Study reports gender disparity in manufacturing workforce

Mumbai, Feb 8 (KNN) Major gender gaps in India’s manufacturing sector has been identified by a paper published by a researcher at Ashoka University’s Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA).

The research is based on the 2019–20 Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) data, which claimed that less than a fifth of the eight million people who worked in India’s factories in 2019–20 were women.

Flagging the gender based inequality it added that this share had largely remained unchanged for two decades.

The paper also pointed out that ASI provides gender-segregated data only for “direct employees” involved in the manufacturing process but not for workers hired on contract or those involved in “clerical, supervisory, managerial, sales, watch and ward staff.”

CEDA’s Dhruvika Dhamija wrote about the wide regional and industry-wide variations among this small share of women in the manufacturing sector.

Southern states of India such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala account for nearly three-fourths (72 per cent) of all women working in industries across country.

“Of the 1.6 million women workers across India, 0.68 million (43 per cent) were working in the factories of Tamil Nadu alone,” noted Dhamija.

“Manipur is the only state with a gender balance among those working in its manufacturing sector. The share of women workers in the state stood at 50.8 per cent in 2019-20. Manipur was followed by Kerala (45.5 percent), Karnataka (41.8 percent) and Tamil Nadu (40.4 percent),” she wrote.

According to Dhamija, Chhattisgarh had the most gender-skewed industrial workforce, with women making up just 2.9 per cent of those working in the state’s manufacturing units.

This was followed by Delhi, where women comprised 4.7 per cent of the workforce, and Jammu and Kashmir and West Bengal, where women made up just 5.5 per cent of the total manufacturing workforce.

The percentage of women workers in the manufacturing sector varied across India’s most-industrialised states, with Maharashtra (12 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (5.7 per cent) and Gujarat (6.8 per cent) having large gender gaps and Tamil Nadu (40.4 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (30.2 per cent) faring much better.

Women’s share among industrial employees was less than 10 per cent in 16 states and union territories.  (KNN Bureau)