Arya News - According to the Indian government, an employment surge among women is being driven by those from Indian villages, reversing a trend that has been low for decades because of social and familial pressures against women working, safety concerns and a shortage of jobs in preferred sectors.
BENGALURU – Kavita Mahto caught nationwide attention in early October when she ran barefoot in a turquoise sari to get a job with the Home Guards in Ramgarh in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.
The poor brick-kiln worker ran 1.6km in 8.57 minutes and passed the time trial, hoping to secure employment paying 1,088 rupees (S$14) a day.
On the one hand, the picture of a sari-clad woman competing for a contract job alongside thousands of others was heartening evidence of more women in rural India entering the workforce than in the past four decades.
On the other hand, it was a stark reminder of the widespread unemployment in India, with about 16,000 applicants reportedly applying for just 284 Home Guards posts in Ramgarh.
“I didn’t think of anything but the job when I ran. It could change my life and that of my children,” said Kavita, 30, a widow and mother of two who also cares for her elderly in-laws after her husband died of ill health three years ago.
Home Guards are civilians contracted for three to five years to help the police manage traffic, secure government buildings, and do community work. Half the posts are reserved for women, with a separate 5% provision for widows.
About 20 other women ran in saris in the recruitment trial, just like Kavita, said Ankit Kumar, a running coach who had organised the heats for applicants to improve their performance before the actual test on Oct 25. “All are under 30, from villages, all looking for stable jobs that are hard to come by in our parts,” he said.
Why rural women are joining India’s workforce
According to the Indian government, an employment surge among women is being driven by those from Indian villages, reversing a trend that has been low for decades because of social and familial pressures against women working, safety concerns and a shortage of jobs in preferred sectors.
The latest official employment data showed that India’s rural female labour force participation rate (LFPR) reached 40% in September, rising almost every month from 24.6% in 2017. Meanwhile, urban LFPR for women has been largely unchanged at around 25%.
Economists, however, say that the good headline numbers hide a worrying reality. The phenomenal increase in the share of rural women in the workforce is not a sign of progress or more job opportunities, but rather growing economic distress in the Indian countryside, which forces women to take on largely low-paying work.
Indeed, rural female unemployment is at its lowest today, at around 3.9%, while it is 9.2% for urban women.
As agricultural distress, inadequate incomes, and the rising cost of living throw rural households into financial crisis, many women find themselves having to pick up the slack to support their families for little or no pay.
Women’s participation in India tends to rise during economic stress and fall as conditions improve, a trend shaped by the interplay of financial necessity, the individual’s agency and societal prestige.
Women in low-income households from marginalised communities in rural areas are more likely to be working to supplement family income, studies show. Today, a majority of rural women in the workforce run eateries or shops for marginal profit or work unpaid on family farms to cope with household financial difficulties.
An October 2026 Oxfam study found that self-employment is surging, even as the proportion of women in salaried jobs and casual labour has declined. In rural India, self-employment increased from 57% in 2017 to 73%. Around 59% of the self-employed women are unpaid helpers in family enterprises.
“Women are stepping in to keep the family from starving. The overwhelming home-based part-time work they do shows that there are few job opportunities for them and that they are still not able to go too far from their home due to household duties,” said Sona Mitra, principal economist at the Initiative for What Works to Advance Gender Equality, a research centre in Delhi.
Kavita Mahto went viral for running 1.6km barefoot in a sari at the physical tryouts of a Home Guards recruitment in Jharkhand state. PHOTO: ANKIT KUMAR/THE STRAITS TIMES
Rural women face low pay in India’s jobs market
The gender pay gap for self-employed women is also worse than for salaried work, Mitra said. “In wage employment, a woman makes 65 to 70 rupees for every 100 rupees a man makes. In self-employment, a woman makes only 37 rupees for every 100 a self-employed man makes,” she added.
The rate at which Indian women were leaving agriculture in the past few decades was “an encouraging trend”, Mitra said, but the reversal of the trend today, with many stepping back into the home farm to prevent the family from going hungry, “is not good news for the Indian economy”.
Working women are increasingly participating in these “bottom-of-the-rung survivalist activities”, according to a research paper by economists Ipsita Sarkar and Divya Pradeep published in the Economic & Political Weekly, compelled by economic constraints, lower levels of education, restricted physical mobility, primary care and domestic responsibilities, and conformity to cultural norms.
Apart from financial stress, the researchers found that some positive motivators for self-employment in the past decade include progressive gender attitudes, greater awareness of the need for financial security, and government promotion of non-farm businesses, especially through women-led self-help groups.
Several state schemes have also helped, like collateral-free loans and direct monthly transfers to women from low-income households.
One such beneficiary, Divya Kumari, a 29-year-old high-school graduate with a toddler in a village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, opened a betel nut and tobacco shop two years ago with a soft loan of 100,000 rupees from the state government. She recently began selling tea and offering mobile currency recharge services as well.
But Divya’s story also demonstrates the limitations of such help without the right economic conditions. After a back-of-the-envelope cost-benefit analysis of the barely 200-rupee profit a day and looming medical expenses, bus fare and grocery bills, she admitted that she was just not making enough.
“The shop is a source of livelihood, but I am running in the same place. Almost everything I earn with my right hand, I spend with my left hand,” said Divya, whose village, Bhakwaha, is in Bhopal district.
Even gig workers like 35-year-old Rakhi (name changed), who goes to suburban homes outside Delhi to thread eyebrows and give head massages through a beauty services app, are hanging by a thread.
Women make up a quarter of India’s fast-growing gig and platform economy, but they are largely in lower-paying care, beauty, cleaning, and home-service roles, rather than higher-earning logistics or food delivery sectors where male workers dominate.
“I like gig work because I can balance home and work,” said Rakhi, who has two daughters, aged 12 and 10. “But it is only a slight improvement from farm labour.”
And after six months of client abuse, volatile ratings and concealed deductions that eat away at her income, she feels she traded away her “dignity and rights for the promise of mobility”.
Yet, Rakhi swears she will not quit. “My daughters will go to college soon. My parents are unwell. My husband’s family has debts to repay. And the costs of oil, gas and vegetables are shooting up. I need to help my family out,” she said.
Despite training hard for two weeks at an athletic academy, Kavita eventually did not qualify for the Home Guards job as she did not clear the high-jump test. She has gone back to construction work, and the national story of her fast feet is now just a blip in a hard life.