Structure of unemployment and gender gap in India

The objective of this paper is to analyse the gender disparity in employment in agriculture and non agriculture sector, public and private sector, wage and self employment, proportion in labour force, paid and unpaid workers and sector wise employment using NSSO secondary data from 1983 to 2009–10. There exist wide disparity in employment of male and female in India both in agriculture and non agriculture sector of our country. In 2007–08, 80.2% of female labour force were working in agriculture sector where as 10.9% and 11.9% were working in manufacturing and construction & services sector respectively. In 2010, women have only 20.41% of total organized employment where as men have 79.69% of employment. Nearly one-half of women workers are employed in three occupational group sales (retail and personal services), services, and administrative support.