When the Indian IT industry began taking shape in the early 1980s, we were operating in an environment of scarcity. Capital was expensive, infrastructure was fragile and the world’s confidence in Indian engineering was untested. Yet, over four decades, we built a global services powerhouse on the back of process excellence, English-speaking talent and an insatiable hunger to learn. That era defined India as the world’s services back office.

Today, we stand at a far more volatile and consequential inflection point. We are transitioning from the Information Age to the Intelligence Age. Artificial Intelligence is not merely a new tool; it is a fundamental reshuffling of the global economic order. Simultaneously, India has set itself the ambitious goal of becoming a Viksit Bharat by 2047.

To achieve this, we cannot rely on the playbook of the past. The next phase of India’s growth will not come from labour arbitrage or services alone, but from becoming a product nation—an economy driven by innovation, intellectual property and high-value research.

However, there is a glaring structural weakness in our foundation. India is currently attempting to take off while flying on one engine. The missing engine is the full economic participation of its women.

The argument for bringing more women into the workforce is often framed as a matter of social justice or diversity. While those are valid moral arguments, the economic argument is far more urgent.

Consider the data. In China, the female labour force participation rate hovers near 60 percent. Women there have been a driving force in manufacturing, technology and the explosion of digital entrepreneurship. This participation was a critical component of China’s rapid ascent to superpower status. In contrast, India’s female labour force participation rate remains stubbornly low, often estimated below 30 percent.

This is not just a statistics problem; it is a GDP problem. We are effectively leaving half of our human capital on the bench. Estimates suggest that bridging this gender gap could add trillions of dollars to India’s GDP over the next decade. For a nation aspiring to be an economic superpower, this underutilisation of talent is unsustainable.

As we move deeper into the age of AI, the composition of our workforce matters more than ever. There is a common misconception that AI will make human qualities obsolete. I believe the opposite is true. As algorithms automate routine cognitive tasks, the unique human capabilities of empathy, complex judgement and ethical reasoning will become the most valuable commodities in the market.

Technology is not value-neutral. It reflects the biases, perspectives and values of the people who build it. If the teams designing our AI models, healthcare algorithms and financial systems are homogenous, the resulting technologies will be fragile and biased.

We need women in the room—not just to ‘balance the numbers’, but to improve the product. Research consistently shows that diverse teams solve problems faster and more creatively. Women often bring a different approach to problem-solving—more collaborative, holistic and user-centric. In fields like healthcare, education and governance, where AI will soon make life-altering decisions, this perspective is not a luxury; it is a safeguard.

We need women to ensure that our digital systems are designed for human well-being, not just computational efficiency.

For India to transition from a service economy to a product nation, we need to own the intellectual property that defines the future. This means we need a massive influx of talent into deep science, research, and high-tech entrepreneurship.

Historically, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics have seen skewed gender ratios, but this is changing. We must accelerate this shift. Careers in research and entrepreneurship are, in many ways, uniquely suited to women. They offer intellectual autonomy, the flexibility to define one’s own path, and the opportunity to build solutions for real-world problems. The product nation dream cannot be realised if 50 percent of our potential inventors are not in the field playing the game.

There is another massive transformation looming on India’s horizon: demographics. While we currently celebrate our demographic dividend of young people, we must also prepare for the inevitable shift towards an ageing society. India will soon house one of the world’s largest populations of older adults.

This creates a demand for the Silver Economy—a marketplace for products and services designed to help people age with dignity, control and grace. This includes everything from assistive robotics and telemedicine to specialised insurance and community living models.

This is a sector ripe for innovation, and it requires a high degree of empathy and systems thinking qualities where women leaders often excel. Women entrepreneurs can lead the charge in designing the care ecosystems of the future, turning a demographic challenge into an economic engine.

The next question is how do we make it happen? The current workplace was largely designed for a different era. To bring women back into the workforce—and keep them there—we need to fundamentally redesign our institutions.

Flexibility as a standard: The post-pandemic world has proven that productivity is not tied to a specific desk. Hybrid work models, which offer flexibility without compromising output, are essential for allowing women to balance professional ambitions with personal responsibilities.

Safety and culture: We need zero tolerance for harassment and bias. But beyond safety, we need inclusion. A workplace where a woman feels she has to ‘act like a man’ to succeed is a failed workplace. We need environments that value diverse leadership styles.

Returnship programmes: Many talented women leave the workforce for caregiving and find it nearly impossible to return. Corporate India must treat these career breaks not as a resume gap, but as a pause. Robust ‘returnship’ programmes that skill and reintegrate women are essential.

The future of technology is not just about faster chips or larger language models. It is about how these technologies integrate into human life to solve human problems.

As we stand on the threshold of this new era, we must recognise that excluding women from the technological vanguard is a strategic error we cannot afford. We need their productivity to drive our GDP. We need their empathy to humanise our AI. We need their innovation to build our intellectual property.

India’s rise to the top of the global economic order is not guaranteed. It will require a focused and whole-of-nation approach. Bringing women into the heart of the technology workforce is not just the right thing to do—it is the smart thing to do. It is the only way we will build a future that is not just prosperous, but also balanced, humane and truly developed.

Kris Gopalakrishnan | Former Vice Chairman and CEO, Infosys; Managing Trustee, Pratiksha Trust

(Views are personal)