Feminisation of Labour Across Developed and Developing Nations

The global workforce has changed dramatically in the last four decades. More women than ever participate in paid employment, yet the conditions of that participation tell a complicated story. Economists and sociologists call this large-scale shift the feminisation of labour – a term that captures both the rising share of women in employment and the simultaneous spread of insecure, low-paid working conditions that were once considered typical of “women’s work.” Understanding how this process unfolds differently in developed and developing economies helps explain why a higher number of working women has not automatically translated into greater economic equality.

What feminisation of labour really means 🔗

Feminisation of labour is not just about counting women in the workforce. The term carries two meanings that move together. The first is quantitative: a steady increase in women’s labour force participation since the 1970s. The second is qualitative: jobs themselves have become “feminised” – characterised by part-time hours, low wages, weak job security, and limited career mobility. As researchers Nazneen Kanji and Kalyani Menon-Sen note, irregular employment conditions once seen as the hallmark of women’s secondary employment have now spread across both sexes, though women remain disproportionately concentrated in such work.

Two structural forces sit behind this transformation: the global shift away from manufacturing toward services in rich countries, and the rise of export-led industrialisation in poorer ones. Both pulled women into paid work in unprecedented numbers, but on terms shaped by older gendered assumptions about what women’s labour is worth.

Feminisation in developed countries 🔗

In high-income economies, feminisation is closely tied to deindustrialisation. From the 1970s onwards, manufacturing jobs that had supported male breadwinners – in steel, automobiles, textiles, and heavy industry – began moving overseas or disappearing through automation. The vacuum was filled by the service sector: retail, hospitality, healthcare, education, finance, and personal services. These sectors expanded rapidly and absorbed enormous numbers of women.

The service economy and the “pink-collar” workforce 🔗

The service economy values skills culturally coded as feminine – caregiving, communication, attention to detail, and emotional labour. Hospitals, schools, call centres, and supermarkets became major employers of women. In the United States, women now make up the overwhelming majority of workers in health and education services, and similar patterns hold across Western Europe. But this concentration produced what sociologists call occupational segregation: women clustered in a narrow band of “pink-collar” jobs that tend to pay less than male-dominated sectors of comparable skill.

Part-time and precarious work 🔗

A defining feature of feminisation in the developed world is the explosion of part-time employment. According to the International Labour Organization, part-time work has become increasingly commonplace over the past decades, and women hold a disproportionate share of these positions. Part-time jobs offer flexibility that many working mothers value, but they typically come with lower hourly wages, fewer benefits, weaker pension entitlements, and limited paths to promotion.

The picture is not uniformly bleak. The Nordic countries – Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark – have shown that strong public childcare, parental leave, and labour protections can produce high female participation without extreme precarity. Elsewhere, however, the feminised service sector has often meant zero-hours contracts, agency work, and gig-economy platforms where workers carry the risks once shouldered by employers.

Feminisation in developing countries 🔗

In the Global South, the feminisation story took a different path. From the late 1970s, many developing countries adopted export-led industrialisation strategies, opening their economies to foreign investment and building factories oriented toward global markets. Garments, textiles, electronics, footwear, and food processing became the leading export industries – and these industries hired women in extraordinary numbers.

Export Processing Zones and female employment 🔗

The most visible site of feminisation in developing economies is the Export Processing Zone (EPZ), also called Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in some countries. These are designated industrial areas where governments offer foreign investors tax holidays, relaxed labour laws, and streamlined regulations. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Mexico, Honduras, and parts of China and India all built their export economies on this model. According to data compiled by Global Policy Forum, between 70% and 90% of workers in many EPZs are women, who frequently suffer abuse, harassment, and poor working conditions.

Why this overwhelming preference for female workers? Employers cite “nimble fingers” and aptitude for detail work, but a more honest explanation involves gendered assumptions about docility. Young, often unmarried women migrating from rural areas were seen as less likely to unionise, less likely to demand higher wages, and more willing to accept long hours and strict factory discipline. As a systematic review of EPZ research shows, these zones have contributed substantially to female labour market participation, but the gender composition reflects sectoral choices that favour stereotypically “female” industries like garments and electronics.

Working conditions inside the zones 🔗

Wages inside EPZs are often higher than informal-sector alternatives, which is why many women actively seek these jobs. But the conditions are demanding. Long shifts, mandatory overtime, restricted bathroom breaks, exposure to chemicals, and inadequate ventilation are common complaints. A study by the International Trade Union Confederation on El Salvador’s export zones documented verbal abuse, threats, physical abuse, and sexual harassment, alongside a clear anti-union policy that targets workers attempting to organise.

The Bangladesh ready-made garment sector – the world’s second-largest exporter of clothing – illustrates both the opportunity and the cost. Millions of women have gained independent incomes and a measure of social mobility through factory work. Yet tragedies like the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse, which killed over 1,100 workers, exposed the lethal consequences of weak building codes, ignored safety standards, and the pressure on factories to meet ever-tightening delivery deadlines for Western brands.

The informal sector trap 🔗

Outside formal factories, an even larger share of women in developing economies work in the informal sector – as domestic workers, home-based piece-rate workers, street vendors, and agricultural labourers. The ILO estimates that in low-income countries, over 92% of employed women work informally. In India, more than 90% of working women are in the informal sector, with little to no access to social security, maternity benefits, or legal safeguards. Recent reporting on the textiles and garments sector shows that while most men receive a regular monthly wage, many women work on a piece-rate basis, which translates to lower and more unpredictable earnings.

Implications of feminisation 🔗

The consequences of feminisation are genuinely mixed. Dismissing it as pure exploitation ignores what paid work has meant for hundreds of millions of women. Celebrating it as empowerment ignores the structural inequalities baked into the jobs themselves.

Real gains for women 🔗

Paid employment has given many women independent incomes, greater bargaining power within households, delayed marriage and childbearing, and exposure to public life beyond the home. Studies in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have shown that women working in export industries often report increased decision-making authority over household spending and their own mobility. For women migrating from villages to cities, factory wages – however modest – can fund younger siblings’ education, family medical expenses, or savings toward a small business.

Persistent gendered division of labour 🔗

Yet feminisation has not dismantled the gendered division of labour. It has reorganised it. Women remain concentrated in jobs that mirror their unpaid roles at home: care work, cleaning, food preparation, garment-making, and other forms of “nimble” or “nurturing” labour. The gender pay gap persists almost universally. Women continue to perform the bulk of unpaid domestic work and childcare, producing what sociologists call the “double burden” – a full day of paid work followed by a full evening of household labour.

Low wages and job insecurity 🔗

Feminised jobs are systematically undervalued. The same skills – caring for children, cooking, managing relationships – that command high status and high pay when performed by male professionals tend to be poorly paid when performed by women in service roles. Add to this the rise of contract work, sub-contracting, and home-based piece-rate production, and the result is a workforce that participates in the market without enjoying the protections that earlier generations of (male) workers won through unionisation.

What India’s experience shows 🔗

India offers a particularly instructive case. Despite rapid economic growth, female labour force participation remains among the lowest in major developing economies. Much of the recent rise in women’s reported employment reflects unpaid family labour and own-account work rather than salaried jobs. According to recent analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations, the Indian economy could grow significantly if women were represented in the formal economy at the same rate as men. The barrier is not legal but structural – cultural norms around women’s mobility, the burden of unpaid care work, occupational segregation, and the absence of safe, accessible workplaces all hold back genuine inclusion.

The road ahead 🔗

Feminisation of labour is now a permanent feature of the global economy. The question is no longer whether women will work outside the home but on what terms. Strengthening labour laws, extending social protection to informal workers, recognising and redistributing unpaid care work, and supporting collective organising by women workers – through groups like SEWA in India and similar movements worldwide – are the practical levers for change. The shift from manufacturing to services in rich countries and from agriculture to export factories in poorer ones cannot be reversed, but the conditions attached to those jobs absolutely can be improved.

What do you think? If feminisation has brought millions of women into paid work but largely on poor terms, is the answer to push for more women in better jobs, or to revalue the “feminised” jobs themselves so they pay fairly? And how should care work – paid and unpaid – fit into our definition of a productive economy?

References

1. https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/What_does_the_Feminisation_of_Labour_Mean_for_.htm
2. https://www.ilo.org/media/317211/download
3. https://archive.globalpolicy.org/globalization/globalization-of-the-economy-2-1/export-processing-zones.html
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6183862/
5. https://www.ituc-csi.org/el-salvador-appalling-situation-in
6. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/female-labour-force-participation-in-india
7. https://scroll.in/article/990984/in-indias-informal-economy-crores-of-women-face-gender-bias-and-insecurity
8. https://www.cfr.org/womens-participation-in-global-economy/case-studies/india/