Partner: The Nudge Institute

India’s economic future was inextricably linked to the full participation of women in the workforce. Despite progress, significant barriers persist in increasing women’s labour force participation rates (LFPR). This panel discussion at Charcha ’24 organised by The Nudge Institute aimed to cut the clutter on India’s female labour force participation rate and identify real bottlenecks for women’s access to productive employment or entrepreneurial journeys in the formal/informal sector.

It outlined clear pathways for (1) fractional employment for women in India through investments in sustainable, innovative models for micro work and platform jobs, (2) avenues to invigorate entrepreneurial opportunities by enhancing access to capital and markets, especially in agri-allied, food, and last-mile sectors, and (3) opportunities to break barriers to women’s workforce participation, including the persistent issues of connectivity and time poverty. Each panelist brought in their experiences across rural & urban models that had shown traction in enabling more participation of women in the workforce and outlined some of the key success factors of those models and some of the limitations that still needed support.

The session featured leading policymakers and experts, including:

• Sharon Buteau, Executive Director, LEAD at Krea University
• Ajaita Shah, Founder, Frontier Markets
• Pooja Sharma Goyal, Founding CEO, The Udaiti Foundation
• Varun Khaitan, Co-founder, Urban Company 
• Deepa Nagraj, Senior Vice President & Head – ESG, Sparkle Innovation Ecosystem and Communications, Mphasis