More recently, India’s low female labour force participation has been linked to demand-side problems in the labour market. Concerns about the scarcity of formal jobs and gender-based discrimination in hiring and wages are recognised issues in policy debates. Yet a persistent empirical puzzle is complicating this account: many urban young women complete secondary education and a substantial share even enter higher education, yet they do not transition into sustained labour market participation.
If labour-demand constraints were the main barrier, participation among educated women in metropolitan settings would be markedly higher where jobs are not scarce, even though gender discrimination may persist. The fact that participation remains low points to a constraint that operates at a younger age, before women encounter the labour market at all.
The puzzle is not simply why women do not work, but how preparation for paid work is structured – or left unstructured – during the school-to-work transition.
Career Formation as an Overlooked Policy Lever
One upstream margin receives little policy attention: the formation of career plans. By this, we mean the process through which young people reflect on their interests and strengths, gain exposure to possible occupations, understand educational and training pathways, and translate these into concrete post-school plans.
Policy typically treats this as a “soft” intervention – peripheral to the “hard” investments of schooling, skilling, and job creation. Career guidance is often reduced to sporadic counselling sessions or optional workshops, rather than systematically embedded within education systems.
Yet career formation shapes how human capital is allocated before individuals ever reach the labour market. Without structured exposure and planning, education can remain inert – completed but not converted into actionable transitions. In this sense, career formation is about structuring choices at a critical juncture.
Testing Career Formation at a Critical Transition Point
The question of whether structured career exploration can shape how young women plan their transition out of school was examined through a school-level randomized controlled trial conducted with approximately 6000 grade 12 students, primarily female, across 45 low-cost senior secondary schools in a large North Indian city. Students from 22 randomly selected schools were exposed to a classroom-based career exploration program delivered during regular school hours, designed and implemented by Alohomora Education Foundation.
Students received roughly ten hours of structured engagement facilitated by slightly older young adults of the same gender, typically from similar socio-economic backgrounds and already enrolled in tertiary education. The program combined in-class discussions and exercises with a digital platform offering career videos, quizzes, and reflection exercises.
The timing mattered. Grade 12 represents a critical transition point, when students must decide whether to sit for entrance examinations, pursue further training, or exit formal education altogether. For many young women, this moment quietly determines whether the pathway to paid work remains open or closes.
What Changed – and What Did Not
The results point to a specific shift in behaviour. Students exposed to the program were more likely to plan to take entrance examinations for higher education and to report that their career choices would be guided by their own interests rather than other factors such as salary, distance, or external pressures. Students were also more likely to know which occupation they want to work in in the future, to feel confident about achieving their career objective, and to tell their parents about it. These effects were strongest among students who attended at least ten of the fifteen classroom sessions.
Importantly, several outcomes did not change. Students’ stated desire to work in the future remained largely unaffected, in part because aspirations to work were already high. Broader measures of self-efficacy and control also showed limited movement.
This distinction is central. The intervention did not create ambition where none existed. Instead, it altered how students translated existing aspirations into concrete plans. The evidence challenges the notion that low female labour force participation reflects low aspirations. Rather, the constraint lies not in wanting to work, but in navigating viable pathways from school to work.
However, follow-up data collected approximately one year after the intervention show that these shifts in planning did not (yet) translate into measurable changes in enrolment, entrance exam completion, or labour market participation.
How a Modest Intervention Shifted Planning
Understanding why a low-cost, short-term intervention produced these effects requires looking beyond motivation. The most dominant channel was improved information. Students gained knowledge of career options, educational requirements, and the sequence of steps required to pursue them.
The second-most relevant mechanism was the role of facilitators as relatable role models. As facilitators were only a few years older and from similar communities, they embodied transitions that felt attainable rather than abstract. Their credibility did not stem from professional credentials but from their proximity and lived experience.
Notably, peer effects and raising aspirations for education levels or future earnings played a smaller role than might be expected. The intervention’s effectiveness lay less in inspiring students and more in structuring exposure and guidance. This has implications for how career support is designed in resource-constrained education systems.
Institutional Implications for Education and Skill Policy
These findings carry important institutional implications.
First, career formation should be treated as part of education and skill policy, not as an auxiliary service. Investments in schooling and skilling presume that students can identify and navigate pathways aligned with their interests and capabilities. When that assumption fails, education risks remaining inert – completed but not translated into actionable transitions – leading to misallocation of human capital.
Second, scalable design matters. Professional career counselling, while valuable, is difficult to expand across public school systems serving low-income communities. The classroom-embedded, facilitator-led model tested here offers a low-cost alternative that can be integrated into existing institutional structures without substantial new infrastructure.
Third, such interventions complement rather than substitute for labour demand policies. They do not create jobs or dismantle structural barriers. But by expanding perceived mobility and credible options, information can alter planning even where gender norms remain binding – creating a necessary, if insufficient, condition for later behavioural change.
However, policy actions should be cautious. Career exploration alone cannot resolve India’s female labour challenge. Rigid gender norms, labour demand conditions, safety concerns, childcare burdens, and discriminatory norms remain binding constraints. The effects observed are meaningful but limited. They should be understood as one component of a broader policy ecosystem, not as a standalone solution.
Reframing the School-to-Work Transition
The National Education Policy and related skill frameworks increasingly emphasise flexibility, vocational exposure, and expanded training capacity. Yet the transition out of secondary school remains weakly institutionalised and highly dependent on what individual schools provide and the family background. College admissions are increasingly complex and costly, with fragmented processes and mandatory multi-day entrance exams even for undergraduate courses. Students are often left to navigate high-stakes choices with limited structured guidance.
The evidence suggests that even modest, well-designed interventions at this juncture can shape how young women plan their futures. At scale, small shifts in entrance exam participation or interest-aligned career selection can accumulate into significant labour market consequences. Without complementary institutional support, including post-school guidance, parental engagement, and financial and logistical support, improved planning may not translate into continued skill formation and actual labour market entry.
If the objective is to unlock women’s economic participation, policy must look beyond job creation and skill supply alone. It must also engage with the moment where aspirations meet information and become plans. Career exploration, embedded systematically within schools, is not a soft add-on. It is part of the institutional architecture through which a society allocates its human capital – and decides whose potential is realised.