Female Labour Force Participation in India: An Empirical Study

This paper attempts to analyse the factors which affect Indian working age women’s continuous withdrawal from the labourforce. The main objective deals with two specific questions: probing the empirical validity of the U-hypothesis and exploring whether supply side factors could sufficiently explain the falling FLFPR in India, especially in its rural sectors. Through a review of available empirical literature, factors like social constraints, upward mobility among lower castes and household burden have been identified as some of the major determinants. Using three rounds of NSSO data namely 50th round (1993–94), 61st round (2004–05), 68th round (2011–12) of Employment and Unemployment Surveys and the PLFS (2017–18) data, our analysis (across factors) have shown the existence of U-shaped relationship between FLFPR and education, however it shifts downwards with time. The relationship between FLFPR and MPCE deciles is not U-shaped but negative. Women from higher income class are more likely of being graduates thus increasing their probability of joining the labour force; even then a lower labour force participation of women in the upper deciles show the dominance of Income effect over education. It is significant that FLFPR declines with time irrespective of income and education. This indicates existence of factors other than supply side for explaining the problem of falling FLFPR. Particularly, one needs to focus on demand side problems and social-institutional factors inhibiting women from joining the labour force.