Female labour force participation rate

Also called: FLFPR · Topic: Employment, Unemployment and Informalisation · NCERT: Beyond NCERT

Meaning

Female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) is the percentage of women in a given age group who are in the labour force. The labour force means women who are working plus women who are seeking or available for work.

FLFPR = (Employed women + Unemployed women) ÷ Total women in that age group × 100

It shows how many women take part in the economy that is counted in GDP. India's FLFPR has long been low by global standards. This matters for growth, for women's own income and for the demographic dividend (the extra growth a country can get when it has many people of working age).

Explanation

How it is measured

• Who counts as a worker: a person who does an economic activity (work that adds to GDP) and earns from it, in cash or in kind. Unpaid helpers on a family farm or in a family business also count.
• Who is in the labour force: women who are working, plus women who have no work but are seeking or available for work.
• Who is left out of the labour force: students, homemakers, retired women and others who are neither working nor looking for work.
• Age base: in India, PLFS figures for FLFPR are usually given for women aged 15 years and above. Figures for all ages are lower, because children are included and most of them do not work.
• Worked example (made-up numbers):
• A village has 100 women aged 15+. 38 work. 2 have no work but are looking for it. 60 are students, homemakers or retired.
• FLFPR = (38 + 2) ÷ 100 × 100 = 40%
• Female WPR = 38 ÷ 100 × 100 = 38%
• Female UR = 2 ÷ 40 × 100 = 5%. The base is the labour force (40), not all women (100).

Why the reference period matters for women

• Usual status (ps+ss): a woman's activity is judged over the 365 days before the survey [1].
• Principal status (ps): the activity she spent the most time on in those 365 days [1].

• Subsidiary status (ss): extra economic work done for 30 days or more in the same 365 days [1].

• Why ss matters:

• Many women are mainly homemakers but help on the farm at harvest time.
• Under ss, they are counted as workers.

• Without it, they would drop out of the FLFPR.

• Current Weekly Status (CWS): activity judged over only the last 7 days [1]. Seasonal farm work by women can be missed on this basis.

What makes FLFPR rise or fall: the U-shaped curve (Claudia Goldin)

• U-shaped curve: a graph of women's participation against a country's income level, shaped like the letter U.
• Falling side (early development):
• Income effect: household income rises, so the family can live on the man's income, and the woman leaves hard farm work.
• Stigma: paid manual work outside the home is seen as lowering the family's status.

• Longer schooling: girls stay in education longer, so fewer young women are in the labour force.

• Rising side (later development):

• Women get higher education.
• Respectable white-collar jobs (office, teaching, services) appear.

• Participation rises again.

• India is a global low outlier on this curve. Its FLFPR is lower than its income level would predict.

Other factors that push FLFPR down (especially in cities)

• Social norms: women are expected to do housework first.
• Safety and travel: city jobs are far from home, and transport that is unsafe or costly keeps women away.
• Few suitable jobs: there are not many part-time or flexible urban jobs close to home.
• Double burden:
• Women do both paid work and unpaid domestic and care work.
• When a woman takes a job, her housework does not go away.
• So her total working day gets longer, and this discourages paid work.

In India

• Who measures it: the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), launched by the NSSO under MoSPI in April 2017 [1].
• Quarterly estimates cover urban areas only (CWS). Annual estimates cover rural and urban areas, on both usual status and CWS.
• 2023-24 (July 2023 – June 2024) is its 7th Annual Report. It surveyed 1,01,920 households and 4,18,159 persons [1].

• Before PLFS, the NSSO ran quinquennial (once in five years) employment surveys.

• Trend in FLFPR (15+, usual status) [1][2]:

Year	Female LFPR (%)	Male LFPR (%)	All persons (%)
2017-18	23.3	75.8	49.8
2018-19	24.5	75.5	50.2
2019-20	30.0	76.8	53.5
2020-21	32.5	77.0	54.9
2021-22	32.8	77.2	55.2
2022-23	37.0	78.5	57.9
2023-24	41.7	78.8	60.1

• The rise is mostly rural. Rural female LFPR rose from 24.6% to 47.6%, while urban female LFPR rose only from 20.4% to 28.0%, between 2017-18 and 2023-24 [1].
• Female WPR (15+, usual status): 22.0% (2017-18) → 40.3% (2023-24) [1].
• Unemployment rate (15+, usual status), 2023-24: 3.2% for both men and women. Women's UR rose from 2.9% in 2022-23 [1].
• What kind of work is it? Most of the rise is in rural self-employment and unpaid family work, such as helping on the family farm or in a family shop without a wage.
• Where women work: 64.4% of women workers are in the primary sector, against 36.3% of men (2023-24). This is called feminisation of agriculture (women becoming a bigger share of farm workers as men move to non-farm jobs in towns).
• Invisible work is not counted: in the Time Use Survey 2024, 83.1% of females and 26.4% of males did unpaid domestic services on a normal day [3][4]. Most of this work does not enter FLFPR or GDP.
• Legal backstop: the Code on Wages, 2019 bars gender discrimination in wages for the same or similar work. It replaced the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976.

Don't confuse with

• Female Worker Population Ratio (WPR): counts only employed women out of all women. FLFPR also counts women who are seeking or available for work. So FLFPR is always equal to or higher than female WPR (2023-24, 15+: 41.7% vs 40.3%) [1].
• Female unemployment rate: the base is the female labour force, not all women. UR = Unemployed ÷ Labour force × 100 [1].
• Unpaid care work: caring for family members and doing domestic chores without pay. It is excluded from GDP, so it does not raise FLFPR. Unpaid work on a family farm or in a family business is counted.
• WPR (all ages) from NCERT Table 6.1: women's WPR is 30.7 (all ages, 2023-24). This is not the FLFPR, and it is not on a 15+ basis. Always check the measure and the age group before you compare two figures.

Prelims Hooks

• FLFPR = (Employed + Unemployed women) ÷ Female population × 100. Unemployed means seeking or available for work. Homemakers and students are outside the labour force.
• Female LFPR (15+, usual status): 23.3% (2017-18) → 41.7% (2023-24). Male LFPR: 78.8%. All persons: 60.1% (2023-24) [1].
• Rural vs urban female LFPR, 2023-24: rural 47.6%, urban 28.0%. The rise is mostly rural [1].
• PLFS: NSSO (MoSPI), launched April 2017. Quarterly estimates are for urban areas only (CWS). Annual estimates cover rural and urban [1].
• Subsidiary status needs 30 days or more of economic work within the 365-day usual-status period. It raises the count of women workers [1].
• U-shaped FLFPR curve: linked to Claudia Goldin. Participation first falls as income rises, then rises with higher education and white-collar jobs.

Mains Points

• Quantity vs quality of women's work:
• FLFPR nearly doubled from 23.3% to 41.7% between 2017-18 and 2023-24 [1], but most of the rise is rural self-employment and unpaid family work.
• Empowerment view: better roads, water and cooking gas free up women's time, and Self-Help Groups (SHGs) create work.
• Distress view: women took up work because household incomes fell (for example, after COVID-19), and unpaid helper work gives them no income of their own.
• Measurement view: better counting of subsidiary (ss) work may explain part of the rise.

• Policy should aim at paid, secure, non-farm jobs for women, not just a higher headcount.

• Urban FLFPR puzzle and the U-curve:

• Urban female LFPR is only 28.0% (2023-24) [1].
• Suggested fixes: safer public transport, flexible and part-time jobs, public childcare (anganwadi-cum-crèches) to ease the double burden, and firm enforcement of the Code on Wages, 2019.

• These would help India move up the rising side of the U-curve and gain from its demographic dividend.

• Making invisible work visible:

• Women who give unpaid care spend about 140 minutes a day on it, against 74 minutes for men (age 15–59, TUS 2024) [3][4].
• Women are 64.4% primary-sector workers (2023-24), but they operate only 13.78% of holdings (2015-16) [5].
• Suggestions: satellite accounts that value unpaid work beside GDP, and land titles in women's names so they can get credit, insurance and scheme benefits. This links GS-I (women's issues) with GS-III (employment and agriculture).

Related concepts

• U-shaped female labour force participation
• Unpaid work of women
• Unpaid care work
• Care work
• Double burden
• Feminisation of agriculture
• Gender wage gap
• Glass ceiling

Read more

• Who works: participation by gender and region, and women's invisible work