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Women in Manufacturing
Women Missing from the Factory Floors
Context: As India charts its path towards becoming a Viksit Bharat (Developed India), manufacturing is emerging as one of the primary engines of economic growth.
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- Simultaneously, gender inclusion is recognised as a vital pillar of this development.
- However, a concerning trend is emerging—women are missing from the factory floors in India’s formal manufacturing sector.
Declining Female Participation in Formal Manufacturing
- Declining Share: According to recent data, the share of women in India’s formal manufacturing workforce has declined from 20.9% in 2015-16 to 18.9% in 2022-23, translating to just 1.57 million women out of 8.34 million workers.
- What’s more, Tamil Nadu alone accounts for 41% of all formally employed women in manufacturing, indicating a stark regional concentration.
- Informalisation: In contrast, the informal manufacturing sector employs 43% women, showing that women are indeed working, but often in low-paying, unregulated jobs.
- This disparity reflects a broader trend of informalisation and limited access to quality employment opportunities for women.
India Lags Behind Global Peers in Female Manufacturing Employment
- Lagging Comparatively: Despite manufacturing contributing nearly 20% to India’s GDP, the participation of women remains low, especially when compared to countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam, which have successfully integrated women into their industrial workforce.
- Concentration: Notably, five Indian states—Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat—account for almost 75% of India’s formal female manufacturing workforce.
- Similarly, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra make up nearly 50% of the informal female workforce in the sector.
High Gender Disparity Across States
- States like Bihar, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, and Haryana show some of the highest gender gaps, with women representing less than 6% of the formal manufacturing workforce.
- Even industrially advanced states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh exhibit significant gender disparity, with female participation below 15%.
Limited Industry Diversity for Women Workers
- There is limited industrial diversity in the sectors where women are employed.
- In the formal sector, around 60% of women work in textiles, apparel, and food processing.
- In the informal sector, the tobacco and wearing apparel industries dominate.
- In fact, the tobacco industry is the only formal sector where more women than men are employed, and over 90% of workers in the informal tobacco sector are women.
- These patterns indicate that women are concentrated in low-paying, low-skill industries, reinforcing the need to transition them into formal, diverse, and better-paying sectors.
Key Steps to Enhance Women’s Participation in Manufacturing
To boost women’s presence in formal manufacturing, a multi-pronged approach is necessary:
- Skill Training and Upskilling: Only 6% of women in the sector have received formal vocational training or on-the-job training, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey.
- Improving Educational Attainment: 47% of men in manufacturing have completed secondary education or higher, compared to just 30% of women.
- Sectoral Diversification: Women need opportunities in a broader range of industries beyond traditional sectors like textiles and tobacco.
- Safe and Supportive Work Environments: States must create safe, inclusive workplaces to attract and retain female workers.
- For instance, Tamil Nadu’s ‘Thozhi’ scheme offers working women hostels to support female employment.
