labour, child care, elder care and emotional support that sustain households and reproduce the workforce.
In India, women perform the vast majority of reproductive labour. According to the Time Use Survey (2019), Indian women spend nearly 5 hours a day on unpaid domestic work compared to less than two hours for men. This unpaid labour remains invisible in national income accounts, despite its essential role in supporting economic activity.
This gendered division of labour is socially constructed rather than biologically determined. Women are socialised into caregiving and household responsibilities, while men are associated with paid work and public authority. As a result, women’s paid employment is often viewed as secondary, even in low income households where women’s earnings are crucial for survival.
This perception contributes to occupational segregation and wage disparities. According to the periodic labour force survey (PLFS) 2022 – 23, women earn on average 20-30% less than men across sectors. Women are also over represented in informal employment, lacking job, security, social protection and bargaining power.
Feminisation of labour across sectors
Agriculture
Agriculture remains the largest employer of women in India. As per census 2011 and subsequent labour surveys, women constitute over 33% of agricultural labourers and this share has increased due to male migration to urban areas. Women are involved in sowing, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, livestock care, and post harvest processing.
Despite this, women rarely own land. Less than 14% of land holdings in India are women owned, limiting their access to credit, technology, and institutional support. Their labour is often categorised as “ family labour”, excluding them from wages, recognition, and decision-making. This creates a paradox where women’s agriculture workload has intensified without corresponding economic empowerment.
Manufacturing and home-based work
In manufacturing, feminisation is most visible in textiles, garments, Beedi rolling and electronics assembly. Women are preferred for repetitive, low skilled tasks based on stereotypes of patience and docility. These stereotypes justify low wages, contractual employment, and limited opportunities for scale upgrading.
Home based work is a major site of feminised labour. According to the national sample survey, a significant proportion of women workers are engaged in home-based production, particularly in garments, handicraft and food processing. These workers often receive piece rate payments, lack written contracts and remain excluded from labour laws.
Services and care work
The service sector has witnessed growing feminisation, particularly in domestic work, healthcare, education, hospitality, and retail. Domestic work alone employs over 4 million women in India, most of whom work without minimum wages, social security, or legal protection.
Public schemes such as ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) and Anganwadi workers highlight another dimension of feminised labour. These women perform essential public health and childcare functions but are classified as “volunteers” rather than workers. They receive honorariums instead of wages, despite long working hours and high responsibilities. This reflects how care work, when feminised, is systematically undervalued.
Informalisation, Precarity, and the Double Burden
Feminisation of labour in India is closely related to Informalisation. Over 90% of women workers are employed in the informal sector. Informal employment offers flexibility, which is often presented as beneficial for women. In reality, this flexibility serves employers more than workers, allowing easy hiring, and firing without accountability.
Women in informal work face job insecurity, unpredictable incomes, absence of maternity benefits and unsafe working conditions. At the same time, they continue to shoulder unpaid domestic and care responsibilities. This creates a double burden, where women’s participation in paid work does not reduce their reproductive labour, but adds to it.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of feminised labour. Women experienced disproportionate job losses and increased unpaid care work., Leading to a decline in female labour force participation rates, which fell to around 25% in 2021, one of the lowest globally.
Gender and Development: Rethinking Policy Frameworks
Earlier development approaches in India largely treated women as welfare beneficiaries rather than economic agents. Programmes focused on nutrition, family planning, and maternal health without addressing the structural conditions shaping women’s labour.
The Gender and Development (GAD) framework offers a more transformative lens. It emphasises that gender relations shape economic outcomes and that development cannot be gender-neutral. A key insight of GAD is the centrality of social reproduction to development. Economic growth relies on unpaid care work, yet policy frameworks rarely account for or support it.
GAD also highlights how women’s labour is constrained by intersecting structures of patriarchy, caste, class, and state policy. For instance, Dalit and Adivasi women are disproportionately represented in the most insecure and hazardous forms of labour. Addressing women’s labour conditions therefore requires structural interventions, not just employment generation.
From a GAD perspective, development policy in India must focus on recognising unpaid work, expanding social protection for informal workers, ensuring equal wages, strengthening labour rights and enabling women’s collective organisation through unions and self help groups.
Conclusion
The feminisation of labour in India reveals a fundamental contradiction of contemporary development. While more women are participating in the workforce, this participation has largely occurred under conditions of informality, insecurity and undervaluation. Increased labour force participation has not translated into proportional gains in rights, income, or autonomy.
Women’s labour must be understood, not merely as an economic input, but as a deeply, social and political phenomena shaped by power relations and institutional choices. The gender and development framework underscores that meaningful development requires transforming the structures that render women’s work invisible and disposable.
Progress will depend on policies that recognise, re-distribute and reduce unpaid labour, extend legal protection to informal workers and challenge the gender norms that naturalise inequality. Without such changes, the feminisation of labour will continue to reproduce vulnerability rather than empowerment.
References
Government of India. (2019). Time use survey of India 2019. National Statistical Office. https://mospi.gov.in/time-use-survey-2019
Government of India. (2023). Periodic Labour Force Survey 2022–23. Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. https://mospi.gov.in/plfs-annual-report
Kabeer, N. (2012). Women’s economic empowerment and inclusive growth: Labour markets and enterprise development. International Development Research Centre.https://www.idrc.ca/en/book/womens-economic-empowerment-and-inclusive-growth
Mehrotra, S., & Sinha, S. (2017). Explaining falling female labour force participation in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 52(39). https://www.epw.in/journal/2017/39/special-articles/explaining-falling-female-labour-force
Neetha, N. (2009). Contours of domestic service: Characteristics, wages, and working conditions. Economic and Political Weekly, 44(26–27).UN Women. (2020). Recognizing, reducing and redistributing unpaid care work. https://www.epw.in/journal/2009/26-27/special-articles/contours-domestic-service
UN Women. (2020). Recognizing, reducing and redistributing unpaid care work. https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/03/policy-brief-unpaid-care-work
World Bank. (2022). India gender assessment: Gender equality and development. https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099940012152218534
About the contributor: Madhur Thapar is a Research Intern at IMPRI. She is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in Political Science from Kamala Nehru college, Delhi university. Her research interest include public policy, international relations and psychology
Acknowledgement: The author sincerely thanks IMPRI and other IMPRI fellows for their valuable contribution.
Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.
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