What’s Holding Back India’s Economic Ambitions?
Many countries have followed a similar economic trajectory: As they develop, women increasingly enter the workforce, further fueling the country’s upward climb. It happened in China, Japan and South Korea in the latter half of the 20th century. The U.S.
saw its female labor-force participation rate—the percentage of women age 15 and up who are working or actively looking for work—grow from 32% in 1948 to 59% by 2000. India, which overtook the U.K. last year as the world’s fifth largest economy, hasn’t followed that path.
Since 1990, its female labor-force participation rate has hit a peak of only 31% in 2000, according to data from the World Bank. Last year, it was 24%. That rate is among the 12 lowest in the world, a list including Afghanistan and Somalia.
Saudi Arabia has a higher percentage of women working or looking for a job. India has made some recent progress. The percentage of women in the labor force has grown slightly from a low of 21% in 2018, but those small gains have been hard won.
Even companies that have made an effort to hire women have found it difficult. India’s low numbers helped bring down the percentage of women in the world’s labor force from around 51% in 2000 to 47% last year. Economists blame India’s low figures on two main factors: weak job creation, which has led to intense competition for the available opportunities, and a deeply conservative culture that emphasizes a woman’s place is at home.
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