The Quick Read
- Women accounted for 28.56% of the 9.99 million first-time employees registered under PM-VBRY, while men accounted for 71.41%. That leaves women well below one-third of the intake.
- PM-VBRY is meant to encourage formal job creation and support first-time workers entering the EPFO system. Under Part A, eligible first-time employees can receive an incentive of up to ₹15,000, while Part B incentivises employers for sustained additional hiring.
- The headline number is troubling, but it does not tell us how many women applied, how many were aware of the scheme, how many were eligible, or where they dropped out.
- If India wants more women in formal work, it needs to study the pipeline, not just the final count. Awareness, access, safety, digital processes, sector mix, and the nature of work all deserve closer scrutiny.
PM-VBRY first-time employees and the gender gap
The numbers from PM-VBRY first-time employees tell an uncomfortable story. Women make up less than a third of the first-time workers entering India’s formal workforce through a scheme that is supposed to widen formal employment and strengthen social security.
At one level, the headline is simple enough. Out of 9.99 million first-time employees registered under the Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana, only 2.85 million are women. Men account for 7.14 million. There are also small numbers under the transgender and “Others” categories. The imbalance is hard to ignore.
But if we stop at that headline, we will miss the real policy question. The more useful question is not only how many women made it in, but how many women tried, and where the system lost them. That is where this story becomes bigger than a scheme.
What is the PM-VBRY Scheme?
PM-VBRY, according to the official scheme architecture, is part of the government’s employment-linked incentive approach. It is designed to generate jobs, improve employability and promote formalisation.
The scheme has two parts: one supports first-time employees, while the other encourages employers to create and sustain additional employment. The government’s own public material says it wants to connect young workers and employers more tightly to the formal labour market.
That ambition is welcome. India needs more formal jobs, and women need far greater access to them. Yet a number like 28.56% tells us that the entry gate is still not opening equally.
Why are women lagging in the numbers of PM-VBRY first-time employees?
It would be easy to jump to a lazy conclusion and say women are not applying. That would be premature. The public number tells us who got registered as first-time employees. It does not, by itself, tell us how many women heard about the scheme, how many considered applying, how many met the conditions, how many were hired into eligible roles, or how many got filtered out somewhere along the way.
That missing chain is the real story.
One possibility is awareness.
Schemes often exist loudly on paper and quietly on the ground. If information is not travelling properly to women in colleges, training institutes, industrial clusters, smaller towns, employment exchanges, self-help group networks, and first-generation job seekers, then a policy can remain technically available while being socially invisible.
Another possibility is the nature of the jobs themselves.
Formal employment is not a single category. It is shaped by sector, location, shift timing, safety conditions, travel distance, wage expectations, and family approval. If a large share of first-time formal jobs is emerging in work environments that feel inaccessible to women, then the number will naturally skew male.
That is not theoretical. Change in Content has already looked at how women workers are still more likely to remain in informal employment, even as workforce participation improves. Many women do work. They are simply less likely to be in stable, protected, formal jobs.
Then comes the education-to-employment gap.
India is producing more educated young women, but education does not automatically convert into work. We have seen this earlier in our analysis of the education-to-employment gap for women. Degrees rise. Aspirations rise. Formal job outcomes do not rise at the same speed. Between the classroom and the first payslip, too many women disappear from the labour pipeline.
There is also a mobility and infrastructure angle.
A woman may be qualified and willing, but still blocked by poor transport, long commutes, unsafe routes, family restrictions, or shift timings that do not feel workable. Our reporting on night shift policies for women has already shown how “equal opportunity” becomes hollow when safety and actual usability are left vague.
We should also not ignore digital friction.
A scheme linked to formal registration, banking, Aadhaar seeding, portal-based processes, employer compliance and documentation may feel routine to urban, already-networked candidates. For first-time entrants, particularly women from smaller towns or vulnerable backgrounds, every extra procedural step can become a barrier. Not always a dramatic one. Often just enough to push someone out of the queue.
And then there is the labour market itself.
The latest quarterly labour data has repeatedly shown that young women continue to face the hardest employment shocks. In our analysis of PLFS data for Q1 2026, young women emerged as the most pressured group across participation and unemployment. That context matters here. A scheme cannot solve a structural problem if the ecosystem around it remains unequal.
So what should happen next?
First, the government should publish a gender-disaggregated pipeline view of PM-VBRY. Not just final first-time employee registrations. The country needs to know:
- How many women were reached through awareness drives
- How many attempted registration or entered the process
- How many were found eligible
- How many were hired into eligible roles
- How many completed the steps needed for payment and retention
- Where the drop-offs were highest, by state, sector and age group
Without that, we are arguing from the last number on the page.
Second, the scheme needs a women-specific outreach design. If women are underrepresented in the final beneficiary pool, the response cannot be generic communication. It has to be targeted communication. Colleges, ITIs, skilling centres, women’s hostels, self-help groups, industrial training networks, and urban employment missions should all be part of the information chain.
Third, this is a reminder that formal employment is not created by incentive alone. Conditions around the job shape it. Safe mobility, predictable shifts, decent work environments, transparent hiring, onboarding support, and strong employer participation all influence whether women enter and stay.
Fourth, we need better state-level diagnosis. A low female share in one state may be an awareness issue. In another, it may be industrial mix. Elsewhere, it may be safety, low labour demand, cultural norms, or weak placement pipelines. One national percentage cannot explain all local realities.
There is a positive way to read this story as well.
The gap is not proof that women lack ambition. It is proof that India still has work to do in converting women’s ambition into formal economic participation. Policies such as PM-VBRY are useful. They create a framework. But frameworks do not complete themselves. They need feedback, adaptation, measurement and pressure.
The Change in Content Perspective
PM-VBRY should not be judged only by how many jobs it incentivises. It should also be judged by who gets left out of those jobs.
Women making up less than a third of first-time employees is not a small side note in the data. It is a warning light. At the same time, the honest response is not to treat that number as the whole story. Public policy becomes stronger when it asks better questions.
In this case, the better question is clear.
- If fewer women are reaching formal employment through PM-VBRY, where exactly is the break happening?
- Is it awareness?
- Is it eligibility?
- Is it hiring bias?
- Is it shift structure?
- Is it documentation?
- Is it geography?
- Is it safety?
- Is it the nature of the jobs on offer?
Until those answers are tracked properly, India’s formal employment story will remain incomplete. And if Viksit Bharat is serious about women’s economic participation, incomplete is no longer good enough.
Editorial Note and Disclaimer
This Policy Pulse article is based on official scheme documents, publicly available parliamentary material, and labour-market context relevant to women’s formal employment in India. The article is intended for editorial and informational purposes only. Some questions raised here, especially around applications and drop-off points, reflect Change in Content’s analysis and policy interpretation rather than official government findings.
Sources
- EPFO/Ministry of Labour & Employment: About Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana
Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2471: Review and Implementation of PM-VBRY (03 August 2026) - Press Information Bureau: Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rojgar Yojana (01 August 2026)
- Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation: Periodic Labour Force Survey resources
