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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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.
 

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.
 

What is quite surprising, though, is that even at the same levels of education, women earn a lot less than their male counterparts do. So, according to the survey, while the average male earned Rs 43,885 per annum, this figure was just Rs 14,994 for women. This difference was pervasive across most occupation types and not restricted to just certain occupation groups.

So, when it comes to “own-account workers”, men earned Rs 50,824 per annum as compared to Rs 21,657 for women. In the case of salaried employees, while men earned Rs 70,810, women earned a much lower Rs 40,429.

While an illiterate man earned Rs 33,680 as his salary as a sweeper/peon/driver/whatever, the illiterate woman earned just Rs 12,923. If you look at those who’d been educated till the 8th standard, the average salaried male earned Rs 43,010 as compared to just Rs 19,805 for women.
 

You’d think this discrimination would disappear for graduates. It doesn’t, though it does come down significantly. Male graduates who have regular salaried jobs earn Rs 85,211 or around a third more than women — this is high, but less than at lower levels of literacy where men often earn 2.5 times what women do. When it comes to diploma/vocational training, there is little difference between men and women, suggesting that specialised jobs offer less discrimination.

While just 4.2 per cent of all households in the country are headed by women, what’s interesting is the impact this has in terms of their household incomes. There is no major difference at the all-India level, but in Delhi, while the annual income is Rs 2,02,270 for households headed by men, it is Rs 2,84,545 for households headed by women. In Greater Mumbai, the figures are Rs 1,92,985 and Rs 2,21,094 respectively.

All told, if political parties are indeed able to get enough women to occupy Parliament seats as opposed to what’s called the bahu-beti brigade, these women have their task cut out when it comes to reducing gender discrimination. The good news, of course, is that as education levels rise, the discrimination reduces significantly even though it doesn’t completely disappear. This, of course, applies only to those women who are allowed to work — with women labour participation rates less than half those for men, and over a third of graduate women opting out of the work force, this is clearly one of the first action areas for India’s women parliamentarians.

The author is Senior Fellow, NCAER

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