Beyond statistical growth, unlocking India’s full economic potential requires transforming female workforce participation into quality, dignified employment.
Delivering the Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi placed Nari Shakti, the power of India’s women, at the heart of the nation’s journey to 2047. He celebrated the progress Indian women have made, from flying fighter jets, leading in STEM, building semiconductors in Sanand. He also appreciated the achievements of ‘Lakhpati Didis’ and ‘Drone Didis’ and appealed to Parliament to enact the Nari Shakti Vandan Act’s 33%. This moment is a useful entry point as the country looks ahead to its vision of Viksit Bharat by 2047, reflecting on the strides already made and to draw lessons on what is missing. Let’s look at the journey.
Going back in history, you would record that Indian women were never absent from work. During ancient times or colonial rule, women worked shoulder to shoulder with men, building roads, working in fields and family enterprises, and doing hard labour. But their work got pushed into the unskilled category, underpaid, less valued and slowly made invisible. After independence, there were Five-Year Plans and many social welfare schemes, but they saw women as beneficiaries and not active participants. Even after 1991, when India opened up and started growing fast, women’s participation in the workforce actually went down, from about 31% to 23% by 2017. A nation cannot be developed if half its population remains underrepresented in the economy, overburdened in unpaid labor and under-acknowledged in leadership. Around half of all women worldwide participate in the labour force, with regions such as the Middle East/North Africa and South Asia sitting well below the world average. And this was not unique to India, as “U-curve” shows that female participation often dips during early industrialisation, as women move out of agriculture faster than new formalsector jobs become available to them, before rising again once education levels and service-sector opportunities expand.
Where India Stands Today
Since 2017–18, India has recorded one of the fastest rises in female workforce participation seen anywhere in the world, nearly doubling to 41.7% by 2023– 24, according to Periodic Labour Force Survey data analysed by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. With the vision of women-led development, women are seen as active beneficiaries. Through landmark initiatives such as Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, the Jan Dhan– Aadhaar–Mobile ( JAM) trinity, and Digital India, significantly expanding women’s access to education, financial inclusion, employment opportunities, and digital infrastructure. Over the past 11 years, Gender Budget allocations have increased by four and half times, from Rs. 0.98 lakh crore in 2014-15 to Rs. 4.49 lakh crore in 2025-26. As a result, in December 2025, overall female labour force participation reached up to 35.3%. In rural areas, it was 40.1% and in urban areas, it reached 25.3%. There has been a huge rise in women entrepreneurs across the country. The scale of collective mobilisation through Self-Help Groups (SHGs), with nearly 10 crore women associated with SHGs across the country is the successful story. Approximately two crore women have achieved the status of “Lakhpati Didis” and “Drone Didis” demonstrating the transformative impact of livelihood programmes and technological integration.
But as we celebrate these soaring achievements, we are confronted with stark realities. The pathways to economic integration and empowerment are marred by deeply entrenched patriarchal networks along with institutional challenges. A lot of participation is still in the informal sector or low-paying jobs or micro-or small based entrepreneurs. Then women are still struggling to find access to basic infrastructure such as safe transport, washrooms, water or electricity. So, the quantity has improved, but the quality still has a long way to go. Underlying this is the unpaid care work burden, often described as the ‘purple economy’. Women across the world spend more time than men on domestic and care work, sometimes over six times as much, and this labour is entirely excluded from standard labor-force statistics. According to the latest Time Use Survey, women spend an average of 305 minutes per day on unpaid care work, compared to 88 minutes for men. And the Economic Survey estimated that women’s unpaid care work contributes 3.1% to GDP, which suppresses their measured participation.
Way Forward
India sits in the middleincome countries’ trap often characterised with lower FLFPR. Developed countries pull women into white-collar work as education and service-sector demand rise and in least developed countries push women into subsistence agriculture out of necessity. The question is what do we need? The task for the next two decades, as the country pursues its Viksit Bharat vision for 2047, is to convert this quantitative momentum into quality, dignity, and opportunity at scale. Therefore, we need actionable, interdisciplinary policy frameworks. First, childcare and elderly support so that household work is reduced and redistributed. Second, formal, dignified formal employment opportunities. Additionally, flexible and part-time work facilities along with social security benefits. Third, gender-sensitive infrastructure facilities, such as safe transport and housing/hostel facilities. Here, Tamil Nadu’s Thozhi hostel model is an example where they converted educational gains into urban employment. And, finally, genuine leadership opportunities for women, not just token board seats.
India cannot simply achieve the developed status with half the population sitting on the sidelines as PM Modi emphasised during his speech. The IMF itself says closing this gender gap could boost India’s GDP by nearly 27%. The data now points firmly in the right direction. The task ahead is to deepen and build on that momentum. And if India gets this right, it won’t just be a story of growth, it’ll be a story of everyone actually being counted.
Dr. Cchavi Vasisht is Associate Fellow at the Centre for Geopolitics and Strategic Studies, Chintan Research Foundation, New Delhi. She is a UGC NET Junior/Senior Research Fellow in Sociology
