According to the NSO's ASUSE 2025 survey, cities with higher proportions of women-owned informal businesses consistently show greater female employment participation. In Surat, women own 43% of proprietary businesses and comprise 41% of the workforce, while Vadodara, Ahmedabad, and Pune maintain similar high thirties percentages for both business ownership and workforce participation. Conversely, Srinagar has among the fewest women business owners under 10% and correspondingly low women worker share at barely 10%, with Varanasi, Patna, and Delhi clustering in the same low corner on both metrics. As reported by Business Standard, this correlation holds true across India's 46 million-plus cities.
A new NSO survey reveals that unpaid care work, not job scarcity, keeps most Indian women out of the workforce in major cities. The survey covering 46 Indian cities with populations exceeding one million found that 69% of women outside the labour force cited childcare and household chores as the primary reason, while only 1% of men reported the same reason. The burden varies significantly across cities, with Howrah recording the highest share at 83%, followed by Surat (81%), Pimpri Chinchwad and Bhopal (78% each), and Dhanbad (77%). At the other end of the spectrum, Coimbatore (38%), Agra (41%), Kota (57%), Hyderabad (58%), and Visakhapatnam and Srinagar (60%) show substantially lower proportions. The findings come as India's female labour force participation remains at an estimated 30.7% in 2025, among the lowest globally.
The survey reveals significant variations in productivity across cities despite varying workforce gender composition. Delhi has the third most productive informal economy nationally, with each worker generating approximately ₹2.65 lakh of value annually, well above the national average, yet women account for only 13.5% of its workforce, among the lowest shares. Similarly, Greater Hyderabad ranks second in productive informal workforce but women represent just 19.82% of its workforce. Greater Visakhapatnam produces around ₹1.8 lakh per worker compared to Delhi's ₹2.65 lakh, yet women comprise 42.5% of its workforce, the highest share in the survey. Srinagar, with the lowest worker productivity at nearly ₹2.5 lakh per worker, has the lowest share of women workers.
The data reveals distinct sectoral patterns affecting women's participation in informal economies. Among the eight most trade-dependent cities surveyed, women make up less than 20% of the workforce on average, with Srinagar, where trade accounts for 57% of all establishments, having the lowest women workforce share. Kanpur, Delhi, Kota, and Lucknow, all trade-heavy cities, follow closely with women accounting for less than 20% of their workforce. Conversely, cities favoring manufacturing and services show significantly higher female participation, 10-15 percentage points above the national average of 26%. Surat, India's most manufacturing-intensive informal economy with 43% of establishments in manufacturing, ranks among the most female-friendly with 41% of jobs filled by women.
Despite better job quality in major cities, significant wage disparities persist across employment sectors. Women in salaried employment in million-plus cities earn an average monthly income of ₹23,700, compared with ₹30,700 for men—a wage gap of nearly 23%. The disparity is even wider among self-employed workers, with self-employed men reporting average monthly earnings of ₹33,880, more than double the ₹16,160 earned by self-employed women. Around 65% of employed women in million-plus cities held salaried positions, compared with 51% across urban India, while only 3% reported being engaged in casual work, significantly lower than the 9% recorded across urban areas. Workers in million-plus cities also log longer working hours, with employees working an average of 49.5 hours per week compared with 47.1 hours across urban India.
