Artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to disproportionately displace Indian women from the workforce by targeting their dominance in automatable service jobs and informal employment sectors.
India boasts near gender parity in higher education enrollment, but female labor participation stays low. Around 80% of employed women hold informal positions, while a vast female workforce in business process outsourcing (BPO) fills roles ripe for automation.
AI’s Impact on Job Security
Lacking inclusive skilling, reskilling, and transition measures, AI deployment accelerates women’s job losses, widens economic divides, and reverses hard-won educational equality.
Health Challenges Fuel Workforce Exits
Health and well-being concerns often rank as the top reason women leave jobs, eclipsing childcare or household duties. The unrelenting “double shift” of paid work plus unpaid care work sustains high stress levels, poor sleep, burnout, anemia, and related issues that drive labor market dropouts.
Data from the National Time Use Survey by the National Statistical Office shows women spend 289 minutes daily on unpaid domestic tasks, versus 88 minutes for men.
Review of employment patterns across 350 companies reinforces these dynamics.
Boosting women’s employment demands not just higher numbers but robust defenses against AI-driven changes.
Indian women face elevated job loss risks from AI compared to men and peers in nearby nations, notes Saundarya Rajesh, Managing Director at Avtar Career Creators.
“This AI-led gender displacement crisis requires urgent interventions to avert,” she stated.
