Women in low paid work reflects a layered system of structural barriers, social norms, policy gaps and labour market failures that together push women toward the lowest-paying, least-secure work available and keep them there.
In India, the picture is stark. According to the ILO, India’s gender pay gap stands at 34%, making it one of the highest among 73 countries studied globally. Women earn, on average, only 66% of what men earn for comparable work. In rural areas, that figure drops further — women earn just 50% of male wages in rural settings and around 60% in urban areas, according to National Statistical Office data. Understanding why this happens, and what can be done about it, is essential for anyone working toward gender equality, economic inclusion and sustainable development.
Overview of Women’s Employment in India
India’s female labour market has a complex character. Female labour force participation is rising on paper, but the nature of that participation reveals persistent inequality underneath the headline numbers.
Female Labour Force Participation Rate in India
India’s female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) has shown significant headline growth in recent years. According to the PLFS 2025 Annual Report released by the National Statistical Office, the female LFPR for persons aged 15 and above stood at 40% in 2025, compared to 79.1% for men. While this represents a substantial improvement from 23.3% in 2017-18, economists and labour researchers have flagged an important qualification: much of this growth has been driven by rural women entering the workforce under economic distress, often through unpaid family labour or MGNREGS-linked work rather than formal, waged employment.
More than 80% of rural working women are employed in agriculture, where wages are lowest and conditions most precarious. In urban areas, the female LFPR was around 25.3% in December 2025 — significantly lower than the rural figure, and well below comparable economies in South Asia and East Asia.
Among women who remain outside the workforce entirely, PLFS data offers a revealing breakdown: 44.4% cite childcare and homemaking responsibilities as the primary reason for not working, compared to 69.8% of men who cite continuing education. The labour market is not keeping women out uniformly with a combination of structural barriers and social expectations that makes participation conditional, constrained and often unpaid.
The Glass Floor
Rising participation tells one story. The invisible work supporting it tells another.
Unpaid Family Labour
Millions of women contribute to family enterprises without formal wages.
Care Economy
Childcare, eldercare and household work continue to remain largely invisible.
MGNREGS-linked Work
Participation often rises during periods of economic distress.
Informal Employment
A large share of women remain outside secure and formal jobs.
Understanding the Concentration of Women in Low Paid Work
The concentration of women in low paid work is not accidental. It is the cumulative outcome of occupational segregation, education gaps, social norms and a systematic undervaluation of the work that women predominantly do.
Occupational Segregation and Gender Stereotypes
Occupational segregation, the tendency for men and women to work in different sectors and roles, is one of the strongest drivers of the gender pay gap in India. Women are concentrated in what are often called “pink collar” jobs: domestic work, garment manufacturing, teaching, nursing, agriculture and informal trade. These sectors are consistently lower-paid and offer fewer protections than the engineering, finance, management and technology roles where men are overrepresented.
This segregation is not purely a matter of individual preference. It is reinforced by hiring practices that channel women toward certain roles, social norms that associate women with caregiving work and a circular logic that keeps wages low in female-dominated sectors because they are perceived as secondary or supplementary.
In India’s technology sector, for example, women make up around a third of the workforce but earn only 40% of men’s wages. In finance and banking, the figure is 50%. Even in sectors like education and healthcare, where female representation is higher, women earn 70-80% of male wages — still a significant shortfall.
Education Gap and Skill Barriers for Women
Education has a measurable impact on women’s workforce participation in India. PLFS 2023-24 data shows that 39.6% of women with postgraduate education were in the workforce, compared to 23.9% of those educated to higher secondary level. The relationship between education and employment is clear but it is not straightforward.
Women now account for nearly 50% more students in higher education than a decade ago, yet they continue to be significantly underrepresented in engineering and information technology, the fields most closely linked to high-wage employment. Social expectations, infrastructure barriers and a lack of female role models in technical fields all contribute to this gap. Girls who could pursue STEM careers are often steered toward arts and humanities and subsequently into lower-paying sectors, before they are even aware that this redirection has happened.
Causes of the Gender Pay Gap in India
Understanding why the gender pay gap exists requires looking beyond discrimination in individual workplaces, though that is a real and documented factor, toward the broader structural conditions that shape women’s careers over time.
Discrimination, Unpaid Care Work and Career Breaks
Direct wage discrimination remains a significant issue in India. Despite legal protections under the Code on Wages 2019, which replaced the Equal Remuneration Act 1976 and extended equal pay provisions to the LGBTQI+ community, enforcement remains weak and the definition of “work of equal value” remains legally undefined, leaving individual courts to determine comparability case by case.
But discrimination in hiring and pay is only part of the picture. Unpaid care work is the invisible weight that shapes nearly every employment decision women make over their lifetimes. The Economic Survey 2024 estimated that women’s unpaid care work contributes 3.1% to India’s GDP — labour that generates no income, builds no social security and creates no pathway to economic independence.
When women take career breaks for maternity, childcare or elder care, the cumulative earnings loss compounds over time. They return to work at the same or lower seniority, miss promotions and salary reviews, and often shift to lower-paid, more flexible, but less secure roles to manage competing demands. This career penalty is borne almost entirely by women, with minimal structural support from employers or policy systems.
PLFS data for 2023-24 captures this starkly: self-employed men earned roughly three times what self-employed women did. Salaried men earned around 1.2 times more than salaried women. Male casual workers took home approximately 1.5 times women’s casual earnings. The gap exists across every category of work.
Challenges Women Face in the Formal Workforce
Even when women do enter formal employment, they encounter a set of structural barriers that consistently limit their advancement and earnings.
The Broken Ladder
For many women, career advancement is not a straight climb. Structural barriers often break the path long before leadership comes into view.
- Lack of safe transport and mobility. Limited access to safe public transport restricts the geographic range of jobs women can realistically pursue, particularly in smaller cities and towns.
- Absence of affordable childcare. Without reliable, affordable childcare, women with young children often have no viable path to sustained formal employment.
- Workplace safety and harassment. Fear of harassment at the workplace and during the commute remains a significant deterrent, particularly in manufacturing and construction.
- Limited access to formal credit. Women entrepreneurs face greater difficulty accessing business loans and working capital, channelling many into low-capital, low-return informal activities.
- Glass ceiling and underrepresentation in leadership. Despite legal frameworks, women remain significantly underrepresented in senior management, board positions and high-paying leadership roles across Indian industry.
India ranked 131st in the Global Gender Gap Index 2025, down from 129th the previous year, with an economic parity score of just 39.8%. These figures underscore that the challenge is systemic, not incidental.
Government Schemes to Improve Women’s Employment
India has a wide range of government schemes aimed at addressing women’s economic participation. Understanding these programmes helps clarify both what is available and where the gaps remain.
- Skill India Mission and PMKVY. The Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana offers certified, industry-aligned skill training. For women, targeted tracks exist in areas including beauty and wellness, healthcare and construction, though representation in higher-wage technical trades remains limited.
- MGNREGS. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme provides a legal right to 100 days of paid work annually, and has been a significant entry point for rural women — though wages under the scheme are lower than market rates in many states.
- Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana. Provides collateral-free micro-loans to small business owners, including women entrepreneurs, enabling access to credit that was previously unavailable.
- Stand-Up India. Supports women and SC/ST entrepreneurs with loans of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 1 crore for setting up greenfield enterprises in manufacturing, services or trading.
- Beti Bachao Beti Padhao. Addresses the upstream causes of women’s workforce disadvantage by promoting girls’ education and gender-equitable social norms from early childhood.
Solutions to Address Low Pay and Inequality for Women
Addressing the structural causes of why women are employed in low paid work requires action at multiple levels simultaneously — from individual skilling to policy reform to social norm change.
Strengthening vocational training in non-traditional livelihoods for women is one practical starting point. Programmes that connect women to higher-paying trades — construction, electronics repair, plumbing, renewable energy installation — have shown measurable income gains, but remain small in scale relative to need.
Pay transparency measures, similar to those introduced in the European Union, would make it significantly harder for wage discrimination to persist invisibly in Indian workplaces. Requiring companies above a certain size to publish disaggregated pay data by gender and seniority would be a concrete step.
Affordable, accessible childcare infrastructure is perhaps the single policy intervention with the greatest potential to increase women’s formal workforce participation. Without it, millions of women continue to make rational choices to exit or reduce their labour market engagement rather than bear prohibitive childcare costs.
Smile Foundation’s Swabhiman programme directly addresses women’s economic inclusion through livelihood training, entrepreneurship support and skill development for women in underserved communities. Initiatives like LEDP (Livelihood Empowerment Development Programme) and WEDP (Women Empowerment Development Programme) equip women with market-relevant skills and connections to formal employment pathways — the kind of integrated support that government schemes alone cannot fully deliver at the community level.
Ultimately, closing the gender pay gap and reducing women’s concentration in low-paid work requires sustained, coordinated effort. Laws create the framework. Schemes create the opportunity. But genuine change happens when women have the skills, safety, support and social permission to choose work that reflects their full capacity.
FAQs — Women in Low Paid Work in India
Why are women in low paid work in India?
There are many women in low paid work in India due to a combination of occupational segregation, education barriers, unpaid care responsibilities, discrimination and social norms that restrict their access to higher-paying formal employment. Over 90% of employed women work in the informal sector, where wages are lowest and protections weakest.
What is the gender pay gap in India?
According to the ILO, India’s gender pay gap stands at approximately 34%, meaning women earn around 66% of what men earn on average. PLFS 2023-24 data shows that urban men earn around Rs 26,105 per month compared to Rs 19,879 for women, and the gap is even wider in rural areas.
How does unpaid care work affect women’s employment?
Unpaid care work like childcare, elder care and household labour is primarily borne by women and directly reduces the time and energy available for paid employment. The Economic Survey 2024 estimated that women’s unpaid care work contributes 3.1% to India’s GDP but generates no income or social security for the women providing it.
What are the main challenges women face in the workplace?
Key challenges include direct wage discrimination, limited mobility due to safety concerns, lack of affordable childcare, underrepresentation in leadership roles, career penalties from maternity breaks and concentration in informal, low-protection sectors with no social security or legal safeguards.
Why is female labour force participation low in India?
Despite recent growth, India’s female LFPR at 40% in 2025 remains far below men’s 79.1%. The primary reasons cited by women outside the workforce are childcare and homemaking responsibilities — structural barriers that policy systems have not yet adequately addressed.
How does education affect women’s job opportunities?
Higher education levels strongly correlate with workforce participation for women. PLFS 2023-24 data shows 39.6% of postgraduate women are employed, compared to much lower rates for less-educated women. However, women continue to be underrepresented in high-earning technical fields like engineering and IT, limiting education’s full equalising potential.
What government schemes support women’s employment in India?
Key schemes include Skill India and PMKVY for vocational training, MGNREGS for rural employment guarantees, Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana for micro-enterprise credit, Stand-Up India for entrepreneurship and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao for addressing gender equity from education upward.
What is occupational segregation and how does it affect women?
Occupational segregation refers to the concentration of men and women in different types of jobs. In India, women are clustered in lower-paying roles in agriculture, domestic work and the care economy, while men dominate higher-paying sectors like technology, finance and management — a pattern that perpetuates the gender pay gap.
How can India bridge the gender pay gap?
Closing the gap requires pay transparency legislation, affordable childcare infrastructure, vocational training in non-traditional livelihoods, stronger enforcement of equal pay laws and concerted efforts to increase women’s representation in higher-paying sectors and leadership positions.
What role do NGOs play in improving women’s employment?
NGOs work directly in underserved communities to provide vocational training, entrepreneurship support and livelihood connections that government programmes cannot always reach. Smile Foundation’s Swabhiman initiative, for example, combines skilling with employment linkages to help women build sustainable economic independence at the community level.
