From Participation to Parda: The Historical changes in the Indian Workforce entry by women.

The role of women in the working age population in India has always existed as a complicated web of caste, class, religion and economic need. Although the practices like parda subjugated women of upper-caste and upper class to household chores, the lower-caste women had been a major source of agricultural and services labor, with existing social and economic inequalities. Merchant activity was originally restricted by religious rules, such as Hindu restrictions on sea journeys but Jainism and Buddhism were able to facilitate new trade routes and eventual accommodation of Hindu tendencies. It was these forces of population growth, urbanization and increasing economic pressures in the post 1970s in the country that led women in economically weaker parts of upper-caste families to join the workforce, in the footsteps of lower-caste women. This paper analyzes such historic patterns with particular focus on how the social norms, religion and economic pressures intertwined to create the pattern of female participation in labor in India.