[es09]

The statistic that stood out for me was the drop in the fraction of labor that are women. This is also true for China in the last couple of decades, admittedly from a much higher level.

Anecdotally, I hear from business people in India that hiring is very tough at all levels and there are simply not enough qualified people available. How does that square with declining participation of women? Perhaps the increased wealth is making all of the labor in the lower rung drop out of bad jobs? Is this statistic reliable to begin with?

This wasn't really a focus of this article but I wish it was.

[rdudekul]

That statistic may not be accurate, as more and more women have been entering workforce for the past 2 decades in India. However most such jobs, such as working as a maid or cook at some one else's house, may not be documented and hence probably doesn't figure into the statistic.

[verroq]

Is it supposed to be the percentage of women in the workforce or the percentage of the workforce that are women?

[es09]

Good point. It's the fraction of women that are in the labor force - http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS