Women’s Work and Public Employment in India

Dipa Sinha ()
Additional contact information
Dipa Sinha: Azim Premji University

Chapter 21 in Women and Work in India: Challenges, Opportunities and Perspectives for Policy, 2026, pp 487-505 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Public employment is a crucial source of work for women in many countries, and existing research shows a strong link between women’s public sector employment and their broader labour market outcomes. In India—where female labour force participation has historically been low—the public sector plays an increasingly significant role in employing women. However, this feminisation is accompanied by a growing share of irregular, poorly paid, and insecure public jobs, such as community health workers (ASHAs) and para-teachers. This chapter presents a gender-disaggregated analysis of public employment in India using nationally representative survey data from the last three decades. It argues that feminisation is occurring both through rising shares of women and through the shifting nature of public jobs themselves. The quantitative findings are complemented by qualitative interviews from different regions, highlighting conditions of work, women’s preferences for such employment, and the implications for their social and economic status.

Keywords: Public employment in India; Invisibilised nature of work; Gendered segregation of occupations; Contractual jobs in regular cadres; Feminisation in public employment; Increasing informalisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-981-95-6103-2_21

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789819561032

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-6103-2_21

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in India Studies in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().