This study has attempted to look at the effects of economic reforms in the garb of globalization on total employment in general and female employment in particular in the selected six states; Kerala, Punjab, Karnataka, West Bengal, Assam and Bihar. The period 1983 to 1993- 94 surrogates pre-reform period and 1993-94 to 2004-05 is taken as post-reform period. Study is based on Usual (Principal and Subsidiary) Status data. The study concludes that the total work participation rate in India in 1983, 1993-94 and in 2004-05 has remained same at 42 per cent. For rural workers it decreased by 0.5 percentage points and for urban workers it increased by 1.8 percentage points during post-reform period.Total male and female work participation rates during post-reform period have remained almost same whereas during pre-reform period increase in total FWPR was much higher than that of males. Male–female work participation gap at India level decreased by 6.3 percentage points during pre-reform period whereas in post-reform period it increased by 0.1 percentage points. At rural level it has decreased by 0.5 percentage points and at urban level increased by 1.7 percentage points during post-reform period. The annual compound growth rate of total employment decreased from 2.37 per cent during pre-reform period to 2.09 per cent during postreform period. During pre-reform period, annual compound growth rate for female employment was almost double to that of males. But in post-reform period , it declined to almost half and became equal to that of males.