Meaningful inclusion of women in the workforce is Impossible Without Inclusive Mobility
Often for a woman who overcame social hurdles to work, at least in mindset and approach, the poor city mobility infrastructure itself becomes a second, artificial shackle.
“Sometimes the footpath is broken, sometimes vehicles come on it. We have to move between road and footpath. By the time I reach work, I am already exhausted”
This is not just an isolated personal anecdote. This and the experiences of many other women is symptomatic of a systemic failure in the design, implementation, and governance of urban mobility, a failure that actively constrains women’s workforce participation in India’s cities.
According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023–24, only 28% of urban women aged 15 years and above participate in the labour force, compared to 75.6% of urban men, highlighting the stark gender gap in employment. This is a gap that ultimately shapes and limits women’s economic potential.
While research and policy discussions on women’s lower workforce participation have often focused on the disproportionate burden of caregiving responsibilities and household work on women, relatively lower levels of education, and social barriers, mobility remains a critical but largely overlooked impediment.
Yet the ability to travel safely, comfortably, and reliably is often the difference between accessing a job and staying out of the labour force or settling for a non-optimal job. Cities must therefore move towards far more gender-intentional standards in the design, planning, and implementation of urban mobility systems.
This must reflect in the Urban and Regional Development Plans Formulation and Implementation (URDPFI) guidelines that are an integral part of all states’ town and country planning acts, and thus the master planning process, and also in individual project tenders for mobility infrastructure such as roads, bus stops, and metro stations.
Barriers to female workforce participation
Existing labour surveys and studies have long pointed to reasons for low female workforce participation, highlighting in particular, the influence of social and caregiving norms.
For instance, the Female Labour Utilisation (FLU) in India report (April 2023) documents multiple barriers rooted in social expectations, while the PLFS 2021–22 shows that many women remain outside paid work due to education (33.6%) and childcare or homemaking responsibilities (44.5%).
Yet, taken together, these explanations reveal only part of the picture. Unfortunately, neither the PLFS nor the FLU report explicitly captures mobility-related barriers—such as concerns about commute safety, transport availability, distance to workplaces, or inadequate urban infrastructure—as reasons for women’s non-participation in paid work.
Women’s participation in the economy is shaped not only by social norms, but also by the everyday design of our cities; an influence that remains largely invisible in employment debates.
However, where mobility is considered as a factor in women’s work force participation, it is often reduced to safety. For example, in India Today Insight Survey (2025) finds that 57% of women report safety challenges during their commute. Additinally an Uber–Oxford Economics study (2023), based on survey findings, suggests that improving access to safe and reliable transport could raise women’s workforce participation in India by 4–6.9%.
India has also launched multiple initiatives to improve women’s safety in public spaces, particularly through Safe City projects and Nirbhaya Fund supported interventions focused on surveillance, policing, and emergency response systems. While these efforts are important, their prominence also reveals a limitation: women’s mobility continues to be understood through a safety-first-and often safety-only-framework.
While safety from violence and harassment is non-negotiable, this framing is too narrow. It reduces a complex access issue to a single dimension of crime prevention. A broader view of mobility is needed—one that includes reliability, affordability, time poverty, and last-mile connectivity.
Mobility beyond only safety
Recent research by the Jana Urban Space Foundation (JUSP) titled the ‘Gender-Intentional Infrastructure study’, moves firmly beyond only the safety lens to examine mobility in women’s workforce participation as a full journey, from leaving home to reaching work and returning.
Drawing on detailed journey mapping across multiple stages of travel, the study highlights how factors such as accessible public toilets, seating, clear wayfinding, reliable public transport, last-mile connectivity, trip-chaining and the quality of walking infrastructure shape women’s employment decisions.
It shows how everyday mobility conditions become concrete deal-breakers; reversing a decision which would otherwise be to choose to work or work where they would like to. While 42 out of 64 unemployed women identified safety as a key reason for not working. ,nearly 70% of unemployed women also cited lack of transport access as a main reason for not working,.
This compared to just three citing domestic responsibilities. Safety emerges as an issue embedded in the everyday design and maintenance of urban mobility systems, most pronounced in specific contexts, particularly during last-mile travel, at poorly lit stops, and along fragmented walking routes.
Furthermore, basic amenities can play a large role in where to work. As one respondent mentioned that, “There is no toilet on the way. If the journey is long, it becomes very difficult. Because of this, I avoid work that is far, even if the salary is better.” The graphic below highlights the absolute mobility non-negotiables for women’s workforce participation, as well as the ‘good to haves’ in the form of ‘enablers’.
Deal-Breakers and Enablers: What Women Need to Work.
From artificial shackles to liberating infrastructure
Often for a woman who overcame social hurdles to work, at least in mindset and approach, the poor city mobility infrastructure itself becomes a second, artificial shackle. Inadequate infrastructure forces a constant calculus of risk: Which routes? Which hours? Which jobs? This constant evaluation restricts her work choices even after the decision to work has been made.
Breaking free from these constraints that impede meaningful inclusion of women in the workforce requires shifting from safety as a protective measure to mobility infrastructure as a source of freedom. When mobility in cities is designed holistically around women’s everyday needs as outlined in the deal-breakers and good to haves in the box above, women no longer need to second-guess whether to work or not, which job opportunities to choose, limit themselves to nearby work, or factor fear into employment decisions. The question then moves from whether women can work to whether cities are enabling women to access the full range of opportunities available to them, on equal terms with men.
Translating this vision into practice demands moving from gender-blind planning to gender-intentional design standards for mobility. As the Gender-Intentional Infrastructure study highlights, key national and sub national planning frameworks including the widely used Indian Road Congress (IRC) guidelines do not explicitly account for the everyday infrastructure conditions—like continuous footpaths, lighting calibrated for safety, or accessible features in public transport—that determine whether women can practically commute to work. Mobility must be designed as a system—spanning safety, accessibility, reliability, comfort, and last-mile connectivity—with these treated as non-negotiable, not optional add-ons
This shift must be backed by accountable governance, with local bodies mandated to maintain infrastructure and coordinate across transport authorities, traffic police and urban planning agencies. Equally important is building institutional capacity by including more women planners, designers, and decision-makers who understand how design choices on mobility systems shape freedom in womens workforce participation choices. Finally, funding for gender-inclusive mobility must move from pilot projects to core urban budgets, ensuring that amended guidelines translate into real change on the ground, not just well-intentioned policy on paper.
Source and Reference:
- Gender-Intentional Infrastructurereport published by JUSP and Janaagraha
- Female Labour Utilisation in India report, report published by Ministry of Labour and Employment Directorate General of Employment Govt of India.
- Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)report published by Ministry of Labour & Employment Govt of India
- India Today Insight survey (2025)article published by India today
- The MobiliserHer study (2022-2025)report published by MobiliseHER organization
- Uber-Oxford Economics study (2023)article published by India news.
- Nirbhaya Fund, ‘Safe City Projects’report published by Ministry of home affairs Govt of India.
- Bengaluru’s Safe City Projectcorporate project/report by Honeywell Automation India Limited
Name:
Mohammad Mansoor A
Associate Manager
Field Engagement & Data
Janaagraha Centre for CItizenship and Democracy.
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