efforts in the realm of policy and programming, at the local and national levels; failure to do so will merely prolong the precarious role of women in the economic life of the nation.

# 2. Female Labor Force Trends in Post-Liberalization India

## 2.1 Database and Method

Confining our analysis to the post-liberalization era in India, we consider the NSSO data sets for all rounds between Round-50 (1993-94) and the latest available, Round-68, that was collected in 2011-12. In order to calculate labor force participation trends, we utilize information on Usual Principal and Subsidiary Status (UPSS) of the activity classification provided in these data sets.<sup>2</sup> Total FLFP rates, as well as those for rural and urban areas are provided below in Table 2. For the purposes of this study, we consider the working age population as inclusive of those in the age group of 15 years and above.

Table 2: Female Labor Force Participation Rates, Using UPSS for Ages 15 and Above (%)

||Rural|Urban|Total|
|---|---|---|---|
|1993-94|49.0|23.7|42.6|
|1999-00|46.0|21.0|39.5|
|2004-05|49.4|24.4|42.7|
|2009-10|37.8|19.4|32.6|
|2011-12|35.8|20.5|31.2|

> 2 Activity status’ is the activity which a person reports for a given reference period, with regard to their participation in economic and non-economic activities. According to this, a person could be in one of the following three broad activity statuses during a reference period: (i) working or being engaged in economic activity (work) as defined above; (ii) being not engaged in economic activity (work) but either making tangible efforts to seek 'work' or being available for 'work' if 'work' is available; and (iii) being not engaged in any economic activity (work) and also not available for 'work.' The three activity statuses for each individual are accounted for separately in three different reference periods, called Usual Status (US), Current Weekly Status and Current Daily Status. In this study we only consider usual status; US consists of two activity statuses, based on the time spent on an activity during a major part of the reference period and a minor part of the reference period, respectively. The reference period is the 365 days preceding the date of survey. Usual principal status (UPS) of a person relates to the status of a person engaged in any one of the activities mentioned above for 183 days or more (a majority of time) during the reference period. Usual subsidiary status (USS) of a person relates to the activity status of that person during the minor time (183 days or less) during the reference period, if the person was engaged in work during the minor time period. But the USS of a person is recorded only if the person was engaged in that activity for at least 30 days. Usual status considering principal and subsidiary status taken together (PS +SS) is the broader definition of usual activity status, determined on the basis of the usual principal activity and usual subsidiary economic activity of a person taken together. According to the usual status (PS+SS), workers are those who are accounted for as workers by either the UPS or USS criteria. Thus, a person who is not a worker in the UPS is considered a worker according to the usual status (PS+SS) if the person pursues some subsidiary economic activity for 30 days or more during the 365 days preceding the date of survey (NSSO 2011).

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