How do labour regulations affect women's access to manufacturing jobs?

Manufacturing jobs pay roughly 50% more than agricultural jobs on average. Since women in India are disproportionately concentrated in agriculture, a pathway into manufacturing is also a pathway to meaningfully higher incomes. Whether that pathway is open depends significantly on how labour law treats women.

Across Indian states, women are legally barred from working in 31 industries on the grounds that these jobs pose risks to their health or safety. The industries range from petroleum refining, which might plausibly carry such risks, to bangle production, where the case for exclusion is harder to make. The consequence in both cases is the same: women are excluded from better-paying manufacturing work and remain in lower-paying agricultural employment. The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2026 report ranked India 120th out of 190 countries on legal discrimination against women in the workplace, reflecting how extensively Indian law restricts rather than enables women’s economic participation.

Night shift restrictions illustrate the paternalistic approach of India’s approach. Most Indian states restrict or prohibit women from working in factories at night, with the stated aim of protecting their safety. The comparison between Haryana and Punjab shows the cost of this. Haryana extended the right to employ women in night shifts across IT, hotel, and export-oriented establishments in 2003. Punjab did not follow until 2014. Haryana also allows a single woman to work a night shift; in Punjab, at least 5 women must be present before a night shift can operate. In 1980, Haryana’s per-capita income was 6% below Punjab’s. By 2001, the two had converged. By 2022, Haryana’s per-capita income was 49% higher. No single policy explains a divergence of that magnitude, but early access to female night-shift employment gave industries in Haryana a head start whose effects compounded over two decades.

Some states do grant exemptions to the night-shift restriction, but they are awarded at discretion and typically come with costly conditions. Firms that want to employ women at night often have to provide transport, on-site security arrangements, female supervisors, and other services. These conditions may seem reasonable in isolation. However, these conditions increase costs, and only large, profitable firms can afford to meet them. Smaller establishments with more entry-level work remain excluded. The regulation’s visible effect is to protect women in the workplace. Its less visible effect is to increase the costs of hiring women to the point where no entrepreneur would be willing to do so.