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Economic participation

Women's work, pay and maternity rights, and the indices that measure the gap.

Asked before

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Prelims 2024: Consider the following statements: 1. It is the Governor of the State who recognizes and declares any community of that State as a Schedu…
Mains 2024 GS1: Distinguish between gender equality, gender equity and women's empowerment. Why is it important to take gender concerns into account in p…
Mains 2023 GS1: Explain why suicide among young women is increasing in Indian society.
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See all: Prelims 1 · Prelims 2 · Mains

Maternity rights beyond the pay slip: the courts, the Code and the gig workforce

StandardPrelims and Mains30 Sep 2026

What it is

Maternity benefit is paid leave and job protection around childbirth. The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, as amended in 2017, gave India one of the longer paid entitlements in the world: 26 weeks for the first two children, 12 weeks from the third, 12 weeks for an adoptive or commissioning mother, a crèche in every establishment with 50 or more employees, and a bar on dismissal or any adverse change in service conditions during the leave.
On 21 November 2025 the Code on Social Security, 2020 replaced the Act. Chapter VI of the Code carries the same entitlements (Section 60); the Code applies to establishments with ten or more employees, and a woman qualifies after 80 days of work in the preceding twelve months.

What happened

On 31 August 2026, in Rakhi Bisht v. Union of India, the Delhi High Court held that maternity protection "cannot be reduced to merely retaining a woman employee's salary and designation." A manager who returned from leave to a post without staff or meetings had been downgraded in substance. The court awarded ₹10 lakh in compensation, held that a crèche that is not working when it is needed does not meet the statutory duty, and directed the Union to frame rules or a scheme under the Code within six months on role protection after leave, crèche functioning, grievance timelines and anti retaliation safeguards.
The order sits on a line of judgments that have widened the right: Dr Kavita Yadav v. Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (Supreme Court, 17 August 2023): a contractual employee's benefit runs its full course even if her contract ends in the middle of it; K. Umadevi v. Government of Tamil Nadu (Supreme Court, 23 May 2025): a State's two child norm cannot deny maternity leave for a third child, since the leave is part of reproductive autonomy under Article 21; Hamsaanandini Nanduri v. Union of India (Supreme Court, 17 March 2026): Section 60(4) of the Code, which gave an adoptive mother leave only if the child was under three months, struck down under Articles 14 and 21, because adoption in India takes long enough that the limit made the right illusory.

Why it matters

The courts have been filling in what the statute leaves open: that the right outlasts a contract, survives a State's family size rule, does not depend on the age of an adopted child, and now reaches the content of the job a woman returns to. The Supreme Court's rulings of 2025 and 2026 rest on Article 21, which makes maternity a constitutional right, not only a labour law entitlement.
The reach of the law is the harder problem. The entitlement attaches to an establishment of ten or more employees; most working women in India are in farms, homes and small units outside it, and the gig worker has no employer at all. For them the Code offers a scheme that is yet to be notified and a cash transfer, PMMVY, of ₹5,000 for the first child.
A longer leave paid entirely by the employer has a cost that has been pointed out since the 2017 amendment: an employer who must pay 26 weeks may prefer not to hire a woman of childbearing age. Countries with long leave usually pay it from social insurance. India's answer for the informal sector is PMMVY; for the formal sector it is still the employer's wage bill.

What the statute gives, what the courts added, and who is left outsideOpen full size

Schemes to know

Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY 2.0, from April 2022)

₹5,000 for the first living child in two instalments and ₹6,000 for a second child if a girl, in one instalment, by direct transfer to an Aadhaar linked account
A mother who miscarries may qualify afresh.
It is the Samarthya vertical of Mission Shakti, the Women and Child Development Ministry's umbrella scheme, whose Sambal vertical runs the One Stop Centres, the 181 helpline and Nari Adalats, and whose Samarthya vertical also runs Palna, the national crèche scheme for children of six months to six years of working mothers, Sakhi Niwas working women's hostels, Shakti Sadan shelters and the Hub for Empowerment of Women.

e-Shram (26 August 2021)

The Labour Ministry's register of unorganised workers, each with a 12 digit Aadhaar linked number, mapped to 15 welfare schemes; women are 54 per cent of its registrations.
It is the door through which a gig worker would enter a Code scheme.

Code on Social Security, 2020, Chapter IX

The aggregator levy and the Social Security Fund for gig and platform workers, described above
The schemes under it are to be framed by the Centre and may draw on government funds and corporate social responsibility money as well as the levy.

Exam lens

Prelims: 26 weeks for the first two children, 12 weeks thereafter and for adoption; crèche at 50 employees; the Code applies at ten employees; 80 days' work qualifies; the Code replaced the Act on 21 November 2025; Section 60(4) struck down in March 2026; aggregator levy 1 to 2 per cent of turnover capped at 5 per cent of payments to workers; PMMVY ₹5,000 and ₹6,000.
Mains: "The Maternity Benefit Act protects the few women it reaches generously and the many it does not reach not at all." Examine, with reference to recent judgments and the Code on Social Security.

Asked before: Prelims 2019 · Mains 2021 GS1

Show the questions

Prelims 2019: Which of the following statements is/are correct regarding the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017? 1. Pregnant women are entitled for three months pre-delivery and three months post-delivery paid leave. 2. Enterprises with creches must allow the mother minimum six creche visits daily. 3. Women with two children get reduced entitlements. Select the correct answer using the code given below.
Mains 2021 GS1: Examine the role of 'Gig Economy' in the process of empowerment of women in India.

Cases to cite

Dr Kavita Yadav v. Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (2023): benefit travels beyond the term of the contract.
K. Umadevi v. Government of Tamil Nadu (2025): no two child limit on maternity leave; reproductive autonomy under Article 21.
Hamsaanandini Nanduri v. Union of India (2026): adoptive mothers' leave cannot turn on the child's age.
Rakhi Bisht v. Union of India (Delhi High Court, 2026): the post she returns to must be substantially equivalent; a non functional crèche is no crèche.

Connects to

Rethinking population policy (Social Issues, September): the family policy a below replacement country turns to.
Global Gender Gap Index 2026 (Social Issues, September): India's rank of 143 on economic participation is the context for every maternity case.
Employees' Provident Fund (Economy, September): the other social security story of the month.

Sources

ANI via NewKerala, 1 September 2026, “Maternity protection cannot be reduced to salary, designation”
Khaitan & Co via Legal 500, 1 April 2026
Sterling and Partners, 17 March 2026
India Briefing, 18 March 2026
LiveLaw, 17 August 2023
CourtKutchehry, 27 January 2026
PIB, 9 December 2025, “Labour Reforms: Formalising and Safeguarding India's Gig and Platform Workforce”
PIB, 25 August 2026
PIB, 6 March 2026, “Foundations of Women Empowerment”

Global Gender Gap Index 2026 and the UN Gender Snapshot

BriefPrelims17 Sep 2026

The Global Gender Gap Index is the World Economic Forum's annual measure of the gap between women and men on four sub indices: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
It scores the gap closed, from 0 to 100 per cent, not the level of development, so a poor country can outrank a rich one.
The 2026 report, released in September, is the twentieth edition.

India ranks 131 of 145 economies, with 64.5 per cent of its gap closed. The 2025 rank was 131 of 148.
The sub index that moved: economic participation and opportunity, where India ranks 143 of 145 at 41.2 per cent, up half a point on the year; labour force participation parity is 44.1 per cent and parity in estimated earned income 35.1 per cent. India's best score on this sub index was in 2013.
Globally 69.2 per cent of the gap is closed, 120 years from parity at this pace; Iceland is first for the seventeenth year, followed by Finland and Norway; Namibia at fourth is the highest ranked African economy. Political empowerment is the widest gap worldwide, 22.1 per cent closed.

The Gender Snapshot 2026, by UN Women and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, released on 17 September ahead of the General Assembly's high level week, reads the Sustainable Development Goals through a gender lens: parity in national parliaments is 63 years away at the present rate; 31 of the world's 175 chief justices are women; one in three national gender equality bodies surveyed reported a loss of institutional power in the last two years; aid for gender equality is falling. India is not singled out.

Exam lens: the index is the World Economic Forum's; four sub indices; India 131 of 145 in 2026, 143 on economic participation; the Snapshot is UN Women and UN DESA, an SDG progress report, released each September.

Sources

ANI via NewKerala, 16 September 2026
PTI via The Week, 12 June 2025
World Economic Forum
IISD SDG Knowledge Hub, “When Women Lead, All SDGs Move Forward”

Recognising women as farmers: the Maharashtra Act

StandardPrelims and Mains2 Jul 2026

What it is

In India a farmer, for the purposes of credit, insurance, input subsidy and compensation, is in practice the person whose name is on the land record. Women do close to 60 per cent of the work in agriculture, by the Periodic Labour Force Survey figures the Union gave the Lok Sabha in July 2026, but hold about 12 to 13 per cent of operational holdings, by the Agriculture Census of 2015-16, and fewer than 15 per cent of land titles.
The National Policy for Farmers, 2007, drawn from the Swaminathan Commission's reports, defined a farmer by the activity, cultivation and allied work, and not by ownership; the definition never entered a law. M.S. Swaminathan's Women Farmers' Entitlements Bill, a private member's Bill of 2012, lapsed in 2013.
Uttarakhand amended its land law in 2021 to make a wife a co owner of her husband's ancestral land, the first State to do so.

What happened

The Maharashtra Legislative Assembly passed the Women Farmers Empowerment Bill unanimously on 2 July 2026; it received the Governor's assent and was published on 22 July as the Maharashtra Women Farmers Empowerment Act, 2026.
A woman farmer under the Act is a resident of the State aged 18 or more who is engaged in agriculture alone or jointly "irrespective of the nature of the land": operational holders, tenants with written or oral leases, landless cultivators, livestock rearers, agricultural labourers, pastoralists and seasonal migrants are all covered. Land ownership is not required.
The gram sabha, or in a town the nagar panchayat, decides each application by resolution, may recognise a woman who has not applied, and must give written reasons for a refusal; the certificate issues within 15 days and lasts as long as the woman farms; an appeal lies to the taluka agriculture officer.
The certificate is conclusive proof of her identity as a farmer, entitles her to the benefits of State schemes and to credit under State credit schemes, and places her in a Women Farmers Database. The Act creates a State Fund for Women Farmers, a Council chaired by the Chief Minister, a monitoring committee under the Chief Secretary. It creates no offence and no penalty.

Why it matters

It separates the identity of a farmer from the title to land for the first time in an Indian statute, which is what the 2007 policy asked and what the 7/12 extract, the Maharashtra land record, had always refused.
Its limit is the one the Opposition named in the House: the certificate opens State schemes, not the Union's, and does not touch ownership, so a woman recognised as a farmer still cannot pledge the land she farms; the demand that women be made co owners of family land was not conceded.
The gram sabha as the certifying body is the Act's wager, that a village will recognise its own women; it is also where a resolution can be refused.

Schemes to know

Maharashtra Women Farmers Empowerment Act, 2026

Certificate by gram sabha resolution, no land test, State Fund, Council under the Chief Minister, a database; in force from 22 July 2026.

Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (2011, under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana National Rural Livelihoods Mission)

The Union's programme for women farmers through self help groups, funding sustainable agriculture, livestock and non timber forest produce.

Uttarakhand's 2021 amendment

To its zamindari abolition and land reforms law: co ownership of ancestral land for wives, reaching an estimated 35 lakh women.

Exam lens

Prelims: Maharashtra Women Farmers Empowerment Act, 2026, assent 22 July 2026, certificate by the gram sabha, no land ownership test; women about 60 per cent of farm work and 12 to 13 per cent of operational holdings (Agriculture Census 2015-16); the National Policy for Farmers, 2007.
Mains: whether recognition without ownership changes a woman farmer's access to credit, insurance and compensation, and what a Union law on the Maharashtra model would need.

Connects to

Cash transfers to women: the EAC-PM evidence (Social Issues, July): the other route to a woman's own income.
The care economy in India (Social Issues, August): the unpaid work the farm adds to.
Maternity rights beyond the pay slip (Social Issues, September): the woman worker the law does not see.

Sources

PRS Legislative Research
ThePrint, 2 July 2026, “Maharashtra Assembly passes first of its kind Bill to recognise women farmers”
Down To Earth, 1 September 2026, “India's women farmers are finally being recognised; will they ever own the land?”

Settled facts (dates of Acts, constitutional provisions, standing definitions) are from standard references.

Women and Men in India 2025: what the numbers carry

StandardPrelims and Mains30 Jun 2026

What it is

*Women and Men in India is the National Statistics Office's annual compendium of sex disaggregated data under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. The 2025 volume is the 27th edition*.
It does not run a survey of its own: it gathers the latest figures from the Census, the Sample Registration System, the Periodic Labour Force Survey, the Time Use Survey and administrative records into one place, chapter by chapter, from population to decision making.

What happened

The 2025 volume, dated March 2026, was reported in the last days of April 2026; its labour chapter draws on the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) annual report for 2025, released on 27 March 2026 on a new survey design, so earlier years are not strictly comparable.
Labour: the female labour force participation rate for persons aged 15 and above was 40 per cent in 2025 against 79.1 per cent for men; in rural areas women's participation has risen from 37.5 per cent in 2022 to 45.9 per cent, while urban women's stays near 27.7 per cent.
Earnings: regular salaried women earned an average of ₹18,353 in 2025 against ₹24,217 for men, so a woman in a regular job earned about three quarters of what a man did.
Unemployment: equal for women and men at 3.1 per cent overall, but 6.4 per cent for urban women.
Sex ratio at birth: up from 904 in 2017-19 to 917 in 2021-23.
Education: women's gross enrolment ratio in higher education, 30.2 in 2022-23, is now above men's 28.9; the gender parity index is 1.0 from primary to higher secondary school.
Decision making: women in managerial positions have more than doubled since 2017, a rise of about 102 per cent against 74 per cent for men.

Indicator (latest year)	Women	Men
Labour force participation, aged 15 and above (PLFS 2025)	40.0 per cent	79.1 per cent
Worker population ratio, aged 15 and above (PLFS 2025)	38.8 per cent	76.6 per cent
Unemployment rate, aged 15 and above (PLFS 2025)	3.1 per cent	3.1 per cent
Share taking part in unpaid domestic work (Time Use Survey 2024)	81.5 per cent	27.1 per cent
Average earnings, regular salaried (PLFS 2025)	₹18,353	₹24,217
Minutes a day on unpaid domestic work, per participant (Time Use Survey 2024)	289	88
Minutes a day on unpaid care, per participant (Time Use Survey 2024)	137	75
Gross enrolment ratio, higher education (2022-23)	30.2	28.9

Why it matters

The rural rise is the story of the decade: most of the increase in women's work since 2017-18 has come from rural women, much of it self employment and unpaid help in family enterprises, which is why higher participation has not closed the earnings gap.
The urban gap is the puzzle: educated urban women work far less than educated men, and their unemployment rate is the highest of any group, which points to the lack of jobs, safe transport and childcare rather than to any lack of skill.
Unpaid work explains the rest: women spend more than three times as many minutes a day on unpaid domestic work as men, and almost twice as many on care; until that time is shared or paid for, participation will plateau.

Schemes to know

Mission Shakti (2022, Ministry of Women and Child Development)

The umbrella for women's safety and empowerment schemes, in force from 1 April 2022, in two sub schemes: Sambal (safety: One Stop Centres, the Women Helpline, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Nari Adalats) and Samarthya (empowerment).
Samarthya carries Shakti Sadan, Sakhi Niwas working women's hostels, the Palna crèche scheme and the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana.

Palna (2022, under Samarthya)

Crèches for children aged six months to six years, open 7.5 hours a day for 26 days a month; it replaced the National Creche Scheme in 2022.
11,395 Anganwadi-cum-crèches across 34 States and Union Territories approved by March 2025.
Funded 60:40 by the Centre and the States (90:10 in the North East and hill States).

Exam lens

Prelims: Women and Men in India published by the National Statistics Office (MoSPI), 27th edition; female labour force participation 40 per cent (rural 45.9, urban 27.7) in PLFS 2025; sex ratio at birth 917 (2021-23); women's higher education enrolment ratio 30.2 above men's 28.9.
Mains: why women's participation has risen in villages and stalled in cities, and what would raise it.

Asked before: Mains 2024 GS1 · Mains 2025 GS2

Show the questions

Mains 2024 GS1: Distinguish between gender equality, gender equity and women's empowerment. Why is it important to take gender concerns into account in programme design and implementation?
Mains 2025 GS2: Women's social capital complements in advancing empowerment and gender equity. Explain.

Connects to

The care economy in India (Social Issues, August): the unpaid hours behind the participation gap.
Cash transfers to women: the EAC-PM evidence (Social Issues, July): income that does not depend on a job.

Sources

Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, March 2026, “Women and Men in India 2025”
PolicyEdge, 29 April 2026
Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, 27 March 2026
PIB, 25 February 2025
Ministry of Women and Child Development, “Mission Shakti guidelines 2021-22 to 2025-26”
PIB, April 2025