Low and declining female workforce participation has remained a critical challenge for policymakers in India. However, during the post-COVID-19 period, there was an improvement in the female workforce participation rate in both rural and urban areas. The rise was more prominent during 2023–24. Such a rise attracted significant debates around the working conditions of female employment in the country. In this light, this paper, based on unit-level Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data, assesses the fundamental forces leading to the rise in the workforce participation rate (WPR) for females. The paper argues that revised instructions and guidelines in the PLFS 2023–24 contributed to shifting sizable females from ‘not in the labour force’ to the self-employed category. Besides, activities within the self-employed category, which were instrumental in absorbing the female labour in 2024, witnessed a fall in average real income, indicating that the rise in the female WPR, other than the enumeration-based factors, is distress-driven diversification.