Rising Female Labour Force Participation, Stagnant Quality: Gendered Informality in India’s Labour Market
Using PLFS data from 2021-22 to 2023-24, this paper reveals that despite rising female labour force participation in India, gendered informality remains structurally embedded, with women disproportionately concentrated in low-quality, unpaid, or informal roles across rural agriculture and urban services compared to men's dominance in regular wage employment and physically intensive sectors.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Imagine the economy as a giant, bustling marketplace where everyone is trying to sell their time and skills. In this marketplace, there are two main types of stalls. Some are "formal" stalls: they have shiny signs, pay taxes, offer health insurance, and promise you a steady paycheck with a contract. Others are "informal" stalls: they might be under a tree or in a small shed, they don't always follow the official rules, and they often don't offer safety nets like paid sick leave or retirement funds. For a long time, people thought that as countries got richer, everyone would eventually move to the shiny, formal stalls. But there's a twist in this story: the type of stall you get often depends on who you are. Specifically, it depends on your gender. This paper dives into the Indian labor market to see if the "richer country" promise is actually keeping its word for women, or if they are being funneled into the shaky, informal stalls while men get the steady ones.
The author, Basit Amin Padder, acts like a detective sifting through a massive pile of recent clues called the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) from 2021 to 2024. The investigation reveals a surprising and stubborn pattern: even though more women are showing up to the marketplace than before, they aren't getting the "good jobs." Instead of finding steady, paid work, they are being pushed into a specific corner of the informal economy. The study finds that rising female participation isn't a sign of progress toward equality; it's a sign that women are increasingly filling the role of "unpaid helpers" or working in low-wage, insecure gigs.
Think of the labor market as a game of musical chairs, but the chairs are different types. There are "Regular Wage" chairs (steady, paid, secure), "Own Account" chairs (you are your own boss, but it's risky), and "Helper" chairs (you work for free for your family). The paper shows that men are mostly sitting on the "Regular Wage" and "Own Account" chairs. Women, however, are overwhelmingly crowded onto the "Helper" chairs. In rural India, for instance, the percentage of women working as unpaid helpers in family businesses actually grew from 42.7% in 2021-22 to 42.3% in 2023-24 (with total self-employment, including helpers, rising from 67.8% to 73.5%). Meanwhile, the number of rural women with regular, paid jobs actually dropped slightly, from 8.1% to 7.8%. It's as if the music stopped, and the women were left holding the empty "unpaid" tickets while the men kept the "paid" ones.
The investigation also looks at where these jobs are located, like mapping out the different neighborhoods of the marketplace. The paper finds a clear "gendered map." In the countryside, women are almost entirely stuck in agriculture, often working as unpaid family labor on farms. In the cities, women are concentrated in "other services," which often means domestic work, care services, and other low-wage informal jobs. On the flip side, men dominate the heavy-lifting neighborhoods like construction, transport, and mining. Even in the manufacturing sector, where men and women seem to be working side-by-side in similar numbers, the paper suggests a hidden trap: women are often doing the same work but getting paid less and having fewer protections. It's like two people carrying the same heavy box, but only one of them gets a reward at the end.
Why is this happening? The paper suggests it's not just about a lack of jobs, but about a "double burden." Using data from a time-use survey, the study points out that women are spending a massive amount of their day on unpaid care work—cooking, cleaning, and looking after family members. In fact, women spend an average of 363 minutes a day on these unpaid tasks, while men spend only 123 minutes. Because their time is eaten up by these invisible duties, women are forced into flexible, informal work that fits around their home life, rather than the rigid, 9-to-5 formal jobs that require a full-time commitment.
The bottom line of this detective story is that the "growth" of the Indian economy hasn't automatically fixed the gender gap. The paper argues that we are seeing a "stagnant quality" of employment for women. Just because more women are working doesn't mean they are better off; many are working harder for less security and less pay. The study concludes that without specific policies to fix the "unpaid care" burden and enforce fair labor laws, the economy will keep building a system where women are the flexible, low-cost workforce, while men hold the steady, secure positions. It's a reminder that in the race for economic growth, we can't just count how many people are running; we have to check if they are all running on the same track.
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