The paradox, on one hand, of the growing Indian economy, and on the other of the abysmally low labour force participation rates (LFPR) and workforce participation rates (WPR), especially among women, has been a matter of extensive debate and discussion. Even within the country, states like Meghalaya stand out in the sense that it has traditionally performed very well in terms of female LFPR and WPR, a part of which may be attributed to their being a matrilineal society. However, between the years 2018–2019 and 2019–2020, a downturn was observed in the case of Meghalaya, where the female WPR numbers went down despite the nation’s figures going up. Extraction of unit level data from Periodic Labour Force Survey 2018–2019 and 2019–2020 was carried out and an attempt was made in this article to analyse the employment situation in terms of sector (rural/urban), gender (male/female), the employment status (regular/self-employed/casual), industrial classification (agriculture/industry/services), occupational categories and their geographical distribution (districts). Further, logistic regression analysis along with the Wald test was performed to try and throw light on the extent to of various socio-economic variables on the likelihood of rural Meghalaya women participating in the workforce.
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