India's urban work boom is leaving women behind

Nearly 400 million people live in cities in India and during the next 40 years that number will more than double. Not only is the proportion of India’s total female population that is economically active is among the lowest in the world, but urban areas do even worse. Data from the 2011 census shows only half as many urban women work as their rural counterparts.Few states – including Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – do worse than India when it comes to women’s participation in the workforce. Others such as Somalia, Bahrain and Malaysia do much better.

 Among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) which are comparable emerging economies, India has the lowest female participation rate, with only 29% of women over the age of 15 working. As the chart below shows, even among the MINT countries – Mexico, Nigeria, Indonesia and Turkey – only Turkey has the same participation rate as India.In mainly agricultural economies, urban women often find less work than rural ones. Half the working population in India is employed by the agricultural sector. But agriculture’s contribution to Indian economy has been steadily falling and is now less than half that of the services industry. This should have corresponded with rapid growth in numbers of working women in cities, but that hasn’t happened.Economists have tried to understand this discrepancy.