Interpreting Low and Falling Female Labor Force Participation in India: A Puzzle Within a Puzzle

• In Event: 1265 - Puzzles and Tensions in Women's Education and Employment

Abstract

The push for Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) or, more accurately women’s empowerment through economic activity, is challenged in places like India where female labor force participation rates are stubbornly low and steadily dropping. My paper reviews the academic literature on the explanations of and solutions for this low female work participation to conclude that a common underlying assumption in this literature is that non-work reflects only involuntary constraints in women’s lives. I suggest that the feminist reluctance to attribute agency to non-working women stems from the consequent challenge of reconciling respect for female agency with the belief that productive work is uniformly good for individuals and for societies, as well as from an unstated moral abhorrence for ‘laziness’. I turn to the larger social science and Enlightenment literature on the future of employment, on the need for ‘universal basic income’ as economies grow, and on the role of ‘work’ in the good life to suggest some ways in which these contradictions might be eased.

Author

• Alaka Malwade Basu, Cornell University