Automation cuts women’s jobs by 80% in Ahmedabad construction industry: Study

By Jag Jivan 

Automation in India’s construction industry is deepening gender disparities and eroding livelihoods for thousands of women workers, particularly those from marginalised communities, according to a new study titled Building Futures: Automation and Gender Disparities in Construction – The Case of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. 

Conducted by Aajeevika Bureau and Work Fair and Free, and led by researchers Geeta Thatra and Saloni Mundra, the study draws on feminist participatory action research between 2023 and 2025 to map how technological change is reshaping labour hierarchies in one of the country’s largest employment sectors.

The report notes that India’s construction industry contributes “nearly 9 per cent to GDP and employs around 68 million workers, including 7.6 million women,” making it the second-largest employer after agriculture. 

Yet, “women’s participation in construction has shown a secular decline,” reflecting broader national trends of falling female labour force participation. Women, typically employed as unskilled helpers, remain at the bottom of a rigid hierarchy, performing physically demanding and hazardous work that is undervalued and invisible.

Technological adoption — from automated machinery and concrete batching plants to Building Information Modelling (BIM), drones, and precast systems — is accelerating in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. But instead of expanding opportunities, these innovations have “reduced on-site labour demand and deepened fragmentation by extending contractual chains,” the study finds. 

“Formwork, concrete production, use of automated equipment, shift from bricks to AAC blocks, and pre-cast technologies lead to a decline of up to 80 per cent in the use of female low-skilled labour,” the authors observe.

As automation spreads, women’s roles in material handling, plastering, and concrete mixing have been largely displaced. “In one large precast factory, hundreds of single male migrants from UP and Bihar dominated production roles, while only 40 migrant families were present, with women confined to cleaning,” the report documents. 

Even as the workforce shifts towards skilled machine operators, “the consistent exclusion of women workers from both skilled trades and emerging technical roles illustrates how technological change perpetuates rather than disrupts gendered divisions of labour.”

The research also highlights how gendered exclusion interacts with migration patterns. Builders increasingly prefer long-distance male migrants from northern and eastern states, marginalising Bhil Adivasi women from Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh who “have historically sustained the industry.” Women’s employment is further constrained by “jodi-based hiring,” where couples are recruited together, undermining women’s independent work status, and by a lack of childcare, sanitation, and safety provisions.

While automation has been promoted as a solution to worker shortages, the report argues that “technological change unfolds within a stratified labour market structured by gender, ethnicity, and migration.” The result is “more precarious employment, limited visibility, and reduced access to rights, protections, and grievance mechanisms.”

Yet the study also records agency and resilience among women workers. “Despite these challenges, women are not passive subjects of automation,” it notes. “They display ambivalent responses, ranging from adjustment and informal learning to collective organising.” Many continue to aspire for training and inclusion in skilled roles, reflecting “a complex interplay of structural constraints and agency.”

The report calls for a reimagined policy framework that couples technological progress with gender equity. It urges the state, industry, and civil society to invest in women’s training in new technologies, set inclusion targets in public projects, and ensure social protection and workplace safety. 

“A more equitable future of work in construction,” it concludes, “will require not only inclusive training and employment practices but also structural support in the form of care infrastructure, social protection, and recognition of women’s labour, regardless of automation’s pace or reach.”

As India’s construction sector grows increasingly mechanised, Building Futures delivers a stark warning: without deliberate intervention, the Fourth Industrial Revolution risks reinforcing, rather than reducing, gender inequality at the very foundations of the country’s urban development.