Indian women and the global skilled workforce: A measurable shift in H-1B participation

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Indian women and the global skilled workforce: A measurable shift in H-1B participation

India has long been recognized as the dominant source country for high-skilled global labor, particularly in technology and engineering.

Historically, however, this outward flow of talent via work visas has been disproportionately male. While that trend is not quite unique to India, cumulative data from the U.S. H-1B visa program over the past half-decade reflects that this imbalance is beginning to change.

Over the last five fiscal years, Indian women have accounted for a steadily increasing share of approved H-1B petitions. While the overall program does remain male-dominated, the trend line is in fact changing. In this article, Manifest Law analyzes U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data, which shows an increasing participation among Indian women in the H-1B visa program.

Rising Share of H-1B Visa Approvals for Indian Women

As mentioned, USCIS data from the annual Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers reports clearly reflect a consistent, continuing increase in the percentage of Indian-born H-1B beneficiaries who are women.

The data shows:

Female Indian H-1B Visa Approvals by Fiscal Year (FY)

• FY 2020: 21%
• FY 2021: 23%
• FY 2022: 24%
• FY 2023: 24%
• FY 2024: 25%

While a one- to two-percentage-point increase on an annual basis is modest, Indian women are closing the gender gap faster than H-1B recipients from other countries.

This represents thousands of additional Indian women entering high-skilled roles in the U.S. labor market.

For context, the overall share of women among the approved H-1B beneficiaries as a whole has increased as well, rising from roughly 26% in FY 2020 to 29% in FY 2024, averaging out to roughly a 0.6 percentage-point change per year.

Indian women moved from a 21% share to a 25% share in that same period, averaging out to roughly a 0.8 percentage-point change per year. The share of women from the next-largest country for H-1B workers, China, has increased by just 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points per year.

What the H-1B Data Actually Signals

The significance of this trend lies less in its scale than in its persistence.

In the past, the gender composition of the H-1B visa program has changed very little year over year. Against that backdrop, the consistent rise in Indian women’s share of approvals is notable, even if the absolute percentage remains low.

H-1B approvals sit at the end of a highly constrained pipeline that includes employer recruitment, sponsorship decisions, wage thresholds, lottery selection, and adjudication standards. Movement at the approval stage implies that change is occurring somewhere upstream, even though USCIS data does pinpoint exactly where that change originates.

It’s important to remember that this H-1B data reflects outcomes, not just access, as USCIS does not publish data on applicants, sponsorship attempts, or rejected petitions by gender or country.

As a result, rising approval shares should be viewed less as evidence that barriers have been removed and women have broader access, but more as women themselves making progress and successfully navigating the system.

H-1B Gender, Selection, and Higher Barriers

While H-1B data does not allow for the analysis of education levels by both gender and country simultaneously, broader approval patterns still offer some interesting insights.

Across the program as a whole, women who receive H-1B approvals are more concentrated in higher education categories, including master’s and doctoral degrees. This can be viewed through two different lenses, one carrying more weight than the other.

First, this might come across as an optimistic finding, where women who succeed in the H-1B system tend to be highly credentialed. On the other hand, as women appear more likely to clear the H-1B threshold when they bring stronger academic credentials, this raises concerns that higher qualifications are often a prerequisite for approval rather than a differentiator after the fact to achieve outcomes similar to male applicants.

What the data makes clear is that lower female representation in approvals does not imply lower qualification. If anything, it raises the possibility that selection thresholds are uneven, shaped by factors such as sponsorship decisions, occupational sorting, or several other gender-focused variables.

As a result, increases in approval share should be interpreted cautiously. They demonstrate movement within the system, yes, but not exactly equality of access to it.

Why the Broader Indian Economic Context Still Matters

This developing H-1B trend should not be treated as a proxy for how Indian women are doing in the workforce overall.

This picture captures a very narrow population: people who are already in specialized roles, already connected to employers willing to sponsor them, and already positioned to relocate for work. That is not the average worker, and in most cases, not even the average professional.

This is where the broader economic context is useful.

A June 2025 report by Goldman Sachs argues that one of India’s biggest growth constraints is the gap between women’s potential participation and actual participation in the workforce, driven by structural barriers like caregiving load, mobility constraints, and the way careers narrow when women step out of the labor market for even short periods.

That research does not explain the H-1B approvals, but changes in international outcomes are likely to appear first among a small subset of women who can clear those barriers.

In other words, the fact that the H-1B channel is narrow is exactly why the trend is meaningful. If Indian women’s share of approvals is rising even in a pipeline that requires employer sponsorship, high-skill roles, and relocation readiness, that is a measurable signal of movement at the top end of the opportunity spectrum.

Now, it is not at all proof of parity, and it is not proof that barriers have been reduced or removed. Instead, it is evidence to the contrary, where Indian women are making progress while increasingly being pushed into rural-focused work.

Even with all of these barriers, more women are reaching the point where global employers will sponsor them, and USCIS will approve them, meaning (as noted earlier), Indian women are, against all odds, putting in the work and navigating the process with more success year in and year out.

A Narrow but Meaningful Signal

The H-1B data does not support sweeping claims about equity, nor does it signal a definitive era of change to come. What it does support, though, is a narrower, but hopeful conclusion: Indian women are slowly increasing their representation within one of the world’s most selective skilled-migration systems, even while they are increasingly motivated to remain in more rural work roles back home.

Rising participation in the H-1B program is not evidence that systemic change is taking place in India or that the H-1B system has experienced major shifts in this area. It is more so a testament to the fact that Indian women are making a measurable change on their own.

For India, the implication is strategic rather than symbolic. Expanding women’s access to professional opportunities, both domestically and internationally, is not only a question of fairness but one of economic capacity. The H-1B data offers a limited but reliable window into how that capacity is beginning to expand.

This story was produced by Manifest Law and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.