Kerala Vision 2047 must decisively move beyond viewing women primarily through the lens of welfare, protection, or social indicators and instead position women as central economic producers, asset owners, and decision-makers. While Kerala has achieved high literacy and health outcomes for women, economic power remains uneven. Female workforce participation is low, asset ownership is limited, and women remain underrepresented in high-income sectors, entrepreneurship, and capital control. Vision 2047 must correct this structural imbalance by redesigning the economy to actively absorb, reward, and elevate women’s productive capacity.
The first pillar of this vision is large-scale integration of women into the formal workforce. By 2047, Kerala should target at least 55 to 60 percent female labour force participation, up from current levels that hover around 30 percent. This is not achievable through encouragement alone; it requires systemic redesign of work. Flexible but formal employment models, hybrid shifts, safe transport corridors, and employer-linked childcare infrastructure must become mandatory in sectors receiving state incentives. Public procurement should include minimum women employment thresholds, ensuring that state spending directly translates into women’s jobs.
Skill formation must be aggressively realigned. Kerala Vision 2047 should ensure that at least 50 percent of all state-sponsored skilling seats in high-growth sectors such as healthcare technology, electronics manufacturing, renewable energy, logistics, fintech operations, and AI-assisted services are reserved for women. The goal is not traditional “women’s skills” but entry into technical, supervisory, and managerial roles. By 2047, Kerala should aim for one million women trained in advanced, income-generating skills that command wages above the state median.
Entrepreneurship is the second critical lever. Kerala has strong women self-help group networks, but most remain confined to micro-activities with low margins. Vision 2047 must consciously move women from subsistence entrepreneurship to growth entrepreneurship. The state should target the creation of at least 200,000 women-owned registered enterprises by 2047, with a minimum of 25 percent operating beyond the micro level. This requires patient capital, credit guarantees, market access, and mentorship. Government-backed women enterprise funds, blended finance models, and assured procurement pipelines must replace fragmented subsidy-based approaches.
Asset ownership is where real power lies. Today, land, housing, and productive assets in Kerala remain disproportionately male-owned. Vision 2047 must aim to ensure that at least 40 percent of all new housing board allotments, industrial sheds, and commercial property leases are in women’s names, either individually or jointly. In agriculture and allied sectors, land leasing and cooperative ownership models must be redesigned to allow women to control productive land even where inheritance patterns are unequal. Economic independence cannot exist without asset control.
Women’s participation in high-income sectors must become a strategic priority. Kerala Vision 2047 should explicitly push women into domains such as port-linked logistics, aerospace components, medical devices, semiconductor assembly, maritime services, and climate-tech operations. These sectors should not replicate existing gender hierarchies. Targets for women supervisors, engineers, and plant managers must be embedded into industrial policy. By 2047, Kerala should aim for at least 30 percent women representation in technical leadership roles across public and private enterprises.
Care economy reform is essential for unlocking women’s economic time. Unpaid care work remains the invisible tax that limits women’s participation. Vision 2047 must professionalize care through public investment. Universal childcare access within a 15-minute radius of workplaces, paid eldercare services, and community health aides can convert unpaid labour into paid employment while freeing millions of women-hours annually. This is not a social expense but an economic multiplier that expands the workforce and raises productivity.
Women’s financial power must also be strengthened. By 2047, Kerala should ensure near-universal access for women to bank credit, insurance, pensions, and investment instruments. Women-focused financial literacy must go beyond savings to include equity, enterprise finance, and long-term wealth building. Cooperative banks and state financial institutions should track and publish gender-disaggregated credit data, making women’s access to capital a visible performance metric.
Leadership and governance form the final pillar. Kerala already has political reservation for women at the local level, but economic leadership remains male-dominated. Vision 2047 must focus on placing women in positions of financial authority such as cooperative board chairs, public enterprise directors, procurement committees, and regulatory bodies. Leadership training programs for women must be tied to real authority, budgets, and decision-making power, not symbolic representation.
Special attention must be given to women from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, coastal communities, and migrant backgrounds. Economic empowerment strategies must be intersectional, recognizing layered disadvantage. Targeted pipelines for education, enterprise, and leadership must ensure that Vision 2047 does not benefit only urban or upper-income women but creates broad-based transformation.
By 2047, the success of Kerala’s women power agenda should be visible in hard numbers. Higher female workforce participation, millions of women-owned assets, strong representation in high-income sectors, and women-led enterprises contributing significantly to GSDP. More importantly, it should be visible in social reality, where women’s economic decisions shape households, markets, and governance.
Kerala Vision 2047 cannot be achieved if women remain on the margins of economic power. Treating women as core economic producers is not a feminist add-on but an economic necessity. A state that fully mobilizes the intelligence, labour, and leadership of its women will not only be more just, but more competitive, resilient, and prosperous.
