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Declining Women Work Participation in Rural India: Trends, Causes and Policy Implications

One of the major policy concerns in recent years has been decline in the number of women workers in the Indian labour market. The ‘education’ and ‘income’ effect hypotheses for such decline are generally advocated. Such analyses, however, are limited in their focus. This study attempts to fill up this gap by exclusively focusing on rural women. Using the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data for the years 2004–2005 and 2011–2012 and Periodic Labour Force Survey data for the year 2017–2018, it observes a widespread decline in rural women’s work participation rates (WPRs) across their different social groups, income strata and states in the country albeit at a significantly varying rate. While the major decline in women WPRs in the age-group, 15–24 years has been in favour of education, it has been largely in favour of ‘domestic works’ in the other age-groups. The major decline in women workforce is observed in case of those as not-literates, ‘unpaid family labour’ in agriculture and ‘casual wage labour’ both in farm and non-farm sectors. This is largely due to contraction in self-employment and casual wage works both in farm and non-farm sectors, more so during recent period. This study finds a positive impact of rising household income on women’s WPRs. While education emerges as a significant predictor of women joining workforce, its iteration with their social groups shows differing impact of similar level of education on different caste groups. It offers inputs for policy measures to be aimed at providing decent livelihoods in rural areas in a big scale, with strong focus on reducing caste and gender disparities. JEL Codes: E24, J16, J21, J18