MPW 2023: India's female workforce is plunging; can the nation's developing economy bear the cost of this?

The labor force profile is transforming into a more profound shade of Millennial-GenZ, with ladies arising as more optimistic than their ancestors. Be that as it may, the nation's plunging female workforce interest lays out an alternate picture. The changing elements stand in sharp difference.

And GenZ (those born between 1997 and 2012) will start edging out GenX (those born between 1965 and 1980) from the workforce in a few years. That is, we have a largely different workforce today, most of whom are digital natives and have all gone through a habit-altering pandemic that has opened up newer ways of working.

“At the individual level, I find that there is a lot more confidence in the youth and a lot more confidence in the women now,” says Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-founder of Infosys and Chairman of Axilor Ventures. The 300 million women of this millennial-GenZ cohort tend to come with more advantages and different priorities than their predecessors.

The younger women are a lot more aspirational, and now there is the advantage of a flexible work system or work-from-home,” says Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund, and a millennial. While the Indian economy has grown more than 10 times since 1990, its female workforce participation has fallen from 30 percent in 1990 to 19 percent as of 2021.

The fall has been particularly steep in the past 15 years when female labor participation plunged from 32 percent in 2005 to 19 percent in 2021, shows World Bank data. The percentage of women in the workforce was about 30 percent and we thought that it was only a matter of time before it would become 50 percent.

But we know the results don’t justify that optimism today,” says Prasenjit Bhattacharya, Founder, and Director of Great Place to Work in India. Interestingly, India offers its women educational attainment nearly equal to that of its men, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2022.

Where 1 refers to parity between men and women, Indian women scored 0.961 in educational attainment, but the score plummeted to 0.350 for economic participation and opportunity.

Besides, just focusing on women without focusing on job creation is not a very good strategy, says Bhattacharya. But there is a silver lining in the form of the emergence of newer employment models such as gig work, which show that a person doesn’t have to be employed full-time for eight hours every day.

As we go along, we add new forms of employment models and organizational structures that will co-exist with the old models,” says Gopalakrishnan. “Flexible work options, structured programs that help women resume work after maternity leave or a career break, gender-neutral parental leaves, comprehensive medical insurance coverage, and programs focussed on enabling caregivers, in general, are helping us achieve our goal of 50 percent women’s representation in our workforce by 2025,” says Lakshmi C., Managing Director, and Lead–HR of Accenture in India.

Women account for 47 percent of Accenture’s 300,000-strong workforce in the country. As the new-age woman navigates the demands of her own aspirations both from work and life beyond it, maybe that is the way ahead to attract more of her tribe into the workforce and keep them in it—new structures and models that allow flexibility and factor in her increased caregiver duties, especially after marriage and childbirth.

If it’s any indication of the changing profile of the workforce, "the media influencer" own list of winners this year has three women graduating into the Hall of Fame compared to just one last year. They have won the award seven times and cannot be nominated again in the same role to make way for new achievers. And the 19th edition of "the media influencer" Most Powerful Women in Business celebrates 55 such achievers.

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