INDIA, May18, 2017 (BBC): The numbers are stark – for the first time in India’s recent history, not only was there a decline in the female labour participation rate, but also a shrinking of the total number of women in the workforce. Nearly 20 million Indian women quit work between 2004-05 to 2011-12 The labour force participation rate for women of working age declined from 42% in 1993-94 to 31% in 2011-12. While more than 24 million men joined the work force between 2004-5 to 2009-10, the number of women in the the work force dropped by 21.7 million.
Using data gleaned from successive rounds of National Sample Survey Organisation and census data, a team of researchers from World Bank have attempted to find out why this is happening – at a time when India’s economy has grown at steady clip. Women need better and more suitable job opportunities outside farming, the authors say. Predictable social norms are attributed to women quitting work in India: marriage, motherhood, vexed gender relations and biases, and patriarchy. But they may not be the only reasons. Significantly, rising aspirations and relative prosperity may be actually responsible for putting a large cohort of women out of work in India.
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