White-Collar Job Openings For Women Witness 35 Per Cent Growth in February: Report

With India Inc's focus on increasing women participation in the workforce, a report has revealed that there has been an increase of 35 per cent in jobs openings for the fairer sex in the white-collar economy during February compared to the same month last year.

There is rising demand for women employees in the Indian white-collar economy as data in February 2023 revealed that there had been a 35 per cent increase in jobs for women candidates when compared to the corresponding month of 2022, a report by foundit (formerly Monster APAC and ME) revealed. Focused efforts by India Inc to increase women participation in the workforce and re-joining of many, who dropped out of work during the pandemic to become full-time caregivers, are mainly drive this growth, the report added.

To increase women's participation in the workforce, companies are introducing benefits such as menstrual leaves and childcare, introducing programmes to fight bias in the workplace, allowing flexibility at work and diversity-focused hiring, among others. The report is based on data on the fountit platform during February 2023 and February 2022.

It further revealed that the highest demand for women in the workforce is currently held by the ITES/BPO (36 per cent) industry, followed by IT/Computers-Software (35 per cent) and Banking/Accounting/Financial Services (22 per cent). In terms of geographic distribution, the highest percentage of jobs available for women was in metropolitan cities like Delhi NCR (21 per cent), Mumbai (15 per cent) and Bangalore (10 per cent), followed by cities like Chennai (9 per cent) and Pune (7 per cent), the report said.

It is also interesting to note that 6 per cent of the total women workforce on the platform are those who have taken a career break and returned to work, the report revealed. Moreover, freelance roles account for 4 per cent of the total jobs for women, indicating a rise in gig-based opportunities in the white-collar economy, it added.