Year in review: What 2025’s data tells us about women in India

For Indian women, 2025 can be best defined by sharp contrasts. On the one hand, fresh government data, corporate disclosures, and sector-based studies pointed to more women joining the labour force, a surge in pension enrolments under the Atal Pension Yojana, rising visibility in blue and grey-collar work, and a steady rise in political and workplace representation. 

On the other hand, some persistent inequalities have been hard to ignore: entrenched gaps in leadership roles, continued vulnerability to gender-based violence, widening divides in digital access and safety, and structural barriers shaped by caste, class, age, location, and identity.

Together, these datasets offer a panoramic view of Indian women’s economic, social, and digital realities. They aren’t abstract metrics but indicators of opportunity, risk, and areas for improvement. 

As 2025 comes to an end, HerStory deep dives into India’s shifting gender landscape, where the pace and depth of change remain uneven.

Women’s employment and economic participation: rising numbers, uneven realities

Throughout 2025, the labour market reflected visible gains, but with stark contradictions. Government figures from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for 2023–24—released in 2025—showed a sharp rise in female labour-force participation, climbing to 41.7%, up from around 23% in 2017–18. 

According to the PLFS, a good part of this rise came from rural women, many of whom are taking on more agricultural and self-employment work. However, most of these jobs were informal, unpaid or low-paid, offering little real security even as more women joined the workforce.

Corporate gender data released in 2025 reinforced these disparities. A flagship study by The Udaiti Foundation’s Close the Gender Gap Dashboard found a 51% increase in gender data disclosures over five years, reflecting stronger corporate transparency. 

Despite this improvement, women remain significantly underrepresented in senior leadership and on company boards—a gap the report identifies across most sectors.

Meanwhile, other gendered employment indicators showed mixed progress. In technology and STEM fields, sectoral assessments showed a gradual, steady increase in women pursuing technical roles. One such trend came from a hardware engineering talent report, which noted a 26% increase in job applications from women in 2024, signalling growing interest in specialised engineering pathways.

Nonetheless, women’s presence in the formal workforce remained uneven across states and industries. According to the 2025 State of Women in the Blue-Grey Collar Workforce report by the Udaiti Foundation, in partnership with Quess Corp, more women are now entering logistics, retail, and service roles. But their participation is still concentrated in lower-wage segments. 

The same report found high early-stage attrition among women with less than one year of experience, highlighting gaps in retention and job quality.

Government reforms also influenced women’s work prospects. India’s proposed labour codes include stronger safety measures, clearer paths to formalisation, and more defined work-from-home options. If implemented well, these changes could help ease some of the longstanding barriers reflected in PLFS and corporate data.

Social security and financial inclusion: a major shift in women’s pension access

One of the most striking shifts in 2025 emerged in women’s access to long-term financial protection. According to a Lok Sabha reply and Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority data for 2024-25, women now constitute 48% of all Atal Pension Yojana subscribers nationwide. 

Notably, 55% of new APY enrolments in 2024–25 were women, which reflects a structural shift in a scheme historically dominated by male informal workers.

State-level data from the same parliamentary reply showed that Bihar had over 42 lakh women enrolled—about 44% of its total subscriber base, as of November 2024. This trend aligns with women’s increased access to bank accounts under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, improved digital payment infrastructure, and the integration of account-based auto-debits that made long-term saving easier.

APY’s pension—Rs 1,000-5,000 a month—is small and doesn’t rise with inflation. Even so, 2025 was the first time women entered the contributory pension system at such a scale.

Digital access, workforce participation, and online inequality

The digital economy’s rapid expansion in 2025 further exposed gender gaps. A workforce analysis by NASSCOM, widely discussed this year, found that women remain underrepresented in high-skill digital roles, especially in AI, cybersecurity, and cloud technologies areas. 

While women’s participation in entry-level tech roles was higher, their numbers dropped sharply at leadership and specialist levels. 

These patterns mirror broader digital-access inequalities observed across multiple digital-workforce studies. Government telecom and Digital India data showed an improvement in women’s mobile ownership but a persistent gender gap in internet use and digital literacy. 

Furthermore, cybercrimes—particularly offences targeting women—recorded a substantial rise. A 2025 study by the Centre for Internet and Society mapped India’s gendered online abuse crisis, documenting rising instances of digital stalking, impersonation, non-consensual image circulation, and deepfake threats. 

The report highlighted how women’s expanding digital presence has not been matched by corresponding improvements in online safety.

Gendered violence, health and climate inequalities

Though no new National Family Health Survey was released in 2025, several analyses drawing on existing government datasets offered a sharper view of how gendered vulnerabilities continue to shape life across India. Together, they revealed intersecting concerns around violence, discrimination, health access, and climate risk.

Demographic reviews and expert commentary drew renewed attention to India’s skewed sex ratio at birth, particularly in states where enforcement of the PCPNDT Act remains inconsistent. This concern was echoed in a 2025 investigation by the Population Foundation of India, which found illegal sex-determination networks still operating despite legal prohibitions.

Across the landscape of safety, multiple 2025 reports pointed to sustained levels of gender-based violence both offline and online. The latest National Crime Records Bureau data continued to show high levels of domestic violence, sexual offences, and dowry-related crimes across several states. Even as new annual figures are awaited, these patterns remain central to public debate.

A 2025 UNFPA study added further dimension, examining harms linked to marriage and dowry practices and highlighting persistent coercion, financial pressure, and violence—especially affecting young married women.

Climate-linked inequalities further compounded these vulnerabilities. An assessment by the World Bank and climate researchers showed that climate-related displacement disproportionately affects women and girls, intensifying risks around housing, food insecurity, early marriage, and violence in drought- and flood-prone districts.

Amid these challenges, some states offered pathways forward. Kerala’s introduction of a queer-inclusive public-health framework in 2025—led by the state health department—showed how targeted state policy can expand access for marginalised gender identities and begin closing long-standing gaps.

Representation and legal reform

Government and civil society analyses throughout 2025 pointed to steady but uneven progress in women’s representation. Parliamentary data showed that women make up roughly 15% of the Lok Sabha—far below global averages—even as local-body representation remains stronger due to reservation mandates. 

The year also saw important legal reforms, such as Karnataka’s 2025 anti-Devadasi legislation, which addressed the exploitation of Dalit and marginalised women and girls. The new law strengthened penalties, expanded rehabilitation support, and aimed to close loopholes that had allowed the practice to persist despite earlier bans.

At the national level, India’s proposed labour codes remained a major point of debate. Analyses highlighted provisions expected to improve women’s workforce participation if implemented well. 

These included stronger workplace-safety norms, formalisation pathways, more work-from-home options, and clearer employer obligations. These reforms surfaced alongside ongoing discussions on workplace safety, sexual harassment redressal, and the need for more robust compliance with existing frameworks such as the POSH Act—themes that were reflected in multiple industry and policy reviews covered in 2025.

Additionally, growing visibility of women in traditionally male-dominated roles prompted calls for regulatory attention to safe transport, sanitation, and night-shift protocols—areas flagged by both labour experts and gender rights groups as essential to sustaining women’s participation.