The worsening gender skew of our workforce

Context: A long downtrend observed in the proportion of job-holders among Indian women is worrying.

Issues with Low Female Labour force Participation:

• Sharp Decline: from 31.8% in 2005 to 20.3% in 2020 and is among lowest in the world. 
• Female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) is the proportion of women aged 15 and above who are either seeking or working at paid jobs.
• Opportunity cost: McKinsey Global Institute report of 2018 said that India would gain $770 billion in output by 2025 if women had the same opportunities to work as men.
• Challenged by socio-cultural attitudes:  that prevail among families are not open to modern ways of thought.
• Rising family incomes leads to dropping out of women from the workforce.
• Hold of patriarchy on society keeps women homebound and denies them space to exercise their agency on the issue of securing paycheques of their own. 
• Weak following of law: According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), over 100 million females in India got married before turning 15, breaching the minimum age by law set at 18 years.

Way Forward:

• Bring attitudinal shift among our multitudes: especially men, given the country's high level of gender violence.
• Move an effective social campaign that directly addresses hold-backs: 
• For, E.g. the move to raise the age of marriage for girls from 18 to 21 years may backfire due to raised perception of a girl child as a "burden", pushing families to opt for prenatal sex selection.