New Delhi: A new study published by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) has found that even though women participation in Indian workforce has nearly doubled in seven years, this increase is not translating into better jobs, high incomes or greater economic independence for women.“The Participation Paradox: Women’s Work and Time-Use in India, 2017-18 to 2025“, authored by Tanu M. Goyal, Shravani Prakash, Ketaki Gaikwad and Arjun Tandon, makes use of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) and the Time Use Survey (TUS) to drawn conclusions about the expansion of female workforce.It states that women workforce expanded from 104 million in 2017-18 to 201 million in 2025, as women’s population ratio increased from 22% to 38%. Nevertheless, a large portion of this expansion has been consumed by sectors like agriculture, self-employment and unpaid domestic work rather than salaried jobs.“The growth in women’s participation has been concentrated in own-account and unpaid family work rather than in regular salaried employment, pointing to a rise in quantity without a matching gain in job quality,” the report says.It notes that own-account workers rose from 13.9 million to 56 million in seven years, along with a rise in unpaid family workers from 28.8 million to 49.3 million. However, salaried employment “expanded only modestly from 7.9 million to 13.9 million, its share slipping from 10.5 to 9.3%.”Thus, per the study, women’s employment has moved in the opposite direction to the structural transformation visible among men. While the share of rural women employed in agriculture increased from 70.7% to 73.3% during the period under study, the corresponding share for men fell from 54.1% to 47.2% as more men moved to manufacturing and service sectors.The study notes that absolute numbers present an even starker image, with women employed in crop and animal production “more than doubling in the period”, thereby hiking from 4 million to over 100 million.It argues that “the fact that the share of female employment remained broadly stable at around 72 to 73% masks the reality that, in absolute terms, the growth in participation of the rural female workforce has been almost entirely absorbed by agriculture rather than distributed across more productive activities.”Additionally, women entering the manufacturing industry remained concentrated in sectors like garments, textiles and tobacco production, all of which are marked by informal arrangements of employment and low productivity.Photo: “The Participation Paradox: Women’s Work and Time-Use in India, 2017-18 to 2025,” ICRIER.A decline in working hoursAnother pertinent finding revealed by the study points to a decline in the amount of time women spend in paid employment, despite increased participation.According to the study, average weekly working hours fell across all groups between 2017-18 and 2025. This decline was the steepest among rural women, with their working hours dropping by more than six hours a week. Comparatively, rural men’s working hours fell by four hours, while urban men and women only saw a fall of around two hours.Photo: “The Participation Paradox: Women’s Work and Time-Use in India, 2017-18 to 2025,” ICRIER.The study interpreted this an indication that women’s entry into manufacturing roles has not necessarily meant access to regular factory employment. A large part of the women workforce continues to be concentrated in home-based and informal means of production.Rural women earn only 45% of what the men are paid“In 2017-18, rural women earned approximately 53% of what rural men earned; by 2025, this ratio had deteriorated to around 45%, implying that the average rural woman now earns less than half the average rural man’s monthly wage,” the study notes.Although earnings increased for both men and women, men’s wages grew at a much faster pace. Between the seven years analysed, rural male wages increased by approximately 65%, compared with 41% for rural women. In urban areas, the respective increases were 57% and 51%.This disparity is evident across industries, with sectors like agriculture, textile, retail and domestic work, which predominantly employ women, continuing to record significant gender wage differences.Meanwhile, sectors like computer programming, scientific research and development, and publishing and consultancy, where pay parity is more common, employ only a small proportion of women.Six in ten women mention household work as the reason for staying unemployedAccording to PLFS 2025 data analysed in the report, 60% of women outside the labour force cited childcare or personal household commitments as their primary reason for not working. As expected, the corresponding statistic for men for merely 1%.“Women are out of the labour force because they are performing unpaid domestic and care work that is invisible to standard employment statistics but fully occupies their time. Microlevel evidence from West Bengal confirms this, showing that domestic chores are the principal constraint preventing women’s participation in paid work, with many women officially classified as outside the labour force in fact engaged in unpaid productive activity,” the study says.As evidence by the table below, only 0.8% of women cited inadequate qualifications or training as reasons for staying out of the workplace, 0.7% called attention to absence of work at more accessible locations.Photo: “The Participation Paradox: Women’s Work and Time-Use in India, 2017-18 to 2025,” ICRIER.Marriage emerged as another consequential factor in the study. In 2025, workforce participation stood at 87.6% among married men, as opposed to just 37.3% among married women respondents.More than seven hours spent on household responsibilitiesThe report argues that while men’s time was found to be “concentrated in paid work across self-employment, regular wage employment and casual labour,” women’s time was concentrated in “unpaid domestic and care activities.”In 2024, women spent approximately 320 minutes a day on household chores such as cooking, cleaning and maintenance. They spent another 144 minutes caring for children, elderly people and other household members. Male members, on the other hand, only spent 97 and 81 minutes, respectively, in addressing these responsibilities.Thus, almost eight hours of a woman respondent’s day, which is the average working hours for full-time employment, going into unpaid, unappreciated labour. Even their entry into paid employment was observed to have come at their own expense – working women had even lesser time available for self-care and personal development. Men’s corresponding share remained the same.More jobs, but also better jobsThe researchers argue that there is a pressing need to move beyond measuring women’s economic empowerment through participation rates in isolation.Affordable childcare, better public transport, stronger familial support systems, better sanitation and stronger workplace provisions should be given equal weight.They call for the creation of more formal employment opportunities in manufacturing and modern services to improve access to skill-training and financial autonomy.Although India has made considerable progress in improving entry of women into the workforce, there remains a prevailing, deep-rooted socioeconomic system that perpetuates misogynistic frameworks and hinders women from the accessing the same opportunities, in the same way, as men.