The Missing Women

Almost every woman got a bank account; most still have no job

Jan Dhan accounts and direct benefit transfers took women’s account ownership from about a quarter to nine in ten, level with China. Over the same years the share of women working or looking for work fell from 35% to a low of 26% in 2020, and has only partly recovered. An account is useful when there is income to put in it.

Bangladesh’s women went to work; India’s went home, then partly came back

In 2004 India was ahead of Bangladesh. Garment factories then drew millions of Bangladeshi women into paid work, and Bangladesh moved ahead by 2008. India’s rate slid for fifteen years, through a period of fast growth, before rising after 2020. Vietnam and China, where factory jobs came early, are near 60–70%.

Only twenty countries have a smaller share of women in the labour force

The typical country has 54% of its women in the labour force. Most of the countries below India are in the Middle East and North Africa, or are at war: Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Egypt. Pakistan and Nepal are lower; Sri Lanka has slipped just below India since its 2022 crisis.

Men work at about the same rate everywhere; women make the difference

Indian men are in the labour force at much the same rate as men in Vietnam, Indonesia or Bangladesh. The difference between these countries is almost entirely about women. India’s gap of 45 percentage points is among the widest; only Pakistan’s is wider in this group.

One in five working Indian women earns a wage; one in three is an unpaid family helper

Of the women who do work, most in India work on their family’s farm or in a household business, often unpaid. In Bangladesh unpaid family work fell from 68% of working women to 12% in twenty years as factory jobs grew. In India the share barely moved.

Much of the recent rise is unpaid work on family farms

India’s Periodic Labour Force Survey shows women’s participation nearly doubling, to 41.7% in 2023–24. Most of the rise was in villages, and much of it was women counted as helpers in family enterprises, mostly farms. The share of working women in regular salaried jobs fell over the same years, from 21% to 16%.

Four times as many women go to college; four in ten young women are not in work or study

Women’s enrolment in higher education rose from 9% to 35% of their age group, slightly above the rate for men. Yet 39% of young Indian women are neither working nor studying, against 20% in Bangladesh and 11% in Vietnam. Education has not turned into jobs.

Women do more than three times the unpaid housework men do

The average Indian woman spends nearly five hours a day on cooking, cleaning and other unpaid housework; the average man spends an hour and a half. On a given day only a quarter of women aged 15–59 did any paid work, against three-quarters of men. Childcare, safe transport and work close to home decide whether women can take a job.

Fewer girls are being lost before birth, but the gap has not closed

India’s sex ratio at birth has improved from 109 boys per 100 girls to 107, as the ban on sex-selective scans was enforced more strictly and the Beti Bachao campaign began in 2015. China has improved faster from a worse start; Vietnam has got worse. The UN estimated in 2020 that 45.8 million females were “missing” from India’s population, through sex selection before birth and neglect after it.

Fewer than one MP in seven is a woman

Women hold 13.8% of seats in the Lok Sabha, up from 8.3% in 2004 but behind Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, which reserve seats for women, and Vietnam, which sets a quota for women candidates. India passed a law in 2023 to reserve a third of seats, but it takes effect only after the next census and a redrawing of constituencies.

Three numbers that need a second look