The female labor force participation rate (FLPR) in India has seen a declining trend since the 1990s despite strong economic growth, decline in fertility, expansion of education, and improved access to infrastructure (Klasens 2019). The FLPR is an important metric for an economy as it leads to improved and sustained growth.According to McKinsey Global Institute’s recent report, The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’s Equality in Asia-Pacific,1 more than 70% of the potential GDP opportunity comes from increasing women’s participation in the labor force by 10 percentage points. Therefore, it is important that India leverage its large female population by encouraging them to join the labor force.While most G20 economies have sustained their FLPR levels over the previous 2  decades, India’s trajectory has been the opposite. In 2021, India recorded the lowest FLPR across all G20 economies (Figure 1), showing a secular decline from 2000.  On observing historical trends, this pattern of declining FLPR can be traced back much further in India. The country recorded an FLPR of 24.1% in 1955, which increased to 33% in 1972.2 Since then, the FLPR has seen a gradual and consistent decline to about 23% 2017.3 However, this declining trend has begun to reverse, with the FLPR improving to 33% in 2021.4 On further disaggregation of the data, we find that the increase in FLPR is being primarily driven by location and industry-specific factors, such as the increasing participation of women in agriculture within the rural economy.Against this background, this policy brief seeks to address 2 questions: (1) What explains the changing trend of FLPR from 2017–2018 to 2021–2022 and (2) What explains the heterogeneity across demography and industries in India with regard to the FLPR. To answer these questions, we use the estimates of the latest round of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), conducted between July 2021 and June 2022.