| Rajesh Shukla: Children of a lesser god |
| Women graduates get a salary a fourth less than what men do and a third don't even get to work |
| Rajesh Shukla / March 13, 2010, 0:18 IST |
Women graduates get a salary a fourth less than what men do and a third don’t even get to work.
If India’s ranking on the human development index remains relatively poor (India was ranked 134th out of 182 countries in 2007), its ranking on the gender development index isn’t any better (114th out of 155 countries). Look at most indicators and you’d know why this is so. According to the World Bank, female literacy rate in India is around 77 per cent versus 87 per cent for males; less than half the births are attended to by skilled health staff; a fourth of pregnant women don’t receive pre-natal care; 84 per cent of men in the 15-64 age group work as compared to 36 per cent for women, the list goes on.
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MARS VS VENUS HOW WOMEN GET SHORT-CHANGED IN INDIA | |||||
| (A) Millennium Development Goals | 1990 | 1995 | 2000 | 2005 | 2008 |
| Female literacy rate, (% of females ages 15-24) | 49 | — | 68 | 77 | 77 |
| Male literacy rate, (% of males ages 15-24) | 74 | — | 84 | 87 | 87 |
| Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments (%) | 5 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 9 |
| Ratio of female to male enrollments in tertiary education | 54 |
— | 66 | 71 | 72 |
| Births attended by skilled health staff (% of total) |
— | 34 | 43 | 47 | 47 |
| Contraceptive prevalence (% of women ages 15-49) | 43 | 41 | 47 | 56 | 56 |
| Maternal mortality ratio (modeled estimate, per 100,000 live births) | — | — | — | 450 |
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Whether the Women’s Reservation Bill which plans to reserve a third of seats for women in Parliament will solve this is an open question, as, of course, the question of how political parties will find enough women to “man” these seats (just 9 per cent of seats in Parliament are held by women according to the World Bank’s World Development Indicators). The purpose of this article, however, is limited to seeing how women fare in India’s job market and to link this with the levels of education they have. The source of data is the latest countrywide National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure (NSHIE, 2004-05) conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER).
The results are shocking in several ways. Though women account for around 47 per cent of the country’s population, they comprise just marginally over 30 per cent of the country’s graduates and post-graduates. Indeed, the proportion of women keeps declining as we go up the education ladder. So, while 48 per cent of students in primary school are girls, this number falls to 42 per cent at middle school, and further to 38 per cent at the matriculate level and stands at just 37 per cent at the level of passing school. As a result, over a third of women are illiterate as compared to a fifth in the case of men; just 3.6 per cent of women are graduates as compared to 7.2 per cent in the case of men. What is worse is what the women do, or are allowed to do, after getting this education. Of the women graduates, according to the NCAER survey, 35 per cent are housewives.
| (B) BY LITERACY STATUS |
(% of total) | ||
| Male | Female | Total | |
| Illiterate | 20.80 | 35.50 | 27.60 |
| Up to primary school | 23.30 | 24.60 | 23.90 |
| Middle (8th) school | 18.20 | 15.00 | 16.70 |
| Matric (10th) school | 16.10 | 11.30 | 13.90 |
| Higher secondary school | 9.50 | 6.40 | 8.10 |
| Graduate | 7.20 | 3.60 | 5.50 |
| Post-graduate | 1.70 | 0.80 | 1.30 |
| Diploma/Vocational | 0.90 | 0.30 | 0.60 |
| Others | 2.30 | 2.30 | 2.30 |
| Total | 100.00 | 100.00 | 100.00 |
| Source: NCAER, NSHIE 2004-05 | |||
Given that men outnumber women in all higher education groups, and have a much higher worker participation rate (84 per cent versus 36 per cent for women according to the World Development Indicators), it is not surprising that men earn a lot more than women. According to the NCAER data, 8 per cent of men have regular salaried jobs as against 1.2 per cent for women. Looked at another way, this means 88 per cent of all those who have salaried jobs in the country are men — this is the occupation group that earns the highest incomes in the country. When it comes to “own-account” workers (small shops/ businesses which don’t employ outsiders), 20 per cent of men run their own enterprises as compared to under 2 per cent for women.
| (C) BY ACTIVITY STATUS |
(% of total) | ||
| Male | Female | Total | |
| Own-account workers | 19.70 | 1.90 | 11.40 |
| Employer | 2.20 | 0.30 | 1.30 |
| Unpaid family worker | 5.10 | 3.80 | 4.50 |
