When 41-year-old Nisha Kotwal was a resident trainee doctor in India’s Maharashtra state 14 years ago, her parents would call her before every shift to ask if she had reached the hospital safely.

“Telling my parents that I have reached the hospital is how they knew I was safe,” the obstetrician and gynecologist said.

Over a decade later, entrenched sexism still persists in India, and economic experts warn that the country will need to tackle the problem to achieve its economic goals.

This month, the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor in a medical college in Kolkata left women fearing for their safety, and compelled the nation’s Supreme Court to establish a national taskforce of doctors to make suggestions on how to better ensure protections for women in the workplace.

In 2023, the labor force participation rate among women was 33% in India, up from 27% a decade prior. While that figure has been trending up incrementally, the country is still far behind the U.S., 56.5%, China, 60.5% Japan, 54.9%, and Germany, 56.5, the four economies India is trailing behind.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ambitious aims to make India a $5 trillion economy by the end of the decade, and a developed nation by 2047. Economists, however, say he’ll have trouble reaching that goal if the country doesn’t work to boost the number of women in the workforce.

“Women literacy has increased, fertility rates have gone down, urbanization is improving and the economy is growing. But these factors have [done little to increase] women’s participation in the workforce,” said Sunaina Kumar, senior fellow at Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation.

Concerns over safety

Kumar believes a lack of safety for women in public spaces has contributed to their low numbers in the workforce.

Some women are not allowed to travel far from home to attend school or training programs, proving that the fear and uncertainty of being sexually assaulted remains a big barrier, she said. “Many young women are allowed to visit nearby markets or facilities, but can’t travel from their homes because of the risk of sexual harassment.”

In a 2021 research paper, World Bank Economist Girija Borker reported on how female students in Delhi opt to attend “lower quality colleges” in order to avoid sexual harassment when traveling to and from the campus. This either meant choosing colleges near their home, or a safer route or mode of transportation. Such limitations could prevent women from clinching better careers.

“Highly skilled youth are meant to be the engine of growth over the coming years,” Eliana La Ferrara, professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School said. “But parents who have read about about the recent rape and murder incident with a highly educated woman will think ‘what good is it to invest all we have in educating our daughter if something like this will happen?'”

The trainee doctor was found dead on Aug. 9 after allegedly being brutally raped and killed by a police volunteer that had access to the seminar room she was resting in.

The incident caused a national uproar, resulting in mass protests by doctors and activists breaking out across India. The Indian Medical Association suspended non-emergency medical services for 24 hours last week.

Reversing gender norms

Social and systemic gender inequality continues to be an obstacle India needs to overcome if it wants to achieve its economic goals, according to Jayati Ghosh, economics professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“There is a deep patriarchy and misogyny within India’s society. That needs to be fixed before the country gets more developed,” Ghosh said .”The image of India becoming more developed is very false [when it comes to gender].”

According to the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Gender Gap Index, India ranks 129 out of the 146 for gender parity, behind larger economies like the U.S., 43, China, 106, Japan, 118, and Germany, 7.

“Women’s employment has two roles: To help economies develop through production, and to ensure power and negotiation within the household remains more equal,” Harvard’s La Ferrara said, elaborating that young women cannot be “kept indoors, but conditions outdoors need to change for them to circulate and function.”

Some economists are skeptical about Modi’s aim to evolve India into developed nation by 2047. But encouraging women to enter the workforce by imposing better safeguards and solutions can move the needle, gynecologist Kotwal said, and it starts with educating boys from a young age.

“India’s whole system and culture sees females as second class citizens, and this will take decades of work to change,” Kotwal said. “We need to work on improving the psychology of boys, not men. That is the tender age when they are exposed to more things that will help structure their brain.”

Ghosh argued that the government also needs to increase spending and enhance policies to support women to enter the workforce.