How India can ensure a female-friendly future of work in its booming gig economy

As the pandemic undermined economic opportunities for everyone in the country, it was women who bore the brunt. Some have described the pandemic as “the great equaliser” owing to the “work from home” flexibility that came with it. Despite this, so many women lost their jobs and incomes across the world, it led to a new term being coined: “shecession”. Taking the long view, though, this decline in women’s employment is not a recent phenomenon and cannot be blamed entirely on the pandemic.

India has witnessed a gradual decline in the female labour force participation rate for more than two decades. As per data from the World Bank, the female labour force participation rate in India decreased from 30.27% in 1990 to 20.8% in 2019.

In addition, India’s female labour force participation rate was at odds with India’s economic growth such that it increased during the low growth phase (pre-2007) and decreased during rapid growth years (post-2008). This paradoxical movement implied that women in India would always have a smaller slice of the economic growth pie. Nevertheless, later in the pre-pandemic years, even as the economic slowdown started to grapple India, women’s participation in the workforce did not increase.

However, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdowns revived the discussion on…

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