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# 26 Oct 2026 · Editorial

> Comrades Editorial of 26 Oct 2026, by news group.

> **[Comrades Editorial · 26 Oct 2026 (PDF)](https://dl.joincomrades.com/e/26-10-26)**

***

## In this edition

1. [Strengthening Women’s Workforce Participation in India](#h-1) Social Issues

## Social Issues

### Strengthening Women’s Workforce Participation in India

<sub>[Source](https://www.drishtiias.com/current-affairs-news-analysis-editorials/news-editorials/26-10-2026)</sub>

**This editorial is based on "Shakti sidelined:** Missing women in India’s workforce" published in the Hindustan Times on 23/10/2026. The article highlights that despite rising educational attainment, social norms, safety concerns, and unpaid care burdens severely restrict female economic agency, requiring targeted policy interventions to boost participation.

India stands at a demographic crossroads, with half its population under 29 and female labour force participation remains below peers like China and Indonesia (around 45%). Addressing low female labor force participation, persistent structural informality, and climate-induced productivity losses remains a paramount national priority. Achieving sustained economic growth requires aligning policy incentives with robust social protection and workforce skilling. Transforming these labor market challenges into economic opportunities requires targeted legal, infrastructural, and institutional reforms.

What are the Key Trends in Women’s Workforce Participation in India?

* **Consolidation of Women’s Participation in Economic Activity:**
  * Women constitute a substantial part of India’s workforce, although participation remains uneven across locations and employment categories.
  * The PLFS Annual Report 2025 estimated 20 crore employed women aged 15 years and above, with a female labour force participation rate of 40% and worker population ratio of 38.8%, measured under usual status.
  * These indicators capture women’s involvement in salaried work, self-employment and other economic activities.
* **Expansion of Women’s Formal Payroll Participation and Social Security Coverage:**
  * Women’s entry into establishments covered by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is expanding access to contributory retirement savings and associated social protection.
  * Official reporting recorded 26.9 lakh net female subscriber additions during 2024–25. This is significant because formal payroll inclusion provides an institutional record of employment and access to benefits that many informal workers lack.
* **Growth of Women-Owned Enterprises and Employment Creation for Other Women:**
  * Women are increasingly participating as business proprietors and employers, extending their economic role beyond wage employment.
  * According to the detailed ASUSE 2025 report, women headed 26.93% of proprietary establishments in the surveyed unincorporated non-agricultural sector, compared with 26.17% in 2023–24.
  * Importantly, nearly 72% of female-led establishments employing hired workers engaged at least one female hired worker.
* **Diversification of Rural Livelihoods through Women’s Collectives:**
  * Self-help groups (SHGs) are supporting women’s engagement in enterprise development, banking services and organised marketing alongside traditional livelihood activities.
  * A July 2026 Ministry of Rural Development reply reported that more than 3.46 crore SHG members had been enabled as Lakhpati Didis under DAY-NRLM.
  * The ecosystem includes Business Correspondent Sakhis, enterprise mentoring and market-facing brands such as UMED in Maharashtra, Palash in Jharkhand and Himira in Himachal Pradesh.
* **Emergence of Electronics Manufacturing as a Major Employer of Women:**
  * India’s integration into electronics global value chains is creating a prominent industrial employment avenue for women.
  * According to MeitY’s July 2026 assessment, women constituted nearly 70% of the direct workforce in mobile-phone manufacturing, while the Production Linked Incentive Scheme for Large-Scale Electronics Manufacturing had generated employment opportunities for approximately 90,000 women.
  * The sector offers opportunities to gain production experience, technical skills and exposure to organised factory systems, although advancement into supervisory and engineering roles remains important.
* **Strengthening of Apprenticeship Pathways and Entry into Non-Traditional Trades:**
  * Women’s participation in industry-linked, on-the-job training is increasing, opening routes into occupations historically dominated by men.
  * An August 2026 parliamentary reply reported that women’s share of apprenticeship engagement rose from 7.74% in 2016–17 to 24.95% in 2025–26. A concrete example is Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles’ Jamshedpur facility, which welcomed its first cohort of 27 women welders in 2026, trained through the NAPS–Kaushalya programme.
* **Greater Policy Recognition of Workplace Access, Safety and Care Responsibilities:**
  * Recent institutional changes increasingly address the conditions that enable women to enter and remain in employment.
  * Following implementation of the four Labour Codes in 2025, the government highlighted provisions permitting women to work across establishments and occupations, including night work with consent and prescribed safeguards, alongside proportionate representation in workplace grievance committees.
  * The framework also retains maternity protection and childcare-related provisions, while Palna and Sakhi Niwas address childcare and accommodation needs.

What are the Key Challenges to Women’s Workforce Participation in India?

* **Unequal Care Responsibilities and Persistent Time Poverty:**
  * Women’s access to employment remains constrained by the double burden of paid work and unpaid caregiving, which limits working hours, mobility and career continuity.
  * The Time Use Survey 2024 found that, among participants aged 15–59 years, women spent 140 minutes daily on unpaid caregiving, compared with 74 minutes for men.
  * These unequal responsibilities can push women towards nearby, flexible or home-based work even when better-paying opportunities exist elsewhere. The concern therefore extends beyond labour-market entry to the motherhood penalty, interrupted careers and reduced lifetime earnings.
* **Precarious Employment and Limited Control over Personal Earnings:**
  * Employment statistics can conceal women’s concentration in contributing family work, where economic activity does not necessarily generate an independently controlled income.
  * The PLFS Annual Report 2025 estimated that 32.9% of rural female workers were helpers in household enterprises, while only 9.3% held regular wage or salaried employment.
  * For example, working on a family farm or assisting a household business counts as employment, but may provide neither a separate wage nor an employment contract. This weakens financial autonomy, bargaining power and access to employment-linked protection, despite recorded participation.
* **Persistent Earnings Disparities and Occupational Segregation:**
  * Women’s earnings remain substantially below men’s in important employment categories, reflecting a combination of occupational segregation, differences in working hours, access to productive assets and bargaining power.
  * According to PLFS 2025, women undertaking casual labour outside public works earned an average of ₹315 per day, against ₹455 for men. Concentration in lower-paid activities and restricted access to specialised trades can reinforce this disadvantage.
* **Weak Conversion of Skills into Employment and Underutilisation of Human Capital:**
  * Training alone does not ensure women’s entry into work when suitable vacancies, safe mobility, placement support and family acceptance remain inadequate.
  * PLFS 2025 reported that, among people aged 15–59 years who had received formal vocational or technical training, 51.4% of women were employed, compared with 83.3% of men. This substantial difference highlights a skills-to-employment conversion gap.
  * Women completing technical courses may still struggle to obtain accessible jobs matching their qualifications, reducing returns on educational investment and weakening India’s ability to realise its gender dividend.
* **Workplace Harassment and Uneven Accountability Mechanisms:**
  * Sexual harassment, fear of retaliation and uncertainty about complaint procedures can undermine women’s workplace dignity, retention and willingness to accept public-facing or mobile occupations.
  * Implementation monitoring remains incomplete. An April 2026 government release reported that over 1.61 lakh workplaces had joined SHe-Box, but details of only 68,460 Internal Committees had been updated.
  * It illustrates the difficulty of verifying effective redress, particularly where workers face powerful employers, insecure contracts or limited awareness of their rights.
* **Glass Ceiling and Underrepresentation in Corporate Decision-Making:**
  * Women’s presence in employment and enterprise ownership has not translated into proportionate representation at the highest levels of corporate authority.
  * The 2025 Spencer Stuart India Board Index found that women occupied only 20.4% of directorships in BSE 100 companies.
  * The concern involves vertical segregation, unequal progression into decision-making roles, alongside access to influential professional networks and career-building assignments.
* **Credit Constraints and the Difficulty of Scaling Women-Owned Businesses:**
  * Women entrepreneurs can remain trapped in small-scale operations when they lack collateral, documented credit histories, working capital and access to commercial networks.
  * A March 2026 assessment by Women’s World Banking reported that 43% of women entrepreneurs had unmet credit demand.
    * A concrete example appears in the World Bank’s September 2026 account of Punjab entrepreneur Balpreet Aulakh, whose stitching and embroidery business struggled to obtain finance when demand and operating costs increased after the pandemic.
  * Such constraints restrict business expansion, investment in technology and the creation of additional paid jobs.
* **Digital Gender Divide and Unequal Access to Emerging Work Opportunities:**
  * Unequal ownership of digital devices restricts women’s independent access to online recruitment, platform work, digital payments, remote learning and e-commerce.
  * The Comprehensive Modular Survey: Telecom 2025 found that only 48.4% of rural women aged 15 years and above owned a mobile phone, compared with 80.7% of rural men.
  * Reliance on shared devices can constrain confidential job searches, timely communication with employers and continuous training, reinforcing a digital capability gap as employment processes become increasingly technology-dependent.

How can Women’s Participation in India’s Workforce Be Strengthened?

* **Comprehensive Care Infrastructure and Accessible Crèche Networks:**
  * Expand Palna under Mission Shakti’s Samarthya component, community childcare centres and shared crèches serving industrial clusters, informal settlements and rural workplaces.
  * Crèche facilities should follow the National Minimum Standards and Protocol for Crèches, 2024, employ trained caregivers and accommodate workers’ shifts.
  * A 2026 UNDP–Dalberg report recommends combining public funding, employer contributions and affordable user fees to support neighbourhood and MSME-cluster childcare models.
* **Remove Occupational Barriers while Enforcing Safe Night-Shift Standards:**
  * Implement women’s access to employment under the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, while ensuring that night work remains voluntary and subject to prescribed safeguards.
  * Employers should provide written consent procedures, reliable transport, adequate lighting, sanitation and emergency assistance; GPS-enabled transport can be adopted where required or appropriate.
  * Strengthen POSH compliance, independent complaint handling and protection against retaliation.
* **Link Frontier-Technology Skilling with Apprenticeships and Verified Employment:**
  * Develop industry-designed training in semiconductor operations, AI, renewable-energy maintenance, advanced manufacturing and drone services, supported by stipends, digital devices and technical mentors.
  * Build on PMKVY 4.0 and AI Careers for Women, launched in 2025 with a planned network of 30 hub centres and 150 spoke centres.
  * Training should include practical projects, paid apprenticeships and placement partnerships, with programme performance assessed through earnings, job retention and progression into technical roles.
  * Expansion should follow independently assessed outcomes, ensuring that training creates credible career pathways rather than merely increasing certification numbers.
* **Strengthen Public Procurement and Growth Capital for Women-Owned Enterprises:**
  * Improve implementation of the 3% public-procurement sub-target for women-owned MSEs, while considering higher targets after assessing supplier capacity and sectoral opportunities.
  * Use GeM’s Womaniya initiative and the Yashasvini campaign to provide tender-readiness training, product certification, catalogue support and links with institutional buyers.
* **Deepen Collateral-Free Credit and Cash-Flow-Based Enterprise Finance:**
  * Expand effective access to Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) and CGTMSE-backed lending, alongside financial counselling and transparent grievance redress.
  * Banks should supplement collateral-based assessments with consent-based cash-flow records, invoices and business performance, while avoiding exclusion of digitally inexperienced applicants.
  * Track loan size, enterprise survival and business expansion, since women’s substantial presence in loan accounts does not by itself establish adequate access to growth finance.
* **Diversify Rural Livelihoods through Producer Collectives and Commercial Services:**
  * Strengthen DAY-NRLM by helping SHG members develop viable enterprises in food processing, packaging, repair services, agricultural services and digital financial intermediation.
  * Namo Drone Didi should be supported with maintenance arrangements, booking systems and sufficient local demand to make drone services commercially sustainable.
  * Progress should therefore be measured through sustained income, profitability and women’s control over earnings. Producer collectives also need professional accounting, storage, quality certification and dependable market contracts.
* **Institutionalise Flexible Work, Paid Returnships and Fair Career Progression:**
  * Encourage predictable scheduling, feasible hybrid work and phased re-entry, alongside paid returnships offering refresher training and transparent recruitment standards.
  * Existing research-career programmes provide useful examples. The government reported in 2026 that BioCARe had supported 415 women researchers, facilitating re-entry into biotechnology and allied research.
  * Employers should extend structured support to other sectors and evaluate workers through outputs and competencies, avoiding penalties for caregiving-related breaks.
* **Integrate Safe Mobility, Affordable Housing and Gender-Responsive Urban Planning:**
  * Connect employment hubs with frequent public transport, safe last-mile services, well-lit walking routes, accessible sanitation and affordable working-women’s accommodation, including Sakhi Niwas.
  * Infrastructure should support women’s varied travel patterns, including trips linking childcare, work and household responsibilities.
  * E.g., the \$150 million Tamil Nadu WESAFE programme, approved in 2025, aims to improve job access for 16 lakh women and includes support for safe transport, accommodation and care services.
    * Other states should adopt this integrated approach, measuring success through commuting affordability, access to suitable jobs and sustained employment, rather than infrastructure construction alone.

**Conclusion**

* Unlocking India’s gender dividend requires moving beyond mere participation numbers toward ensuring economic agency, financial control, and equitable earnings for women. Overcoming systemic constraints, such as time poverty, care burdens, and the digital divide, demands expanding care infrastructure like Palna crèches, enforcing POSH compliance, and enabling access to growth capital. By integrating safe urban mobility with frontier-technology skilling, India can transform its female labor force into a driver of inclusive, high-quality economic growth.


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