India's Working Women in 2026: Who Works, Where, What They Earn — and What They Spend on Workwear

India now counts about 20 crore working women, roughly double the number of 2018,^[10] and yet only around one urban woman in four is in the labour force. Both facts are true, and the gap between them is the story of women at work in India in 2026: a rural surge in participation, a much slower change in cities, a salaried office workforce that is growing and still paid about a quarter less than men, and boardrooms where the share of women has stalled at about a fifth. This report sets out what the official data says about who works, where, and for what pay — and what the thinner evidence says about what working women buy to wear to work.

1. How many Indian women work

The Periodic Labour Force Survey is India’s official count. On its annual “usual status” measure — a person counts as working if she worked for a meaningful part of the previous year — about 20.0 crore women were employed in calendar 2025, out of 61.6 crore workers in all.^[2] That makes women about 32.5 per cent of the workforce (derived).^[2]

The headline rate is the female labour force participation rate: the share of women aged 15 and over who are working or looking for work. It was 40.0 per cent in 2025, against 79.1 per cent for men.^[2] The share actually in work, the worker population ratio, was 38.8 per cent.^[2]

A second, stricter measure counts only work done in the seven days before the survey. On that “current weekly status” basis, published monthly since 2025, female participation was 34.8 per cent in August 2026.^[5] The difference matters: much of women’s work is seasonal or part-time, and it shows up in a year-long reference period but not always in a single week.

2. The 2017-2025 rise, and where it came from

Between 2017-18 and 2023-24 the female participation rate rose from 23.3 per cent to 41.7 per cent — an 18.4-point increase (derived).^[3] The move was overwhelmingly rural: rural women’s participation went from 24.6 to 47.6 per cent while urban women’s rose from 20.4 to 28.0 per cent.^[3]

The calendar-year series that replaced the July-June one shows the rise has flattened. Female participation was 33.9 per cent in 2022, 41.3 per cent in 2023, 40.3 per cent in 2024 and 40.0 per cent in 2025.^[1] The government’s reading, citing the Economic Survey 2023-24, is that the rural increase is not a sign of distress, because distress-driven participation should have peaked during the pandemic and fallen afterwards.^[4] The status data add a qualification: in 2025, 28.3 per cent of all women workers were unpaid helpers in household enterprises.^[1]

Education is pulling in the same direction. Among women with a postgraduate degree or higher, 39.6 per cent were working in 2023-24, up from 34.5 per cent in 2017-18.^[4]

3. Urban women: the gap that has barely moved

For anyone thinking about offices, commutes and workwear, the urban figure is the one that counts. In 2025, 27.7 per cent of urban women aged 15 and over were in the labour force, against 76.2 per cent of urban men.^[1] Among young urban women aged 15-29 the rate was 23.2 per cent.^[1] The monthly series shows no break-out in 2026: urban female participation was 25.4 per cent in August 2026, against 75.3 per cent for urban men.^[5] Women make up about 25 per cent of the urban workforce.^[10]

Education alone does not close the gap. In cities, 30.7 per cent of women graduates and 41.4 per cent of women with a postgraduate degree were working in 2025.^[1] The urban female unemployment rate eased to 6.4 per cent in 2025 from 6.7 per cent.^[2]

The survey asks women outside the labour force why. In 2025, 44.4 per cent of all such women, and 52.5 per cent in cities, gave child care or personal commitments in home-making as the main reason.^[1] The 2024 Time Use Survey puts a number on that load: women spent 289 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services for their household, men 88 minutes.^[6] Among those doing paid work, men spent 473 minutes a day on it and women 341.^[6]

4. Where women work: sectors and jobs

Taken across the country, most working women are still in farming: 59.8 per cent of women workers were in agriculture in 2025.^[1] In cities the picture reverses. The largest block of urban women workers, 40.9 per cent, are in what the survey calls “other services” — education, health, public administration, finance, information technology, professional services and paid household work — against 21.3 per cent of urban men. Another 21.7 per cent are in manufacturing and 16.1 per cent in trade, hotels and restaurants; only 12.7 per cent are in agriculture.^[1]

An analysis of the same survey by Data For India finds education, retail trade and paid domestic work are the three largest sources of urban female employment, and that in higher-paying services — computer programming, financial services, public administration — women make up less than a third of workers.^[10] Technology is the clearest exception: Nasscom puts women at 36 per cent of India’s tech industry workforce in FY25, double the share of a decade earlier, and over 40 per cent of enrolment in STEM streams in higher education.^[9]

The pipeline is there. Women were 2.07 crore of the 4.33 crore students in higher education in 2021-22 — about 47.8 per cent (derived).^[11] The female gross enrolment ratio in higher education reached 30.2 in 2022-23, above the male ratio.^[12]

5. The salaried, formal and office workforce

The women most likely to need a work wardrobe are those in regular salaried jobs. Nationally, 18.2 per cent of women workers held such jobs in 2025, up from 16.6 per cent in 2024.^[1] In cities the share is much higher: 50.9 per cent of urban working women are salaried employees, more than the 46.5 per cent of urban men.^[1] Applied to the survey’s estimate of 5.06 crore urban women workers, that is roughly 2.58 crore salaried urban women (derived: this report’s multiplication of two PLFS figures).^[1]

Salaried does not always mean formal. In 2025, 57.2 per cent of women in salaried non-farm jobs had no written job contract, 45.9 per cent were not eligible for paid leave and 55.2 per cent had no social security benefit.^[1] Salaried women worked 42.9 hours a week on average, against 50.8 hours for men.^[1]

The payroll data show the formal end growing. The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation added 26.9 lakh net female subscribers in 2024-25, out of more than 1.29 crore net additions — about 21 per cent women (derived).^[7] The government says 1.56 crore women have joined the formal workforce in the past seven years.^[7] In a single month, July 2025, 2.80 lakh women joined EPFO for the first time and net female additions were about 4.42 lakh.^[8]

The Ministry of Statistics also counts managers: the number of women in managerial positions rose 102.54 per cent between 2017 and 2025, against 73.80 per cent for men.^[12] It is a fast rise from a small base, as the next two sections show.

6. What they earn: the pay gap in numbers

Salaried women earned an average of ₹18,353 a month in 2025, against ₹24,217 for men.^[1] In cities the averages were ₹21,653 and ₹27,973; in villages, ₹13,208 and ₹19,300.^[1] Put as a ratio, salaried women earn about 75.8 per cent of what salaried men earn nationally, 77.4 per cent in cities and 68.4 per cent in villages (derived, this report’s division of the published averages).^[1]

Women’s pay is rising a little faster. Salaried women’s earnings grew 7.2 per cent between 2024 and 2025, against 5.8 per cent for men.^[2] From 2022 to 2025 women’s average rose about 19.1 per cent and men’s about 18.0 per cent (derived from the PLFS series).^[1]

The gap is far wider outside salaried work. Self-employed women reported average earnings of ₹6,374 over 30 days against ₹17,914 for men, and women casual labourers earned ₹324 a day against ₹489.^[1] That is 35.6 and 66.3 per cent of men’s earnings respectively (derived).^[1] Averages flatter the picture: median monthly earnings in the service sector are ₹18,000 for men and ₹10,500 for women.^[10]

Internationally, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2026 ranks India 131st of 145 economies, with a 41.2 per cent parity score on economic participation and opportunity and 44.1 per cent parity in labour-force participation.^[17]

7. Women in leadership: boards and senior management

Since 2014, listed companies have had to appoint at least one woman director. The rule worked at the first step and stalled after it. As of March 2025, 2,687 women held 3,479 directorships at 2,133 NSE-listed companies — 21 per cent of seats, up from 17 per cent in 2020 and 5 per cent in 2014.^[13] But women held only 10 per cent of executive directorships, just 103 companies (5 per cent) had a woman MD or CEO, and 123 had a woman chairing the board.^[13]

Among the 200 largest NSE companies, Russell Reynolds found women held 20 per cent of board seats in 2025, down from 21 per cent the year before; they were 28 per cent of independent directors and 9 per cent of board chairs.^[14] The World Economic Forum puts India’s parity among legislators, senior officials and managers at 13.1 per cent.^[17]

Mid-sized private firms look better. Grant Thornton’s survey found 36.5 per cent of senior management roles in Indian mid-market businesses held by women in 2025, up from 33.9 per cent in 2024.^[15] Its 2026 edition shows a fall to nearly 34 per cent, down 2.6 points, with women strongest as chief human resources officers and chief technology officers (44.6 per cent each) and chief financial officers (41.1 per cent).^[16] The global figure was 32.9 per cent.^[16]

8. Hybrid work: what one India study found

There is no large national survey of return-to-office patterns by gender in India. The best available evidence is a rapid assessment by IWWAGE of 400 working women, 150 of them in hybrid jobs, most aged 30 or under — a small, non-representative sample, and it should be read as such.^[18]

Its findings cut both ways. Over two-thirds of hybrid workers said managing their personal finances had improved since going hybrid, which the authors link to lower commuting and related costs.^[18] But 50 per cent believed hybrid work hurts women’s promotions relative to men, and 44 per cent said the same of networking.^[18] At junior levels, 35 per cent of women offered a hybrid option still chose to work in person.^[18] For the workwear question that follows, the implication is modest: fewer office days can mean fewer outfits, but the women surveyed did not see staying home as career-neutral.

9. What working women buy: the workwear question

No Indian official series measures spending on work clothes, and no national survey found for this report states what a working woman spends on them. What the government does measure is textile and clothing demand as a whole. The Textiles Committee’s National Household Survey 2024 found that women made 55.5 per cent of textile purchases, against 44.5 per cent by men.^[19] Household demand was ₹8.77 lakh crore and per-capita demand ₹6,066.^[19] Trousers sit among the most widely bought products alongside sarees and salwar kameez, and leggings have emerged as an important product for women.^[19]

How that spending splits between ethnic and western clothes is a matter of market-research estimate, not measurement. A Dun & Bradstreet industry report published by a listed women’s-wear company puts ethnic wear at 51 per cent of the women’s wear market in 2022, Indo-western at 17 per cent and innerwear at 30 per cent.^[20] The same report elsewhere says ethnic wear is 71 per cent of the women’s clothing sector — an example of why this report does not quote a single “workwear market” figure.^[20] The report’s qualitative point is less contested: it describes the formal segment of women’s western wear as expanding as more women enter professional roles.

The official numbers do bound the market. Roughly 2.58 crore urban women hold salaried jobs (derived, section 5), earning an average of ₹21,653 a month in cities.^[1] Many of them dress in a mix — kurta and trouser sets, sarees on some days, shirts and trousers on others — which is why the line between ethnic and western is blurrier at work than in any market split. For what that looks like in practice, our guides to office wear for women in India and to business formal versus business casual cover the dress codes themselves.

10. Where this data is weakest

Two participation measures. The usual-status rate (40.0 per cent in 2025) and the current-weekly rate (34.8 per cent in August 2026) measure different things; neither is wrong. The PLFS also moved from a July-June to a calendar-year cycle in 2025 with a larger sample, so the 2017-18 to 2023-24 and 2022-2025 series are shown separately.^[1][3][5]

Averages, not medians. PLFS earnings are means, and the ratios in this report are its own division of two means. Medians, where published, show a wider gap.^[10]

Leadership surveys differ in scope. Prime Database covers all NSE-listed boards; Russell Reynolds the top 200; Grant Thornton surveys mid-market firms. Their figures are not interchangeable.^[13][14][16]

Workwear spending is unmeasured. The only government demand data cover all textiles and clothing. Market-research splits of women’s wear conflict, sometimes within one report, and this report labels the one it uses as an estimate. The hybrid-work evidence rests on one small study.^[19][20][18]

11. Frequently Asked Questions

Related research: What India Spends on Clothing 2026 · Garment Worker Wages in India 2026 · Gen Z and Millennial Fashion Spending in India 2026 · India’s Silver Economy in 2026 · How Indian Women Shop Online in 2026