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Uttar Pradesh's Workforce Shift: 16M Women Enter Dairy, Not Factories
16M new women workers in UP, nearly all in dairy and crop farming. Young women still lack salaried jobs and hostels. Next leap: non-farm infrastructure.
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Uttar Pradesh added 16 million women to its workforce between 2017 and 2025. The employment-to-population ratio for women aged 15-64 jumped from 13.8% to 33.4%. The share of women not looking for work fell from over 72% to 53%.
On the surface, that looks like a clear success. The composition of those jobs matters far more than the headline number.
Where the Jobs Went: Dairy and Crop Farming
Three-quarters of the increase went into agriculture and animal-rearing, the authors of a Mint analysis found. Dairy farming alone absorbed the biggest share. The proportion of working-age women in animal rearing climbed from 2.3% to 10.2%, more than quadrupling. Crop farming employment roughly doubled to 13% of working-age women. Together, these two segments account for about 12 million of the 16 million additional workers.
The Mint analysis stresses that the increase was not driven by unpaid work in household enterprises or by the public employment guarantee scheme. Young women did not forgo higher education to start working.
What likely triggered the shift was pandemic-era income strain. Most rural households already owned cattle, so little extra capital was needed. Extra milk that families once consumed at home could now be sold in the market. The government's White Revolution 2.0 aims to expand dairy cooperatives. That could bring many own-account workers into the organised sector and improve pricing.
Non-farm employment did rise but from a small base. Women in industry went from 1.8% to 2.9% of working-age women. Women in services climbed from 3.1% to about 7.6%. Combined, the two sectors account for about 10% of working-age women. That is a modest share of the overall increase.