Women, Work, and the Durability Imperative
Women learners engaged in a Generation-led skills training cohort in Kerala, India
Building Sustainable Futures for Women in India’s Workforce
Sharmila’s journey began in Garulia, West Bengal, India, with a simple yet powerful resolve: to support her family after finishing high school. But the onset of the pandemic and lack of formal training turned that dream into a distant hope, until she discovered Generation India Foundation’s Food & Beverage Associate program in 2020. Through rigorous training, Sharmila gained not just skills, but confidence to pursue her goals. Today, she works at VRO Hospitality, breaking barriers as the only woman on her shift. Her employer provides her a travel allowance to take safe transportation to and from the job, an oft-cited barrier to work for women. Financially independent, Sharmila now dreams of opening her own restaurant.
Sharmila’s story is inspiring, but it also underscores a sobering truth. For millions of women, such opportunities remain rare. The numbers speak volumes: globally, only 46.4% of working-age women were employed in 2024, compared to 69.5% of men (ILO, 2025). In India, although the female workforce participation rate has risen in recent months-from 30.2% in June 2025 to 32.4% in October 2025 (PLFS)—a substantial gender gap persists, with male participation at around 75%. Behind these statistics lie untapped potential, unrealized ambitions, and a question we must all confront: What will it take to make stories like Sharmila’s the norm, not the exception?
Beyond access, the challenge extends far beyond simply getting women into jobs. Once in the workforce, women globally earn seventy-eight cents for every dollar earned by men (ILO, 2025). In India, while progress has been made, wage disparities persist, with women earning 40 paisa for every rupee earned by men, a 60% gap according to the World Economic Forum’s 2024 report.
Perhaps most troubling is what we don’t know. When researchers examine gender-specific attrition rates, reliable data sources are virtually nonexistent. While sector-specific studies and corporate data provide some insights into women’s career progression, comprehensive longitudinal data tracking women’s advancement across India’s diverse workforce remains limited, creating gaps in understanding women’s career trajectories at a national scale.
This data deficit is particularly significant given India’s demographic reality: an estimated 520 million women over 14 are legally eligible to work (Data For India, 2024). While India’s new draft Skills Policy focuses on women-led development, the opportunity for systematic intervention remains vast. The untapped economic impact of engaging this demographic talent pool needs more attention from all key stakeholders.
In our work at Generation, a global nonprofit whose mission is to support adults of all ages to achieve economic mobility through employment, we intentionally support and track our women alumni’s journey. We train and place our graduates into meaningful careers that would otherwise be inaccessible by anchoring on a proven seven-step methodology, where we mobilize jobs, recruit learners, deliver profession-specific training, provide mentorship, match graduates with employers, and measure our return on investment for learners, businesses, and society.
At Generation, we measure outcomes on three levels: breadth, depth, and durability. Breadth and depth provide essential snapshots of program reach and short-term effectiveness, while durability represents the ultimate test of a program’s value, whether graduates build lasting careers and economic mobility.
Since 2015, Generation has served over 143,000 graduates, 53% of whom are women. These graduates have been hired by more than 21,000 employers across 45 professions in 17 countries. When learners join Generation, 90% are unemployed. Six months after graduation, 83% are employed, and 88% of those employed work in jobs directly related to their training.
Durability goes beyond initial placement, measuring sustained employment, income progression, and well-being over time. Two to five years after graduation, 76% of Generation global alumni remain employed, and 73% of those employed earn above a living wage, approximately 40% higher than the minimum wage. Our analysis shows that alumni earn nine times more income over five years than they would have in their baseline situation, delivering a seven-fold return on investment compared to counterfactuals.
Traditional workforce programs often focus on training completion and immediate placement rates, but these metrics fail to capture the full picture. Without durability, we risk celebrating short-lived wins while overlooking graduates who struggle to maintain employment or advance professionally. Durability metrics reveal whether skills training creates lasting change or merely temporary relief.
This understanding is why Generation’s recent alumni survey is so significant. We track learners two to five years after training to assess employment and career growth, financial health, well-being, and community engagement. In our most recent survey of Indian graduates from 2020 to 2023, the findings reveal the true impact of our work. Nearly 73% of alumni remained engaged in paid work years after completing their program. Among those who continued working, most held high-quality jobs across multiple sectors, and more than 51% advanced to intermediate or managerial roles. Financial outcomes were equally compelling: 60% employed alumni earn living wages, and more than 80% report being able to meet daily needs, a fundamental shift from the economic uncertainty they faced before training.
From a gender perspective, durability outcomes are critical. While the gender wage gap among employed alumni is just 11%, far below the national average, women still face significant barriers to sustaining employment. These include caregiving responsibilities, workplace discrimination, and limited access to career advancement. A program may successfully place female graduates in initial roles, but without measuring long-term retention and progression, we cannot assess whether it truly addresses systemic challenges. Our durability lens revealed a troubling divergence in India: while only 17% of men left the workforce, this number was as high as 45% for women alumni. Most women who left did so within one to three years of completing training, suggesting that for many, the benefits of training were short-lived. When asked why, nearly half cited caregiving responsibilities, while men most often cited higher education. These differences reflect deeply embedded social norms that assign caregiving duties disproportionately to women.
Durability measurement makes these insights actionable. When we asked women who left the workforce if they wanted to return, one in three said yes, provided they had the right support, such as remote work options, affordable childcare, and family assistance with household responsibilities. Based on these findings, Generation is exploring targeted interventions, including return-to-work placements, connections to childcare services, and mentorship and mindset training to address family expectations and cultural pressures.
Durability metrics force us to ask harder questions and pursue better answers. They reveal not just whether programs work, but for whom they work, how long they work, and where they fail. They uncover hidden disparities, like the gender gap in workforce retention, that traditional metrics overlook. Most importantly, they give us the insights to transform skills training from a short-term intervention into a lifelong advantage.
If we stop at placement rates, we risk mistaking temporary progress for lasting change. But when we measure durability, we hold ourselves accountable for what truly matters: helping people build careers that endure, incomes that grow, and lives that thrive. For the nonprofit sector, measuring durability is not optional, it is imperative. Because if we are not measuring durability, we are not measuring impact. And if we are not measuring impact, we are not solving the problem at scale.
Co-authored by Nandita Sebastian and Shalini Dwivedi