NEW DELHI: Childcare and household chores keep around 69% women out of the labour force in India’s top 46 cities with million-plus population, highlighting the gender-bias in nature of care work even among the more affluent areas of the country, a new National Statistics Office survey has shown.The survey on labour market indicators for the large cities, first reported by TOI on Tuesday, showed that just 1% of the women cited “social reasons” for being out of the labour force, although the report did not elaborate on it.In contrast, 1% of men cited childcare and household work as the reason for being out of the labour force.India has among the lowest female labour force participation rates among the world’s major economies, estimated at 30.7% in 2025, although it has shown an upward trend in recent years.

‘Women earn 23% less than men in big cities’

Within the country, the trends vary across cities. For instance, 83% women in Howrah cited childcare and household chores as the reason for being out of the labour force, followed by Surat (81%), Pimpri Chinchwad and Bhopal (78%), and Dhanbad (77%). In Coimbatore (38%), the share was much lower, as was the case in Agra (41%), Kota (57%), Hyderabad (58%), and Visakhapatnam and Srinagar (60%).There were other reasons cited as well. For instance, 16% opted out as they wanted to pursue further studies, and 10% attributed staying out of the labour force to health and age-related factors.Among men, more than half (53%) attributed higher studies as the reason for not being part of the labour force, followed by health and age-related reasons (39%).The survey also showed the quality of work for women improved in the large cities as compared to other urban areas: 65% reported salaried employment compared with 51% in urban areas, wh-ile 3% reported casual work, as against 9% in urban areas.However, these cities which enjoy a wage premium reflected the gender inequality in wages too. While a salaried male earned Rs 30,700 a month in million-plus cities, a female earned Rs 23,700 – 23% lower. This gap was more pronounced in the case of cities such as Kalyan-Dombivli, Navi Mumbai and Nagpur, where women earned nearly half as much as their male counterparts. Prayagraj seemed to defy the trend, with women shown to be earning more than men.In case of self-employm-ent, men (Rs 33,880) had over double the monthly earnings of women (Rs 16,160).Workers in million-plus cities on average worked for 49.5 hours a week compared with 47.1 hours in urban India. Both male and female workers in million-plus cities reported higher average ho-urs than those in urban India.Women with salaried jobs in Rajkot (51.5 hours), followed by Faridabad (50 hours) clocked in the maximum time at the workplace.