From Training to Work: Childcare, Soft Skills, and Women's Labor Market Participation in West Bengal

Female labor-force participation in India remains low despite rising education and large public and nonprofit investments in vocational training. This pilot studies why training often fails to translate into work for low- income mothers in peri-urban West Bengal. Implemented with the Calcutta Foundation (CF), the pilot tests a combined intervention that pairs subsidized childcare with CF’s individual development module, a structured soft-skills component integrated into vocational training. The module covers career counseling, financial literacy, practical workplace readiness, confidence-building, and exposure to feasible job pathways.

The pilot population is women enrolled in CF’s vocational training program who have at least one young child. The pilot compares status quo programming with the combined childcare plus soft-skills package at CF’s Joyenpur center. It will measure childcare take-up, module implementation fidelity, training attendance, soft-skills and consideration-set outcomes, employment, hours, earnings, and job search. The pilot will generate first-stage take-up rates, variance estimates, and operational lessons needed to design a full 2x2 RCT that separately identifies the effects of childcare support and soft-skills programming. The results will inform how training programs can address both practical constraints and skill-related barriers to women’s employment.