What the Numbers Hide About Women’s Participation in the Labour Force

Recent data from India’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) reveals a striking transformation in the gender dynamics of employment: rural women’s workforce participation has surged to an unprecedented level, now accounting for the majority of national job growth. 

This trend sharply contrasts with stagnant or declining female workforce engagement in urban areas, signalling a profound structural change rather than a mere statistical fluctuation. For the first time, rural women are not just workers but central economic actors shaping India’s development trajectory.

This phenomenon deserves more than celebratory headlines. It challenges conventional narratives about women’s labour in India and demands a nuanced understanding rooted in socio-economic realities, policy impacts, and deeper questions about empowerment and equity.

Rise in rural women's participation

The numbers tell a story. The PLFS for July-September 2025 shows that the female labour force participation rate (LFPR) rose to 34.1%, the highest in five months, with rural women accounting for nearly all of this growth. 

The Worker Population Ratio (WPR) for rural women jumped from 35.2% in June to 37.9% in September, reflecting a sustained absorption of female workers into the rural economy. In contrast, urban female participation remains flat at 26.1%, highlighting persistent disparities in women’s labour engagement across geographies. 

The overall unemployment rate saw a marginal increase to 5.2%, but this is attributed to more women entering the labour market rather than job losses, indicating a dynamic and expanding workforce.​

The rise in rural women’s participation is closely linked to flagship government schemes. MGNREGS, which guarantees 100 days of wage employment per year to rural households, has been instrumental in providing women with income-generating opportunities and reducing their economic dependency. 

In the financial year 2024-25, over 440.7 lakh women participated in MGNREGS, indicative of its critical role in promoting women’s empowerment and economic inclusion. The scheme’s direct wage payments to women, along with provisions for childcare and financial literacy, have helped women gain greater control over household resources and build confidence to pursue other employment opportunities.​

Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), launched in 2016, has mobilised over 10 crore rural women into more than 90 lakh Self-Help Groups (SHGs), creating a robust platform for collective action and financial resilience. 

The mission supports both farm and non-farm activities, empowers women farmers and provides access to formal credit, skills, and market opportunities. By nurturing SHGs and deploying trained community resource persons, DAY-NRLM has diversified income sources and strengthened the rural economy, enabling women to become entrepreneurs and leaders in their communities.​

Rising figures alone are not an accurate indicator

At first glance, these numbers suggest progress. However, a nuanced examination reveals that rising participation figures alone are incomplete indicators of empowerment. The composition of work undertaken by rural women is heavily skewed toward informal and often precarious employment forms, particularly self-employment and unpaid family labour. 

According to recent analyses, the share of women engaged in regular salaried jobs – the form of employment offering greater security and benefits – has declined, while self-employed and unpaid household workers have grown significantly. 

This trend is not confined to rural areas but is mirrored, and often exacerbated, in urban settings. This also points towards a deeper question: is lack of proper employment opportunities the reason behind self-employment among women?

This reality signals a disconcerting paradox. Rather than a flourishing of dignified, sustainable employment, the rise in workforce participation partly reflects distress-driven necessity. 

Faced with agrarian distress, stagnating farm incomes, and limited diversified non-farm livelihood opportunities, many rural women enter the workforce as a survival strategy. Their earnings, often low and unpredictable, supplement family incomes but rarely translate into durable economic empowerment or upward mobility.

The decline in ‘decent work’ opportunities for rural women – characterised by secure wages, social protection, and legal rights – poses a serious challenge to India’s development agenda. It also highlights the gap between India’s aspirations and the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) framework, which emphasises not only employment creation but also quality and equity. 

The promise of social protection, rights at work, and social dialogue remains elusive for a large proportion of rural women’s labour. Consequently, rising participation in work may paradoxically signal vulnerability, precarity and exploitation rather than progress.

A challenge for policymakers

Yet, dismissing the rural women’s labour force surge as mere distress obscures key dimensions of transformation underway. Economic engagement, even if initially insecure, re-calibrates household power dynamics, improves intra-household bargaining positions, and fosters new social identities for women in traditionally patriarchal societies. 

The cumulative effect of wage earnings and collective action through self-help groups strengthens agency, promotes savings and asset ownership, and nurtures community leadership among women. These changes are foundational for long-term empowerment.

While the rising numbers alone capture attention, what makes this moment truly transformative is the potential for deep structural impacts on gender equity and rural well-being. 

Recent data shows rural female labour force participation rising dramatically – from about 24.6% in 2017-18 to nearly 47.6% in 2023-24 – almost doubling in just six years, with rural women driving this surge far more than their urban counterparts. This scale of increase reflects not just income necessity but a shifting social landscape wherein women are increasingly recognised as economic agents rather than supplementary earners.

Turning this numeric leap into lasting financial empowerment requires a strategic policy focus that goes beyond employment access to emphasise income stability, asset ownership, skill enhancement, and social protection. 

For example, rigorous skill-building tailored to rural women's realities can help diversify income sources into emerging sectors such as agro-processing, rural manufacturing, and digital services, thereby reducing dependence on subsistence agriculture and informal work.

Similarly, strengthening women’s property and inheritance rights is critical for economic security and access to credit, which catalyses entrepreneurship and sustained income generation. There is also a pressing need to extend social protection schemes – health, pension, and accident insurance –  to informal women workers, cushioning them against shocks that disproportionately impact female-headed households and vulnerable communities.

This surge of rural women into the workforce also offers profound lessons for broad-based rural development. Collective mechanisms like SHGs not only enable women’s financial inclusion but also transform local governance and social norms, fostering community resilience and gender-inclusive decision-making processes. Recognising women as key economic actors enables development models to shift from male-centric assumptions toward more inclusive, pluralistic paradigms that better reflect Indian rural realities.

Furthermore, the contrasting trends between rural and urban female workforce participation spotlight the need for integrated rural-urban policy frameworks. Urban areas can benefit from the rural innovations of community mobilisation, gender-responsive work conditions, and accessible childcare services. Building such synergies is essential to achieving India’s ambitious target of increasing overall female labour force participation to 55% by 2030.

This evolving rural female labour force is not just a crucial element of India’s economic recovery – it is a bellwether for a broader transformation in development paradigms. It calls for moving beyond male-centric, aggregate growth models to approaches that centralise gender, equity and local agency. The empowerment of rural women reshapes not only economic but also political and cultural landscapes, sewing diversity and inclusiveness into the fabric of India’s growth story.

For policymakers, the challenge is clear: to cement and expand gains through integrated, gender-sensitive, and data-driven interventions that enhance quality and security in women’s employment. For civil society and researchers, the task is to rigorously unpack hidden vulnerabilities and amplify women’s voices in policy dialogues. For India’s broader public, recognising and valuing rural women’s economic contributions is a crucial step toward inclusive nation-building.

Ultimately, India’s progress will be measured not just by rising workforce participation figures, but by the degree to which rural women can translate their labour into agency, autonomy and dignity. The quiet revolution unfolding in villages is an invitation – a call to rethink and reimagine development through the transformative power of rural women’s work.

Trishali Chauhan is an independent research scholar from Kings College, London.

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