Understanding the Feminisation of Labour Force in a Globalized World

Across factories in Tiruppur, garment units in Delhi-NCR, call centres in Bengaluru, and home-based bidi-rolling households in West Bengal, one demographic shift has reshaped the world of work over the last four decades: more women are earning wages than ever before. Economists call this the feminisation of labour. But the term carries a sharp double meaning. It describes both the rising share of women in paid employment and the way jobs themselves have become “feminised”, that is, more flexible, more informal, and less secure. Understanding this paradox is central to making sense of how globalisation has changed work for women.

What is feminisation of labour? 🔗

The term was coined by economist Guy Standing in his influential 1989 paper “Global Feminisation Through Flexible Labour”, published as an International Labour Organization working paper. Standing observed that as economies liberalised through the 1970s and 1980s, two parallel trends emerged: women entered the paid workforce in unprecedented numbers, and simultaneously, the nature of work shifted toward arrangements traditionally associated with female labour, such as part-time hours, piece-rate pay, home-based production, and low social status.

This dual meaning is critical. As scholarly definitions note, feminisation of labour refers both to women’s increased participation in paid work and to the deterioration of working conditions in previously male-dominated jobs. In other words, women weren’t just joining the workforce. The workforce itself was becoming more “feminine” in its conditions, characterised by flexibility, precarity, informality, limited skill formation, and low social status.

The two dimensions of feminisation 🔗

Scholars typically distinguish between two related processes. The first is quantitative feminisation: the measurable rise in women’s labour force participation rates across countries. The second is qualitative feminisation: the spread of flexible, insecure, and informal work arrangements, such as unpaid domestic-style labour, part-time contracts, and home-based piecework, that historically defined women’s work. Standing’s argument was that these two trends were not coincidental. Employers, facing global competition, actively preferred workers who could be paid less and dismissed more easily, and women, given prevailing gender norms, often fit this profile.

How globalisation drove the feminisation of labour 🔗

The economic restructuring that began in the 1980s, marked by trade liberalisation, the relocation of manufacturing to developing countries, and the rise of global value chains, created a massive demand for low-cost, flexible labour. Export-oriented industries such as garments, electronics assembly, footwear, and food processing expanded rapidly in countries across Asia, including India after the 1991 reforms.

These industries had a strong preference for female workers. According to research on global value chains, firms in labour-intensive, export-oriented sectors disproportionately employ female workers because they are paid less due to gender segmentation in the labour market, and because flexible, home-based work patterns suit firms seeking to reduce overheads and social security costs. Women’s perceived “docility”, lower likelihood of unionisation, and traditional association with detailed manual work made them attractive to multinational supply chains seeking to remain competitive.

The flexibilisation of work 🔗

Alongside this hiring shift, the structure of employment itself changed. Permanent, full-time jobs with social protection began giving way to contract work, casual labour, and subcontracting arrangements. Companies broke production into smaller units outsourced to households or small workshops, where labour laws were difficult to enforce. This is the process of labour flexibilisation, and it eroded the standard employment relationship that had once protected workers in formal industries.

India offers a textbook case. After liberalisation, the textile and garment industry expanded enormously through export orders, but the workers stitching, embroidering, and finishing garments increasingly did so from home, on piece-rate wages, without contracts or benefits. The informal sector now absorbs around 88 percent of employed women in India, who work as small-scale farmers, domestic cleaners, street vendors, and garment workers without contracts or social protection. This is feminisation in action: more women working, but in arrangements that offer little economic security.

Erosion of job security 🔗

The shift toward flexible labour has weakened the bargaining position of workers as a whole, not just women. Research on the Indian labour market notes that significant changes have unfolded, including the expansion of the platform economy, the development of global value chains, a declining share of labour in production, and the replacement of standard regular jobs with precarious ones. Crucially, the same study shows that precarity is no longer confined to the informal sector; even formal-sector workers increasingly experience insecurity, short-term contracts, and reduced benefits. Feminisation has spilled across the entire labour market.

The Indian picture: numbers and contradictions 🔗

The recent data on women’s work in India captures the complexity of feminisation. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey for 2023-24, the female labour force participation rate for those aged 15 and above rose from 23.3 percent in 2017-18 to 41.7 percent in 2023-24. This is a dramatic jump, especially in rural areas where female participation nearly doubled.

On the surface, this looks like progress. But a closer reading reveals troubling patterns. Most of the rise has come from rural self-employment and unpaid family labour. The share of self-employed women among employed women rose to 67.4 percent in 2023-24 from 51.9 percent in 2017-18, while the share of women holding regular salaried jobs fell to a seven-year low of 15.9 percent. In other words, more women are working, but they are increasingly in own-account or helper roles rather than secure wage employment.

A return to agriculture, not a structural shift 🔗

Economic theory predicts that as economies develop, workers should move out of agriculture and into industry and services. For Indian women, the opposite is happening. The share of rural women in agriculture rose from 71.1 percent in 2018-19 to 76.9 percent in 2023-24, while their share in industry and services declined. This points to a feminisation that is not driven by expanding opportunity in high-productivity sectors, but by women being absorbed into low-productivity agricultural and informal work, often as unpaid helpers in family enterprises.

Distress or empowerment? 🔗

This pattern has triggered a debate between two interpretations. The government’s view, reflected in official PIB analyses, frames the rise as a positive trend showing improved employment indicators, growing earnings among self-employed women, and an upward trajectory of educated women in the workforce. Critics counter that the data reveals distress-driven participation: women entering work not because new opportunities have opened up, but because household incomes are insufficient. The fact that the rise in female participation has not been accompanied by increases in earnings, regular wage employment, or access to well-remunerated jobs with benefits lends weight to this concern.

Is feminisation of labour progress for women? 🔗

This is the central question Standing’s framework forces us to confront. On one hand, paid work is widely understood as a path to autonomy. Earning an income, even a modest one, can shift household power dynamics, give women a voice in family decisions, and reduce economic dependence. The expansion of women’s employment has been celebrated by international agencies as a marker of development and gender equality.

On the other hand, the kind of work most women are absorbed into rarely delivers on these promises.

The case for progress 🔗

Women’s entry into paid work, however precarious, has generated income for households that previously had none and has begun to challenge norms that confined women to the domestic sphere. Movements such as the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), formed in 1984 and now with around 2.5 million members, have demonstrated how women in the informal sector can organise, build cooperatives, and demand better treatment. Education levels among working women have risen, and digital platforms have created new, if uneven, opportunities for women entrepreneurs.

The case for concern 🔗

But the precarity is real and structural. Women in informal employment face significant income insecurity, lack of legal protection, and limited access to social benefits, exacerbating existing gender inequalities. Wage gaps persist. The “double burden” of paid work plus unpaid domestic labour falls almost entirely on women. Health risks, sexual harassment, and the absence of maternity benefits are routine for those in informal work. And because much of women’s work is invisible, whether unpaid family labour, home-based piece-work, or domestic service, it remains poorly counted and poorly protected.

A more honest reading 🔗

The most honest answer is that feminisation of labour is neither pure progress nor pure exploitation. It is a contradictory process. It has expanded women’s economic participation while simultaneously locking many into low-quality work. It has eroded patriarchal norms in some ways while reinforcing them in others. Recognising this contradiction is essential, because policy responses that simply celebrate rising participation rates miss the deeper question of job quality. Without secure contracts, social protection, decent wages, and recognition of unpaid care work, more women in the labour force does not automatically translate into more empowered women.

What policy responses could change the picture? 🔗

Addressing the feminisation of labour requires moving beyond participation counts to focus on the conditions of work. Strengthening labour laws to cover informal and home-based workers, expanding social security through schemes such as e-Shram, investing in public childcare to reduce the unpaid care burden, recognising and valuing care work in national accounts, and supporting collective organisations of women workers are all part of a credible agenda. The Code on Social Security, 2020, in principle extends some protections to gig and platform workers, but implementation has been slow and uneven. Without enforcement, legal change remains largely symbolic.

Equally important is challenging the structural assumption that women’s labour is naturally cheaper, more flexible, and more disposable. As long as global supply chains profit from this assumption, the qualitative feminisation of work, the spread of insecure conditions to all workers, will continue.

What do you think? If a woman in your neighbourhood works as a tailor from her home, earning per piece with no contract or benefits, is she economically empowered, economically exploited, or both at the same time? And what would it take to ensure that rising female labour force participation actually translates into rising welfare for women?

References

1. https://ideas.repec.org/p/ilo/ilowps/992679063402676.html
2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277539521000698
3. https://borgenproject.org/women-in-indias-informal-sector/
4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333097553_Precarious_Work_Globalization_and_Informalization_of_Workforce_Empirical_Evidence_from_India
5. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2057970
6. https://www.business-standard.com/economy/news/share-of-self-employed-women-increased-to-67-in-2023-24-plfs-data-124092601012_1.html
7. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/female-labour-force-participation-in-india
8. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2074399
9. https://ceda.ashoka.edu.in/too-good-to-be-true-steadily-rising-female-labour-force-participation-rates-in-india/
10. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43621-025-01398-0