Women Workers and Employment Guarantee in Urban Rajasthan

This paper examines women workers’ participation in the Indira Gandhi Rozgar GuaranteeYojana–Urban (IRGY), a public works program introduced in 2022 in Rajasthan as one of therecent experiments with employment guarantee schemes in urban India. The study reveals thatwomen demonstrate significantly higher interest and participation in IRGY than men, especiallythose engaged in housework/ casual wage work. A central benefit of IRGY for women lies in itsrole in easing their entry or return to the labor market through flexible and locally availableemployment provided by the government. In a context where female labor force participation hashistorically remained low, the paper shows how access to public employment can facilitatewomen’s participation in the labour force, expanding the pool of working women, not justredistributing work among those already employed, making IRGY a novel intervention in urbanemployment policy.