Skill India can retain women in workforce

Less than 25 per cent of women who went through the major skilling programme we studied held a job for three or more months after their programme

India’s 2018 Economic Survey posits that India not only has millions of missing women, but that it also has millions of “unwanted” women — 21 million to be precise.

A popular policy solution is financial incentives: bribe parents to have daughters, educate them and keep them alive till they attain adulthood. But such incentives don’t have a strong track record of changing skewed sex ratios — arguably, because they don’t address the large difference in male and female earning potential as adults. 

Can public policy change this by helping women engage more actively in the economy? Possibly, but a host of factors