Global Gender Gap Analysis

“Policies to reduce the gender gap can significantly improve economic growth and standards of living and in developing countries can be a major contribution to poverty reduction” said Jose Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, ILO Executive Director for Employment. Countries that have been able to offer labour market policies to unemployed women on a large scale already had placed programs, in case of Chile’s targeting of unskilled female heads of households, South Africa’s women’s quota in its expansion of its public works programs, and India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

Women continue to face many barriers to enter labour markets. These barriers not only hold back female, they also hold back economic growth and development in countries

The index data on 136 countries shows that women’s economic participation and opportunity is worse in India. India is ranked below many Sub-Saharan African countries in the UN Gender Inequality Index. Global Index ranks India 101 out of 136 countries, showing that women lagged behind men, both in opportunities and access to resources. India rank 9 in political empowerment it performs above average on the political empowerment of women, but lag behind in the other 3 categories like Health and Survival, Economic Participation and Opportunity and Educational Attainment. India ranks 124 in gender gaps in economic participation and opportunity, 120 in gender gaps in educational attainment, and the worst rank 135 in differences between women’s and men’s health and survival, which is explained in (Appendix 1&2). Clearly, India has a long way to go in order to enhance women empowerment, and achieve gender equality. Ensuring economic independence for women by creating decent and productive employment and entrepreneurship opportunities is needed for a larger and more meaningful role of women in the society and their empowerment. India gains four places in the rankings based on improvement in the years with the Female head of state indicator, even though India’s score on the

To examine the structure and changes in the women workforce participation rates in the country during the period from 1972-73 to 2011-12.

2. To examine women employment growth rate over the period.

3. To examine the determinants of change in women’s employment.

4. To examine the women workforce under a different status of employment in India during the same period.

5. To analyze the change in women organized sector in the Indian economy.

6. To analyze the sectoral distribution of the women workforce in the country during the same period.

7. To examine the women casualisation during the same period.

1.6 Hypothesis of the Study

1. Women employment growth rate has remained static over the period.

2. Structure of women employment not changed in Indian Economy.

3. There is no change in women workforce under different status of employment in India during the period from 1972-73 to 2011-12.

4. Sectoral distribution of workforce of women has remained same over the