♤ ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION AND OPPORTUNITY

Women’s participation in labour force is seen as a signal of declining discrimination and increasing empowerment of women. It is thought that feminization of the workforce is also a sign of improvement of women’s opportunities and position in society. In India, the statistics show that in both rural and urban areas, the Labour force Participation Rate had declined in 2009-10 as compared to 1003-94 particularly for females.

Surveys reveal the fact that in India there are considerable gender disparities in Labour force Participation Rates. The female labour force participation rate has declined from 49.0% to 37.8% and from 23.8% to 19.4% in rural and urban areas respectively between 1993-94 and 2009-10. The second conclusion is that in 2009-11, the female labour force participation rate is only 19.4% as against 76.2% for males.

The low labour force participation rates are attributed to reasons that women’s work is statistically less visible, non-monetized and relegated to subsistence production and domestic side and estimation reveal that this proportion accounts for 60.0% of unpaid work and 98% of domestic work. The India Human Development Report-2011 observed that poor access to education was one of the reasons for higher labour force participation rate in rural areas particularly for females. Further, there is huge gender disparity in both rural and urban areas for females with reference to Worker Population Ratio.

Women’s workforce participation rate was almost half of that of men in rural areas and less than a third in urban areas. These figures make it clear that the achievement of economic development for the past 60 years did not had a telling effect on Workforce Participation Rate for females in India as almost no change took place in this vital index of women empowerment.