Structural reforms, care insurance systems crucial to reverse Sri Lanka’s declining female labour force anomaly

•  Island nation’s female workforce participation contracts from 45% in 1990 to around 32% by 2025
• Experts urge adoption of East Asian care insurance models and Canadian employment equity frameworks 
• Local recovery strategy pivots toward targeted public services, transport safety and financing access

Prof. Ito Peng

Shannon Cowlin PIC BY PRADEEP PATHIRANA

By Nishel Fernando 

Addressing Sri Lanka’s persistently low female labour force participation requires an aggressive shift towards structural macroeconomic transformation and comprehensive institutional care systems, according to development experts.

Despite decades of high educational attainment among women, Sri Lanka’s female workforce participation has experienced a unique and troubling contraction, falling from approximately 45 percent in 1990 to an estimated 31 percent to 32 percent by 2025. 

This downward trajectory places the island nation among the lowest in South Asia and leaves it ranking 130th, out of 148 countries, in the global gender equality indices. The economists stress that reversing this trend is no longer just a social equity objective but a core economic imperative necessary to sustain long-term growth and alleviate poverty.

University of Toronto Professor of Sociology and Public Policy Ito Peng, delivering the keynote virtually at the ADB Serendipity Knowledge Programme held in Colombo yesterday, highlighted that the East Asian economic comparators successfully reversed similar contractions by implementing robust, state-backed care systems and stringent employment frameworks.

“I think there are a couple of important factors or reasons that made the increases in female labour force participation in Canada, Japan and South Korea possible,” Prof. Peng noted.

“The first is public and government recognition of care responsibilities and unpaid care work that’s been done by women in these countries and by recognising those, these countries’ governments have actively implemented active policies to reduce women’s unpaid care work.” Japan initiated structural work-family harmonisation policies in 1992, rolling out expanded parental leaves and heavily subsidised public childcare. To counter a rapidly aging population, Tokyo later established a universal long-term care insurance system in 2000, modelled after Germany’s pioneering 1995 framework.

Similarly, South Korea confronted a historic fertility collapse, with total fertility rates dropping below 1.0, by expanding affordable public childcare in the early 2000s and mandating a public long-term care insurance system in 2006, systematically absorbing the domestic care burdens that historically isolate women from the formal economy.

Beyond care infrastructure, legislative tools addressing employer bias and systemic wage disparities are deemed vital. 

Prof. Peng pointed to Canada’s introduction of the Employment Equity Act in the 1980s, alongside strict “equal wage for work of equal value” regulations in provinces like Ontario, which “tried to equalise the wages of work that are mainly done by women... and those done by men... by trying to—arguing that these work are work of equal values and therefore we need to provide an equal wage for work of equal values”. 

These legislative mechanisms legally compelled the corporate entities to eliminate hiring barriers and equalise compensation between traditionally female-dominated care sectors and male-dominated industries like construction. 

Japan and South Korea enacted parallel baseline protections through their respective Equal Employment Opportunity Acts, proving that legally binding corporate accountability is required to shift employer behaviour and build equitable labour markets.

“Having policies and regulations like these are important because it commits employers, not just the governments but employers to work in coordinating with each other to support coordinating with the government to support women’s employment and to ensure gender equality,” she added.

“Improving women’s labour force participation requires more than isolated policy interventions. It calls for structural transformation, investments in infrastructure and services, progressive workplace practices and a broader societal shift.”

Underscoring the local context at the forum, ADB Country Director Shannon Cowlin mapped out the severe, multi-dimensional barriers currently dampening the female economic contributions in Sri Lanka. 

A joint study initiated by the National Planning Department revealed that a significant portion of the female workforce remains cornered in highly insecure, informal and low-paid jobs with virtually no upward mobility.

Entrenched socio-cultural expectations continue to delegate primary household caregiving to women, a challenge severely worsened by a country-wide deficit in affordable, institutional childcare. Furthermore, local women suffer from unequal access to digital technologies, unsafe working environments, workplace harassment and unreliable public transport options, factors that heavily restrict safe mobility, particularly across the rural provinces.

To counter these deeply rooted liabilities, Sri Lanka’s economic recovery strategy is pivoting toward targeted institutional support, under the ADB Country Partnership Strategy, spanning 2024 to 2028. 

The present domestic focus is centred on expanding public services and structural infrastructure designed to directly unlock female economic agency. The state and development programmes are prioritising the rollout of specialised vocational skills training, targeted educational programmes and expanded access to credit and finance to catalyse female-led entrepreneurship.

Additionally, the upgrading of safe public transport systems, modernisation of workplace infrastructure and fortification of robust social protection frameworks are being positioned as critical moves to safely transition women into the formal macroeconomic grid.