Current position for women workers in rural areas will be known only when the annual report for July 2022 – June 2023 would be brought sometime in February 2023, as we can presume by the traditionally bringing the data too late to have any relevance for the realtime management of labour market in the country.

The quarterly bulletins of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) prepared by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation of Government of India covers the data relating to only the urban workers.

As per the annual report of PLFS for July 2021 – June 2022, which was released on February 24 2023, the LFPR for women in this period was 27.2 per cent, WPR 25.6 per cent and unemployment rate 5.8 per cent in CWS. For urban for rural areas, these were 29.2 per cent, 27.9 per cent and 4.5 per cent respectively, whine in the urban areas these were 22.1 per cent, 19.1 per cent and 9.9 per cent respectively. It was a very small recovery since the pandemic year 2019-20, when LFPR for women was 26.3 per cent, WPR 24.4 per cent and unemployment rate 7.5 per cent.

However, for urban areas the LFPR for women remained at 22.1 per cent in 2021-22 as it was in the pandemic year 2019-20, though little improvement was registered in WPR from 19.4 per cent to 19.9 per cent and unemployment rate from 12.4 to 9.9 per cent. It was still at very high level at the end of June 2022.

The Quarterly data for January – March 2023 shows that gender gap has widened in the urban areas. LFPR in CWS has come down to 18 per cent for women of all ages, much less than 22.1 per cent in 2021-22. Sharp fall was registered during the same period last year to 16.2 per cent, and then marginally improved in the subsequent quarters to 16.4, 17.2 and 17.7 per cent, indicating that the LFPR for the whole year July 2022 – June 2023 would be even less than the present 18 per cent.

LFPR in CWS in urban areas for January – March 2023 for women aged 15-29 years was 19.3 per cent as against 17.3 per cent in the corresponding period last year. For women 15 years and above LFPR in CWS was 22.7 per cent as against 20.4 per cent during the same period in 2022.

Worker Population Ratio (WPR) in CWS was merely 16.4 per cent for women of all ages during January – March 2023 as against 14.5 per cent during the corresponding months in 2022. For women above 15 years the WPR in CWS was 20.6 per cent during January – March 2023 against 18.3 per cent during the same period in 2022. Worst case was of the young women between the working age of 15-29 years, the WPR in CWS for whom was only 14.9 per cent during January – March 2023 as against only 13 per cent a year ago during the corresponding period.

Diving deep into the PLFS bulletin for the first quarter of 2023 show even more disturbing trend. The women employed in regular wage or salary were only 54.2 per cent during January – March 2023. A total of 26 per cent were own account worker or employer, 11 per cent in household enterprise, 38.5 per cent had declared themselves self-employed, while 7.3 per cent were casual labour. Needless to say that only a little less than half of the women workers were employed in low or little paid jobs. Their employment were simply unemployment in disguise.

Regular and salaried jobs for women has been on the decline which has came down to 54.2 per cent in January – March 2023 as against 56.7 per cent in the corresponding period in 2022. Job opportunity for them has been declining including quality regular salaried jobs, which necessitated more and more women to start their own work. It is precisely due to this reason own account workers and employers have increased from 24.3 to 26 per cent, helpers in household enterprise increased from 10.2 per cent to 11.7 per cent, and self-employed from 35.3 to 38.5 per cent in the last one year.

As for the unemployment rate for women are concerned, worst sufferers are young women of 15-29 years of age. Unemployment rate for them was 22.9 per cent during January – March 2023, while it was 9.2 per cent for all ages.

Historically speaking, the female labour force participation rate in India has been on the decline since 1999-2000 when it was 34.1 per cent, which came down to 27.2 per cent in 2011-12, and further worsened to 18 per cent in the first quarter of 2023.

Needless to say, policies adopted since 2014 when Narendra Modi became prime minister of the country are going against women workforce, apart from the biases against them prevailing in the society, that generally discourages women to take a job. India needs to take appropriate steps to deal with the situation by removing constraints in women’s path to better life and to paid work that would ultimately increase the GDP of the country and make to society better to live in.