Nisha Singh made a difficult choice when she decided to quit her job at an auditing firm in Mumbai in June 2019. Her son was about a year old. Neither her family – husband and father-in-law – nor her company offered the support that would have let Singh continue working through the child’s infancy.
The 33-year-old hopes to return to full-time work in a couple of years. “When I rejoin after a gap of four years, I will have to learn a lot because auditing regulations change frequently,” she said.
Singh is among lakhs of women in India who are forced to leave the workforce in order to shoulder motherhood and childcare responsibilities. Women who have at least one child under the age of six have lower participation in the workforce as compared to women with no children, according to the World Bank’s 2017 working paper on motherhood and female employment in urban India.
Female labour force participation in India is the lowest by far among the BRICS nations. Only 21%…