‘Give Me Some Rail’: An Enquiry into Puzzle of Declining Female Labour Force Participation Rate

Abstract

Female labour force undeniably constitutes half of the human capital that drives the growth and development of emerging economies. Probing into determinants of female labour force participation decline has gathered momentum in recent past, but there has been no significant breakthrough in resolving the puzzle. Using World Bank’s database of female labour force participation rate of India and China, and the state-wise database for India, this article juxtaposes the intermodal transport trend to examine if the former can be explained by the latter. Decline of female labour force participation in India is a concern from both the demographic dividend aspect and the social inclusion aspect. Twenty-five years’ data of both China and India and 3 year’s data of 18 Indian states show this trend, and this article probes the mobility constraint as the reason behind this phenomenon. Results of this study indicate that lower rail-to-road ratio is exclusionary for women. The findings regarding gendering of mobility and employment would influence important policy towards planning intermodal transport and its share of total transport for a nation. JEL Classification: C25, J12, J16, J21, J22, J130, J220, I38, I180, R48

Tackling Gender Inequality: Definitions, Trends, and Policy Designs

“…households can afford to have only one wage earner, reduction in state childcare support, and rising genderbiased hiring practices; in India, the decline may reflect the declining employment in agriculture, safety concerns and the lack of transportation infrastructure for women to join the urban labor force , and the U-shaped relationship between education and labor force participation as education level improves for women (Li, 2019;Zhang and Huang, 2020;Gupta and Bhamoriya, 2020;Hare, 2016). Excluding China and India, the gender gaps in labor force participation rates in emerging economies are still larger than those in developing economies, which partially reflects the large gaps in emerging MENAP countries.…”