Gender disparity among educated and trained labour force in India

Inequalities in all walks of life on the basis of caste, creed, religion, gender, income, wealth etc. are persistent problems India has been dealing with even after independence. The major of these problems have been the gender inequality where the biasness towards male foetus keeps the female away even from their fundamental rights. This is widely evident in the urban Indian labour market where the underrepresentation of women in the workforce is more than in rural India. Even the educated and trained population of the country is still far from justice in being employed equally. The gender discrimination among the educated and trained workforce is a matter of concern and necessitates this study. The objectives are thus to compare the inequality in distribution of education and vocational training and to ascertain the extent of gender disparity specifically among the educated employed and trained employed across States and Union Territories of India. State wise, gender wise cross sectional secondary data from 29 states and 7 union territories have been used from the Labour Bureau Report 2013–14, Census 2011, and RBI Handbook of Statistics 2013–14. Percentage and gender disparity factor have been used for the analysis and the graphical representation of the data has been used to represent the result. The study finds that gender disparity among educated employed is more than among trained employed. Where education has not been able to bring justice to women workforce, vocational training has filled the gap to a certain extent. On the basis of the results, some suggestions specific to certain States are given to encourage women participation in the workforce.