Women in India's labour market: Report card

Women make up 49% of China’s population and 46% of its labor force. This number is sizably higher than that in many western countries. Analysts say this is because communist China saw women as a resource and actively used them to contribute to the economic growth engine. After all it was Mao Zedong who first said, ‘Women hold up half the sky’.

 

Shereen Bhan: ‘Women hold up half the sky’ today this is the catch phrase of the world economic forums latest global gender gap report. But let us see where India stands.
  On an overall basis that takes into consideration things like access to education, health, participation in political and economic activity, India ranks 113^th out of 135 nations. Now a paper published earlier this year by the World Bank analyses this data to better understand gender disparities in economic participation in the country.
  Here is what the study reveals. We are pretty close to the average scores when one excludes economic participation. But if one were to take it under consideration, India is worst than 95% of all the countries in the sample.  Now this does sound rather alarming and India’s shining enthusiasts might rubbish these finding. So let’s take a nuance look at the numbers.   Here is a report card on women in India's labor market.