WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION IN INDIA- GENDER INCLUSIVE OR EXCLUSIVE?

While women form half of India's population constituting 48.1% of the population, their participation in the labor market is almost one-third as well as declining. Improving socio-economic conditions so as to ensure better outcomes,alignment with Millennium Development Goals. Therefore, enhancing women participation in the labor force is a critical endeavor for driving overall social-economic and sustainable development. Women are a very important human capital who has enriched the society with their contribution in almost every field, in every century. The principal cause for the declining WLFPR relates to stage of development, which suggests a U-shaped relationship between economic development and WLFPR where WLFPR first declines and then rises.While the data on female work participation rate shows a steep decline, the reality remains that women work, in the house as well as outside the house. The inability of data to capture various facets of a woman's work as ‘work' has led to complete failure of policies in acknowledging her as a ‘worker' and unable to recognize her entitlement to equal wages, better work conditions and social security.