The gendered cost of progress: Prof Vibhuti Patel's report on technology's impact on women in India

A new paper by Prof. Vibhuti Patel, former professor at the Advanced Centre for Women's Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and former head of the Economics Department at SNDT Women's University, examines how technology has reshaped women's work across industry, agriculture, and allied sectors in India, and argues that the gains have been sharply unequal.

Titled "Gender, Technology and Environment", the paper states that 94 percent of women workers in India are employed in the decentralised or informal sector, which offers little job security, no upward mobility, and heavy exposure to caste, class, and gender-based exploitation. It notes that in rural India, only 31 percent of the total female population was employed according to the 2001 census, reflecting large-scale unemployment and underemployment among rural women.
The paper traces how automation and semi-automated machinery have pushed women out of traditional manufacturing sectors such as textiles and jute, since industrial technologies are typically designed around an average male body and height, leaving women without adequate training or access. 

It points out that women in the southern Indian states have only recently been recruited into new industrial technology roles, largely because male workers have migrated to Gulf countries, creating a labour shortage that opened space for women. 

The paper also flags that the trade liberalisation

policy opened the Indian market from April 1, 2000, for the unrestricted import of 729 new commodities, of which 240 were agrarian products including rice, meat, milk powder, and fruits, a shift that crashed prices of rubber, cotton, coconut, coffee, cardamom, pepper, tomatoes, sugarcane, and potatoes, and triggered farmer and weaver suicides and starvation deaths.
Sector by sector, the paper documents how the shift from subsistence crops to cash crops such as fruits, mushrooms, and flowers has repeatedly displaced women first from agricultural employment, and how women in dairy, poultry, sericulture, and fisheries continue to perform the most labour-intensive tasks while men retain control over sales, storage, transport, and finances.
It cites the Bhopal gas tragedy and industrial pollution from plastics, synthetic fibre, chemical, and fertiliser industries as evidence of the occupational and environmental hazards borne disproportionately by women workers, and raises concern over the impact of nuclear radiation on women's reproductive health.

On environment and displacement, the paper draws on a 1997 statement by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which found that women suffer disproportionately from forced eviction linked to mega-development projects, citing as an example the construction of 350 flyovers in Mumbai alongside mega plants and shopping plazas that have displaced local populations.
It highlights grassroots women-led environmental movements including the greening of deserts in Rajasthan, the Appiko movement in Karnataka, the Chipko movement in Tehri Garhwal, the Junagarh movement in Gujarat, and the Narmada Bachao Andolan spanning Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat, as evidence that women's ecological knowledge can build community resilience if they are included in adaptation and mitigation planning.

The paper also addresses new reproductive technologies, describing how in-vitro fertilisation, GIFT, ZIFT, cloning, and prenatal diagnostic techniques such as amniocentesis and chorionic villus biopsy affect women's bodies, and it calls for an urgent ethical code governing commercial and altruistic surrogacy given the physical toll of assisted reproduction on women.
It concludes on a more optimistic note about digital and household technologies, noting that computers, mobile phones, internet access, ATMs, e-commerce, and smart cards used by self-help groups and rural women's banks have improved efficiency, mobility, and financial access for many women, particularly in urban and entrepreneurial contexts. Patel closes by calling on the state to prioritise reducing the digital divide, expand technical training for girls and women, and ensure that information, education, and communication policy explicitly incorporates a gender component.