New Delhi: A new study by Oxfam has revealed that the increase in the number of rural women who are working is not because of new job opportunities, with the phenomenon being largely reflective of economic distress, reported Business Standard.As per the study, the labour force participation rate of rural women almost doubled from 24.6% in 2017-18 to 47.6% in 2023-24, which is one of the sharpest increases anywhere in the world.However, instead of a corresponding increase in women being hired, it was found that more women are being counted as “self-employed”. The self-employed category includes everything from running a shop to working unpaid on a family farm.The Oxfam study found that the number of rural women workers who are classified as self-employed increased from 57% in 2017-18 to 72.2% in 2023-24. However, a whopping 59% of the women were unpaid helpers in family enterprises.During the same period that was examined in the study, the share of women employed in salaried jobs decreased from 11% to 8%, while that in casual labour declined from 32% to 20%, reported Business Standard.“In other words, women have moved into work, they have moved out of the categories that typically come with a wage, a contract, or any security, and into unpaid or precarious own-account roles,” said the Oxfam analysis.The Oxfam study also highlighted why policy changes are a matter of concern. Earlier, women accounted for 54% of person-days under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which has now been replaced by the VB-GRAM-G Act.“Unlike the old demand-driven guarantee, the new scheme rations work to specific seasons, shifts 40 per cent of the wage bill onto states — many of them fiscally stressed — and requires twice-daily geo-tagged photo uploads through a mobile app, a barrier for women with limited digital access and skill,” said the analysis.The Wire has previously reported that much of the increase in the participation of women in labour force appears to be concentrated in self employment, unpaid family work and low quality agricultural and informal jobs, while regular salaried employment has declined. For some researchers, this pattern points less to expanding economic opportunities than to underlying economic distress pushing households into low productivity and subsistence forms of work.Village studies offer a useful perspective on why women’s work participation changes. The long running study of Palanpur, for instance, found that women were more likely to withdraw from paid work as household economic conditions improved, while economic hardship pushed more women into the workforce. A more recent study of two villages in Tamil Nadu reaches a similar conclusion: women’s participation tends to rise during periods of economic distress, and fall when household conditions improve.