Background

The lack of education opportunities for women in India is a pervasive structural issue that exacerbates their economic vulnerability, depriving them of nurturing their sense of self as well as developing vital skills, and therefore condemns them to a life of socioeconomic dependence. 

Not only is women’s participation in the workforce low, but studies have evaluated that the female participation rate in India has been on a constant decline. The downward curve records a lowering of women’s participation in the workforce from about 32% in 2005 to about 19% in 2021. This is worrying, especially because India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and is expected to expand into the world’s third-largest growing economy by 2030. Despite this growth, the lack of women's participation in the workforce is deeply worrying, because it excludes them from receiving the several benefits that workers in a growing economy enjoy. Further, most Indian women are employed in the informal sector: data collected by the World Bank estimates that only 1 in 5 Indian women work formally.

Therefore, it is imperative to increase employment opportunities for women in order to ensure their social and financial independence as an indispensable way of ensuring their agency and autonomy. Until we can overhaul the education landscape in the country and increase access to education opportunities for women to allow them to seek high-paying jobs at par with men, we need to develop innovative strategies geared towards the professional inclusion of women from underprivileged communities into the workforce by focussing on increasing upskilling their capabilities as well as foregrounding equitable hiring practices.

Realizing that financial liberation is a prerequisite to their social autonomy, Project Open India was founded with the objective of facilitating the economic empowerment of women by making them aware of existing economic prospects as well as by focusing on their skill development in order to ensure the well-being and independence of women from underserved communities.