Digital infrastructure is aiding women too unevenly

livemint.com:

G20 Summit, India is on a roll. Both these events have been lauded by world leaders. The New Delhi Declaration by G20 leaders, the key outcome document of the summit held in the capital under India’s presidency, featured various policy aspirations that are important for all 20 economies.

One specific focus was on enhancing the economic empowerment of women and achieving what was earlier described as the “25 by 25" goal. Set under the Australian presidency at the Brisbane summit in 2014, this was a key contribution to the G20 agenda: An aim to reduce the gender gap in the labour force participation rate by 25% by the year 2025 (compared to 2012). We are less than two years away from that point, and so this should serve as a good time to take stock of statistics on female labour force participation.

Just how much progress has been made? According to the International Labour Organization, the gender gap in the labour force participation rate in the age group of 25–54 years was 29.2 percentage points in 2022, globally, with female participation at 61.4% and the male rate at 90.6%. While the gender gap in labour force participation has witnessed a decline from 2014 to 2021, the gap has begun to widen again lately. Governments and organizations across the world need to look at policies that could reduce this gap and help reach the ‘25 by 25’ goal within its intended timeframe.

India offers a very interesting picture. The female labour force participation rate in India was 17.5% in 2017-18, which increased to 25.1% in 2020-21. Further, our gender gap in labour force participation has seen a decline from 38 percentage points in 2017-18 to 32 percentage points is 2020-21.