In Sri Lanka today, fewer than three in 10 women are part of the labour force, compared to two-thirds of men. This gap is not just a statistic; it is a story of untapped potential, of households balancing survival, and of an economy missing half its strength. On Kaleidoscope, Peradeniya University Chair Professor of Economics, Research Fellow with the Partnership for Economic Policy, and the author of a study on Female Labour Force Participation (FLFP) conducted for the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Dileni Gunewardena discussed the reasons, challenges, and probable solutions for the low FLFP in Sri Lanka.
Following are excerpts of the interview:
What explains the steady decline in FLFP from 34.6 per cent in 2014 to now 29.8 per cent in 2024?
It’s been declining and there’ve been fluctuations. But, the even larger puzzle is why it's never, since the 2000s, in the last 25 years, reached higher than 36.6 per cent, whereas in the 1990s, the low was 35 per cent. So, what's causing this? There are three things. One is demographic shifts. Younger people are staying in school longer, especially girls. Then there's structural shifts. People are moving out of agriculture and that's reducing, especially among older women’s FLFP. But, the most important thing seems to be income shifts in households, where they can afford for the woman not to work.
Do you think that cultural expectations, and also the lack of childcare and eldercare infrastructure, are the biggest obstacles preventing women from getting into the labour force?
Absolutely. Childcare is the largest measurable determinant of FLFP. If you have, for example, a child under six, your likelihood of entering the labour force is going to reduce by 54 per cent to 67 per cent.
Is this because people think that women should stay at home and look after the child? Or, is it because there are no other options?
We actually don't know. I’m conducting a field survey at the moment with Verité Research, looking at mapping the care economy, trying to find out what people actually do for childcare, eldercare, and care for persons with disabilities. But, apart from the Time Use Survey of 2017, we really don't have much information as to what's keeping women out of the labour force when it comes to care.
What about employers in general? Why does female unemployment consistently remain almost double that of men, and what are hiring practices like?
Jobs are still gendered. There are women's jobs and men's jobs for the vast majority of the people. That works on both the demand side and the supply side. From the employer's point of view, they're biased about hiring women because, what's the point in training them? They're going to leave and have kids. From the woman's point of view, especially women who are getting more educated, they want something that's in the formal sector. So, they won't just take any job. They're waiting for a good job. And so, that leads to higher unemployment on their side.
There are always, or most of the time, more women than men in the university system. Why do women with General Certificate of Education Advanced Level and above face such large-scale unemployment?
It's crazy, but, it's interesting. Higher education is really the best bet if you want a good job. It increases your likelihood of getting a Government job by 53 per cent. It also increases your likelihood of getting a private sector job by a fairly high probability. Basically, it's a good way out of inactivity. But, it also increases the likelihood of being unemployed by 53 per cent. So, it's partly that women get a degree and then wait for a good job to come along.
Youth unemployment is hovering around 20 per cent. How does this intersect with gender, especially for young women wanting to join the labour force?
Youth unemployment is really quite high for women for similar reasons. There are women coming out of school who are waiting for good jobs. Because they don't have any experience and so on, they're not likely to get a job immediately. So, for that type of woman, having good skills, particularly computer skills, is going to help them get a job. But, because they don't take just any job, they're going to be unemployed.
What's the impact that the pandemic had on women, when it pushed them out of full-time work?
Because of the types of jobs that women are in, especially in the export sector, global shocks and global shifts impact them quite a bit. We've seen not just the pandemic, but also the economic crisis after that. Globally, things that happened in 2024 meant that exports shrank and female employment shrank. In 2025), we've seen a pickup, but, that's again because, in the first part of 2025, there was a pickup in the global economy. So, women are quite susceptible to global changes.
he services sector is expanding; the agriculture sector is declining. How are women positioned in these shifting sectors?
Again, women who are staying in school, getting educated and being able to do service sector jobs is great. But, women in agriculture, unskilled work, and unskilled manufacturing are still a large part of FLFP. Obviously, they're women who need to work, and that's why they're working.
How much of women's economic contribution is actually hidden in informal or unpaid work? And do you think that policy needs to account for this?
We do capture informal work; the Labour Force Survey conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) captures this very well. In fact, there was a combined International Labour Organisation–World Bank study which found that the DCS instrument and the DCS way of asking questions actually captured informal work better than their initial questionnaire. There is a misperception that we are not capturing informal work in our surveys. What we aren’t thinking enough about is the fact that unpaid work is also work. In 2017, the DCS did a Time Use Survey which calculated how much women were engaged in unpaid work. They found that the average woman spent 4.1 hours a day more than men on unpaid work. That's cooking, cleaning, childcare, eldercare, all the work. If you calculate how much that works out to per year, and then divide the number of hours by a working day, because if you consider it a job, you actually find that it works out to 187 working days per year, which is something like eight-and-a-half months. You can understand why FLFP is low, because women already have an almost full-time unpaid job.
If women don't do the unpaid care work, who is going to do it? And how do we translate that work into actual money?
Actually, Verité Research and I did a valuation of this. We looked at what the replacement would be if women didn't do this work, and how much that replacement would cost. We took fairly modest replacements. So, for example, a domestic cleaner for cleaning, maybe a Montessori teacher for childcare, etc.
The value of all unpaid work in the economy, men and women together, came to about 14 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Women contributed about 12 per cent and men contributed about 2 per cent. So, it's almost a complete reversal of how men and women contribute to measured GDP. The value is about 14 per cent of the GDP, which is larger than the contribution of agriculture. So, it's really a sector in itself.
The Government has programmes, microfinance initiatives, maternity benefits, etc. – are these adequate to boost female participation in the workforce?
Not really. And sometimes, these policies can actually be counterproductive. For example, we have long-duration maternity leave and virtually no paternity leave, or just three days of paternity leave. That's a huge incentive for employers not to hire women because they're automatically more expensive. And because maternity leave is generous, women are also more likely to take it and then leave the labour force. We need things like paternity leave, which some large private-sector firms that can afford it have already introduced.
We should also consider that the Government should bear some of these costs because childcare is really about raising the future workforce. If that's considered important, then the Government should, in some manner, be sharing the responsibility.
If FLFP stagnates for another eight years, what long-term consequences is Sri Lanka going to see from the point of view of growth and social resilience?
From the point of view of growth, we have to take into account that we have an ageing population, which means that the workforce is also ageing. Currently, you have what's called the sandwich generation. Women are looking after both children and older relatives.
In my survey, although it's still in the early stages, we're finding a much larger number of households than expected engaged in sandwich care. Sometimes, there's a 104-year-old uncle or grand-uncle being looked after by a young woman, with a little help from her mother, while she also has toddlers and a baby. You cannot expect that kind of burden to continue indefinitely.
What we really have to do is think about women the way that we think about men. Not forgetting the gender aspect, but asking: if we want women in the workforce, what's preventing them from being there, and how can we provide the support that they need?
Employers have to think that way too. Childcare infrastructure is not a private household matter. It's social infrastructure, just like electricity, roads, and bridges. If we don't build that infrastructure, we're going to be in for a big shock.
The writer is the host, director, and co-producer of the weekly digital programme ‘Kaleidoscope with Savithri Rodrigo’ which can be viewed on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. She has over three decades of experience in print, electronic, and social media
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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the interviewee, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication