Why Indian women work where they 'can', not always where they 'want'

Times Special

India’s first district-level jobs data shows women work most where they have the least choice, and least where the jobs on offer don’t fit their lives. TOI went to six districts at the extremes

Reporting by Tushar Tere, Vishal Patadiya, Yagnesh Mehta (Gujarat), Jaskaran Singh (Haryana), Rohit Mullick (Himachal Pradesh), Diana Sahu (Odisha), HC Vanlalruata (Mizoram), Ram Sundaram (Tamil Nadu) · Data: Chandni Tekwani

The six districts

Three questions, two ends of each

Profiled districts come from the top and bottom of each ranking; rankings exclude Delhi. Teal marks the higher-performing end, orange the lower. Tap a district to jump to its story.

Map shows India's official boundaries (DataMeet India, CC BY 4.0). Not to scale. Gujarat and Mizoram are survey district groups and are marked at their centre.

1Dahod · Narmada · Dang · Tapi · Chhota Udepur · Mahisagar, Gujarat

8 in 10 women here work. But there's a catch

Tushar Tere, Vishal Patadiya & Yagnesh Mehta

Wearing her pink uniform, Anita Tadvi takes her e-rickshaw to the Statue of Unity in Ektanagar every morning. As tourists begin arriving at the world’s tallest statue in Narmada district, the 25-year-old’s day gathers pace. She drives them around the premises as driver and guide, one of many in this tribal Gujarat belt east of Narmada who are reaping the benefits of tourist inflows since Sardar Patel’s iconic statue was inaugurated in 2018.

Anita Tadvi, 25, e-rickshaw driver at the Statue of Unity. “When I learnt about the requirement for e-rickshaw drivers three years ago, I discussed it with my husband and in-laws. They immediately agreed.”

In India’s first district-level periodic labour force survey (PLFS) released in Sept, the Dahod-Narmada-Dang-Tapi-Chhota Udepur-Mahisagar belt recorded the country’s highest female labour force participation rate of 82.1%. The rural rate was even higher, at 86.5%, suggesting village economies are driving the standout number.

Across these districts, women are working because households need two earners, men migrate for work, farms and livestock require family labour, and govt schemes, NGOs and self-help groups have opened up small livelihood routes.

“Statue of Unity has brought many opportunities for women in our district. When I learnt about the requirement for e-rickshaw drivers three years ago, I discussed it with my husband and in-laws. They immediately agreed,” Tadvi said.

She took driving lessons, obtained a licence and joined a group of around 90 women who drive e-rickshaws at the monument.

Self-help groups that teach making everyday products such as soaps, bamboo items, bags and festive decorations have brought more informal jobs. Tourism has poured into this basket.

“Women in the tribal belt are productive and earn more than men. They not only work outside the house but also shoulder responsibilities at home, leaving them with hardly any free time,” said Vadodara-based entrepreneur Swati Bedekar.

Dinesh Patel, a farmer from Mahisagar district, said many women work as farm hands and can be hired from the labour market. “I need farm labourers regularly in my corn fields. I prefer to hire women as they are productive and dedicated. In our district, women easily find farm jobs,” Patel said.

But high participation does not automatically mean secure work.

Madhu Gayakwad, who is from Dang and heads the sociology department at VNS, said employment opportunities for women had increased but remained uneven and there is scope to do more to improve livelihoods. As PLFS shows, tribal Gujarat’s women are working. The next benchmark is to make this income sustainable enough to change their lives.

Close behind the men. Here, 89.8% of men and 82.1% of women are in the job market, a gap of 7.7 points. Only seven districts in India have a gap under 10 points.

2Yamunanagar, Haryana

Factories at every turn. Yet 9 in 10 women stay out

Jaskaran Singh

Alka Mehta lives in a district crowded with factories, but none of them holds much appeal for her. Yamunanagar’s plywood units, paper mills, sugar mills and manufacturing plants generate jobs across the district. But Mehta, a homemaker, sees much of that work as too physically demanding for women like her.

“Women cannot work there because the factories require hard and skilled work,” she said.

That disconnect between the jobs Yamunanagar offers and the work many local women are prepared to take up may help explain one of the starkest findings of the PLFS. Only 10% of women aged 15 and above in the district are working or looking for work — the lowest female labour force participation rate (LFPR) outside Delhi.

The problem isn’t a straightforward absence of work.

My husband earns well, so I do not need to work. I work at home and spend my time taking care of my children

Geeta Arora, homemaker, Yamunanagar

That divide is visible in the district’s brick kilns. Women account for around half the workforce there, said Attar Singh, an advocate who works on labour-related issues. But most of them are migrants from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam.

The women who do enter paid work are usually concentrated elsewhere — in schools and colleges, govt departments, shops, businesses and other service-sector jobs.

Education is not the obvious missing link. Women made up about two-thirds of students in Yamunanagar’s general arts and science colleges in 2023-24.

And educated women instead looked towards govt jobs, education and private-sector employment, including IT, software and businesses, said Suman Bahmani, mayor of Yamunanagar-Jagadhri Municipal Corporation.

That preference narrows the field considerably in a district whose industrial economy is built heavily around manual and factory work.

Sangeeta Singhal, a local, said women were far more likely to work in “businesses, shops, schools, colleges and other service-sector activities” than take up labour-intensive jobs because of their physically demanding nature.

For many families, there is another reason women stay out of the labour market — they can afford to. Geeta Arora, a homemaker, explained her choice. “My husband earns well, so I do not need to work. I work at home and spend my time taking care of my children,” she said.

The jobs are there. But for many of Yamunanagar’s women, they are not jobs they see themselves doing.

Delhi does worse. Six of India's 10 lowest districts on this measure are in Delhi, and none of Delhi's districts reaches 19%. In rural Yamunanagar, the figure is 7.2%.

3Chamba, Himachal Pradesh

Busy, yes. But mostly on the family farm

Rohit Mullick

In Sadal panchayat in Chamba, nearly every girl now goes to school or college, says up-pradhan Pritam Singh. The problem begins after the degree.

“With no industries and government vacancies extremely rare, educated women are left with no viable choice other than returning to the fields to assist their families with manual agricultural work,” he said.

That gap between being counted as working and having a secure job helps explain one of the more striking results of the PLFS. Chamba has one of the country’s lowest female youth NEET rates — only 2.8% of women aged 15-29 are neither in employment, education nor training — alongside a high female labour force participation rate of 70.7%.

On the ground, much of that participation is tied to agriculture, often on family farms, in a district where formal employment is scarce.

“The predominance of agriculture in the local economy means that women’s participation, including work on family farms and allied activities, is equal to men’s,” said Kulbhushan Upmanyu, president of Himalaya Niti Abhiyan, a social action collective.

People work in the fields only because family members help for free

Kulbhushan Upmanyu, Himalaya Niti Abhiyan

But he cautioned against treating that participation as evidence of good employment. Mountain farming, he explained, often generates too little income to function as a viable livelihood. “People work in the fields only because family members help for free,” Upmanyu said. In some areas, he added, fields are being left uncultivated because farming no longer pays.

For younger women, education is the other half of the PLFS story.

Schools have become more accessible across the district, while ITIs, colleges and skill programmes have expanded. That keeps many girls and young women within education for longer and helps push down the NEET rate.

The difficulty comes in converting education into jobs. While formal job opportunities are limited in Chamba, tourism is concentrated in pockets such as Dalhousie, Bharmour and Pangi and remains seasonal.

But the more consequential transition is still ahead — turning education and labour-force participation into jobs that actually pay.

4Kendrapara, Odisha

3 in 4 young women here are neither in college nor a job

Diana Sahu

Housework at home in Kendrapara. Nearly three in four young women in the district are neither in a job nor in education or training.

Gayatri Lenka should have been in college. Instead, she lends a helping hand to her mother at home at Kalapada village all day, washing, sweeping and fetching water in the morning, working in the kitchen in the evening. Her college books lie untouched.

Gayatri dropped out. “I wanted to study further but finances were a problem. This year, govt made education free for all, but I can’t go back to college. My mother now depends on me for household chores,” she said.

PLFS paints a dismal picture of the Odisha district when it comes to its young women, with 73.9% of those aged 15 to 29 not in employment, education or training.

Like Gayatri, poverty forces girls into unpaid household work. Some wait for marriage. And some may migrate for work, which does not show up in the local employment picture.

Gayatri Lenka, Kalapada village. “This year, govt made education free for all, but I can't go back to college. My mother now depends on me for household chores.”

Nearly 30km away, in Pattamundai, 22-year-old Monalisa Lenka has been at home for more than a year after completing her graduation. She did not find any local skilling programme that could improve her employment prospects. “The only options here are tailoring or making mats,” she said.

Kendrapara does not have large industrial employers.

“Skill-training opportunities are available, but they are not equally accessible to girls across the district,” said Chittaranjan Das, principal of Kendrapara Autonomous College.

Labour rights activists pointed out there is temporary migration from coastal pockets of the district to other states, and so women who might be earning otherwise don’t reflect as doing so in the local data.

Not just the young. Among all women aged 15–59 in Kendrapara, 63.4% are neither working nor studying. In the typical district, the figure is 40.9%.

5Mizoram, outside Aizawl

Study, work, then marriage. Maybe

HC Vanlalruata

In an earlier generation, girls in Mizoram often began working in agricultural fields as young as 13 and married early. Today, more young women are staying in education longer, pursuing training and finding jobs before marriage.

The PLFS shows a striking divide between age groups. Across Mizoram’s districts outside Aizawl, only 15.2% of women aged 15-29 are neither working, studying nor training, compared with 47.2% of women aged 15-59 — a 32-percentage-point gap, among the widest in the country.

Older women worked too — in cultivation, markets, homes and family businesses. What appears to be changing is the path some younger women are taking into adulthood, with greater emphasis on education and financial independence before marriage.

Kimkimi, an assistant professor at a college around 100km from Aizawl, offers a glimpse of how women’s timelines have changed. Now in her mid-40s and unmarried, she spends weekdays teaching and returns to her parents’ home on weekends, where much of her time goes into academic work and writing her dissertation. “You could say I’m married to my job,” she said.

Work opportunities have widened alongside education. Women are deeply embedded in Mizoram’s markets and small businesses. Educated young women are increasingly entering banks, financial institutions and private companies. And govt jobs remain highly sought after.

As women spend longer in education and enter marriage with incomes of their own, the older assumption that men will earn while women depend on them starts fading.

The shift is far from complete. Agriculture remains central in many parts of Mizoram, the state’s hilly terrain limits expansion, and the private job market remains small. But the PLFS figures show how differently younger women are engaged in work, education or training today.

6Tenkasi, Tamil Nadu

Mothers roll beedis. Their educated daughters wait for work

Ram Sundaram

Beedi-rolling at home in Tenkasi. The trade that kept older women in work now offers about half the jobs it did a decade ago.

For decades, beedi-rolling was a steady provider of jobs in Tenkasi. Today, it’s the likely architect of a puzzling picture PLFS has thrown up — 63.7% of women aged 15 to 29 in the district are not in employment, education or training. The figure falls to 38.7% when women aged 15 to 59 are counted, a 25-point gap.

Older women remain connected to work through agriculture, beedi-rolling, VB-G RAM G and home-based production. Their daughters are more likely to have pursued education and gone to college. But these educated young girls are less likely to find jobs that match their education in the district.

A district labour department officer said the software firm, Zoho, offers some opportunities, but openings in the private sector remain limited. Some data-entry firms pay about Rs 5,000 for shifts lasting 10 to 12 hours. This eventually forces young women to take low-paid jobs in garment stores, jewellery shops and photocopy centres. Home-based beedi-rolling is, meanwhile, offering half the jobs it was a decade ago.

But moving into salaried work is not simple. Travelling farther for better jobs is difficult. M Thangam, an All India Democratic Women’s Association functionary, said caste identities remain deeply rooted, with such divisions visible from school age. Some parents hesitate to let daughters work far from home, fearing relationships and marriages outside their caste, she said. This is where Tenkasi’s education story and its employment reality collide.

Some young women bridge this gap by taking small local jobs and returning home to help mothers with beedi work. This informalisation of the beedi industry could be another reason why young girls who may be working from home don’t show up in the job data. For younger women, however, neither farm work nor beedi-rolling has replaced the shortage of suitable salaried jobs. That is the gap PLFS points to.

Looking, not finding. Of Tenkasi's women who are in the job market, 10.6% are unemployed, four times the typical district's 2.7%.

For context

How women compare with men

What the terms mean

Women in the job marketLabour Force Participation Rate (LFPR): share of people aged 15+ who are working or seeking/available for work, by usual status (principal and subsidiary activity, 365-day reference period). "In the week before the survey" is the current weekly status (CWS) measure. Neither working nor studyingNEET rate: share not in employment, education or training. Unpaid helpers in family farms and enterprises count as employed. A generation apartNEET rate for ages 15–29 compared with ages 15–59. The 15–59 group includes the 15–29 group, so the true gap between younger and older women is wider than the figures shown. DistrictThe survey's basic stratum. Some strata combine several districts, for example Dahod, Narmada, Dang, Tapi, Chhota Udepur and Mahisagar in Gujarat. 584 strata in 30 states and UTs. "Typical district" is the median. RankingsProfiled districts come from the top and bottom of each ranking; rankings exclude Delhi. Delhi's figures are mentioned in the text for comparison. * Small-sample estimateRelative standard error of 40% or more; treat with caution. Rankings marked "reliable estimates" leave these out. # marks strata with fewer than 250 households surveyed.

Source: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Periodic Labour Force Survey 2025, district-level key estimates (rural + urban). Photographs: TOI.