E-Paper
Participation to value creation: Next phase of women-centred livelihoods
This article is authored by Nusrat Pathan, head, CSR, HDFC Bank.
India's economic growth story is increasingly being evaluated not only by how fast the economy expands, but also by who participates in that growth and who benefits from it. As the economy becomes more technology-driven and climate-sensitive, women-centred livelihoods must evolve from a framework of inclusion to one of economic leadership and resilience. Participation alone is no longer enough.
Women today comprise a significant share of India's rural workforce. According to the latest PLFS Annual Report 2025, rural female labour force participation reached 45.9%, up from 37.5% in 2022. Yet women remain concentrated in low-income, labour-intensive segments of agriculture, livestock management, food systems and informal enterprises, while remaining underrepresented in higher-value functions such as processing, branding, logistics, distribution and commercial decision-making.
While self-help groups (SHGs), microfinance and financial inclusion initiatives have expanded women's economic participation, much of women-led economic activity continues to operate at subsistence scale, characterised by low asset ownership, weak market integration and limited productive investment. India's SHG ecosystem has achieved remarkable scale, mobilising over 10 crore women into nearly 90 lakh SHGs under the DAY-NRLM. The next phase, however, must move beyond mobilisation metrics towards enterprise outcomes such as value addition, income resilience, market participation and ownership within value chains.
Women's economic participation is also constrained by a less visible but deeply structural challenge: Time poverty. In rural India, women spend significantly more time than men on unpaid domestic and caregiving responsibilities, while inadequate access to water, sanitation, clean energy, transport and care infrastructure further limits the time available for productive work. Investments in rural infrastructure and natural resource management are, therefore, not only social interventions but also economic ones that enable women to sustain and scale livelihoods.
The next challenge is not access alone, but enterprise scale.
Existing livelihood systems remain disproportionately focused on group formation and microcredit delivery rather than enterprise architecture. While small-ticket credit improves liquidity and consumption stability, it does not automatically enable productive expansion or enterprise formalisation. Sustainable enterprise growth depends on infrastructure, institutional finance, processing facilities, digital connectivity and access to formal markets.
This gap is visible across agriculture, sericulture, food processing and non-timber forest produce economies, where women remain overrepresented in primary production but underrepresented in value-added and market-facing activities. An Observer Research Foundation analysis notes that only 13% of women farmers sell produce through formal APMC mandis, while women account for just 6–10% of employees in larger agri and allied enterprises, with even lower representation in ownership and leadership roles. High labour force participation, therefore, does not translate proportionately into higher income or value capture.
Enterprise development is also an infrastructural challenge. Limited storage, processing facilities, transport, cold chains and digital market access increases transaction costs and constrain the scalability of women-led enterprises. Encouragingly, enterprise-oriented livelihood interventions are beginning to demonstrate a different pathway. In Assam, community-led silk production initiatives connect women to organised value chains through silkworm rearing, yarn production, natural dyeing and commercial market linkages. Similarly, women-led nursery and agri-enterprise models in southern India are strengthening horticulture and spice value chains while creating entrepreneurship opportunities in climate-sensitive regions These examples show that women are better positioned to build sustainable enterprises when finance is complemented by infrastructure, technical support and market integration.
The nature of economic participation itself is changing. Commercial ecosystems are becoming increasingly platform-driven, digitally intermediated and data-intensive. Consequently, the viability of women-led enterprises is no longer determined solely by productive capacity, but also by their ability to participate in digital payments infrastructure, e-commerce platforms, formal procurement systems and information-driven markets.
Women-owned enterprises operating outside these systems risk remaining confined to local markets characterised by limited scale, weak pricing power and dependence on intermediaries. Livelihood strategies must therefore move beyond conventional production-focused skilling. Enterprise resilience increasingly depends on capabilities such as financial management, digital integration, quality standardisation, logistics coordination and market-facing competencies.
Digital inclusion, therefore, should be viewed not merely as a financial inclusion objective, but as a determinant of market access. Women-led SHGs under DAY-NRLM now record over ₹1 lakh crore in annual digital transactions, reflecting the growing role of digital integration in rural enterprise.
Climate resilience is equally integral to livelihood security. Women remain closely linked to agriculture, water systems and natural resource management, making them disproportionately vulnerable to ecological stress and erratic rainfall. At the same time, they are emerging as key actors in sustainable farming, renewable energy adoption, eco-tourism, waste management, circular economy models and community-led conservation. The future of women-centred livelihoods, therefore, lies at the intersection of enterprise development, digital integration and climate adaptation.
India has already demonstrated that women's collectives and community institutions can drive inclusion at scale. The next phase must shift from microcredit to enterprise capital, from informal production to market integration and value-chain participation, and from livelihood support to long-term enterprise resilience.
Corporates, working in convergence with government programmes and grassroots organisations, can accelerate this transition by combining policy reach with local implementation, market linkages, technology and long-term capacity building, these partnerships can help women-led enterprises scale sustainably and participate more meaningfully in formal markets.
As India builds towards a more inclusive and future-ready economy, women-centred livelihoods must be viewed not as a social intervention, but as an economic imperative. Sustainable growth will increasingly depend on whether women are able not only to participate in local economies, but also to shape, lead and benefit from them meaningfully.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Nusrat Pathan, head, CSR, HDFC Bank.
