World Bank: India's GDP drains 2.6% due to fewer females in jobs

Substantial variation in labour force participation rate among states

By Rajiv Shah
World Bank report, “India Development Update: Unlocking Women’s Potential” (May 2017), notes that an approximate 10 percentage points decline in female labour force participation rate (LFPR) between 2004-05 and 2011-12 has imposed “constraints on a country’s growth”, and is proving to be a “drag on GDP growth” to the tune of 2.6%.
Pointing out that the “obstacle” means that India’s GDP per annum could “accelerate from 7.4% currently to over 9% the report, prepared by Frederico Gil Sander as the main author, says, “Considering that 42% of India’s science and technology graduates are women”, there is “a significant ‘brain drain’ for modern services sectors”.

The ‘brain drain’ is happening even though Indian women “have highly sought-after skills”, the report claims, quoting a 2014 World Bank Enterprise Survey to note that only 9.4% of firms identified Indian women as having “inadequately educated” as a major constraint, “compared to 15.7% in Bangladesh and 21.7% globally.”

Quoting Breakthrough Index for Women in the Workplace by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the report says, high female workforce participation in states like Sikkim, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu is because in these states there are “fewer restrictions on women’s working hours and high conviction rates for workforce crimes against women.”
In sharp contrast, in some states, social security offered to women is quite low, leading to low LFPR. Thus, an enterprise survey undertaken by the World Bank in Madhya Pradesh revealed that “very few enterprises (40 of the 618 interviewed) offered maternity leave”, the report says.
“Among those that did, only two in every five paid salaries during leave”, the report says, adding, “The provision for childcare was even lower – only 7 firms offered such facilities. Of the firms that provided either maternity leave or childcare facilities (46), the average share of female employees was 20.5%, slightly more than the share of those that did not (14.7%, 2016).

Suggesting how labour laws do not favour higher LFPR in India, the report says, “First, they do not afford the same levels of maternity benefits as other countries. Second, in many cases they prevent women from taking up certain types of jobs in the formal economy. And third, labour laws reduce the flexibility of regular wage jobs: while in the Republic of Korea parents are entitled by law to flexible or part-time work schedules, the same is not available in India.”

Quoting from a survey, the report says, while “around 90% of employers said that men and women deserve equal wages and benefits for the same job”, when asked “whether men have a greater right to a job than women, especially if jobs are scarce, employers were more divided: 53% agreed with the statement, while another 34 percent refrained from offering an opinion.”
“Similarly, when asked whether men made better employees than women, 42% of the employers interviewed responded in the affirmative, while 30 percent did not have a view (the rest disagreed)”, the report says, adding, “There was no significant variation on this subject by firm size, sector or city.”
“In general, employers perceived men to be more suited for jobs in the production/ technical/ operational domain (82% said so); and slightly lesser so for jobs involving procurement/ purchase (71 percent); business development, marketing, sales and HR (62%) and IT support (57%)”, says the report.

“The attitudes and opinions that employers hold about women appear to influence women’s employment outcomes”, the report says, adding, “Across all firms interviewed for the enterprise survey, women comprised a small proportion of total workers (under 16%) with service sector enterprises employing a slightly higher share of women than manufacturing (18% compared with 15%).”

Comments

Covishield controversy: How India ignored a warning voice during the pandemic

Dr Amitav Banerjee, MD * It is a matter of pride for us that a person of Indian origin, presently Director of National Institute of Health, USA, is poised to take over one of the most powerful roles in public health. Professor Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian origin physician and a health economist, from Stanford University, USA, will be assuming the appointment of acting head of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USA. Bhattacharya would be leading two apex institutions in the field of public health which not only shape American health policies but act as bellwether globally.

Growth without justice: The politics of wealth and the economics of hunger

By Vikas Meshram* In modern history, few periods have displayed such a grotesque and contradictory picture of wealth as the present. On one side, a handful of individuals accumulate in a single year more wealth than the annual income of entire nations. On the other, nearly every fourth person in the world goes to bed hungry or half-fed.

Thali, COVID and academic credibility: All about the 2020 'pseudoscientific' Galgotias paper

By Jag Jivan The first page image of the paper "Corona Virus Killed by Sound Vibrations Produced by Thali or Ghanti: A Potential Hypothesis" published in the Journal of Molecular Pharmaceuticals and Regulatory Affairs , Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2020), has gone viral on social media in the wake of the controversy surrounding a Chinese robot presented by the Galgotias University as its original product at the just-concluded AI summit in Delhi . The resurfacing of the 2020 publication, authored by Dharmendra Kumar , Galgotias University, has reignited debate over academic standards and scientific credibility.

The 'glass cliff' at Galgotias: How a university’s AI crisis became a gendered blame game

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan* “She was not aware of the technical origins of the product and in her enthusiasm of being on camera, gave factually incorrect information.” These were the words used in the official press release by Galgotias University following the controversy at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi. The statement came across as defensive, petty, and deeply insensitive.

'Serious violation of international law': US pressure on Mexico to stop oil shipments to Cuba

By Vijay Prashad In January 2026, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US security—a designation that allows the United States government to use sweeping economic restrictions traditionally reserved for national security adversaries. The US blockade against Cuba began in the 1960s, right after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but has tightened over the years. Without any mandate from the United Nations Security Council—which permits sanctions under strict conditions—the United States has operated an illegal, unilateral blockade that tries to force countries from around the world to stop doing basic commerce with Cuba. The new restrictions focus on oil. The United States government has threatened tariffs and sanctions on any country that sells or transports oil to Cuba.

When grief becomes grace: Kerala's quiet revolution in organ donation

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Kerala is an important model for understanding India's diversity precisely because the religious and cultural plurality it has witnessed over centuries brought together traditions and good practices from across the world. Kerala had India's first communist government, was the first state where a duly elected government was dismissed, and remains the first state to achieve near-total literacy. It is also a land where Christianity and Islam took root before they spread to Europe and other parts of the world. Kerala has deep historic rationalist and secular traditions.

When a lake becomes real estate: The mismanagement of Hyderabad’s waterbodies

By Dr Mansee Bal Bhargava* Misunderstood, misinterpreted and misguided governance and management of urban lakes in India —illustrated here through Hyderabad —demands urgent attention from Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), the political establishment, the judiciary, the builder–developer lobby, and most importantly, the citizens of Hyderabad. Fundamental misconceptions about urban lakes have shaped policies and practices that systematically misuse, abuse and ultimately erase them—often in the name of urban development.

Activists warn of gendered impact of VB-GRAMG Act, seek return to MGNREGA framework

By A Representative The All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA), along with the Agrarian Alliance and Workers’ Forum of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), has written to President Droupadi Murmu urging her to call upon Parliament to repeal the newly enacted Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025 (VB-GRAMG Act) and restore and strengthen the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

Stray dogs, an epsilon (ϵ) problem: Of child labour, and the art of misplaced priorities

By Bhaskaran Raman The Greek alphabet ϵ (epsilon) is used in maths and science to denote a quantity which is not zero, but extremely small *** Since the Supreme Court's interim order on the issue of stray dogs came out on 07 Nov 2025, there have been a range of opinion pieces speaking for the voiceless. Most of them take the stance that there is a "problem" with stray dogs, but that we need a humane solution. I agree with this broadly, but I think we need new terminology to talk about this.

Search This Blog