Report on women’s equality in India
NEW DELHI: Mizoram followed by Meghalaya are the two states in the country with least inequality between genders. This has been revealed by a recent report by McKinsey Global Institute titled “The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’s Equality in India”.
By fully bridging the gender gap in the workplace in the country, India could add $ 2.9 trillion of additional GDP, Union Minister for Women and Child Welfare, Maneka Gandhi said.
According to the Minister, Meghalaya and Mizoram, which have the least gender gap, can be important partners in this ambitious endeavour.
The report by Mckinsey Global Institute (MGI) published last month said that reducing gender disparity will help in achieving 60% higher than business-as-usual GDP in 2025.
This was disclosed to Rajya Sabha Member from Meghalaya, Wansuk Syiem by the Union Minister who was replying to her question on Friday.
Syiem wanted to know if bridging the gender gap will have huge economic impact and could add substantially to India’s GDP in 2025.
The report, which analyzed 15 gender equality indicators across 95 countries in an attempt to quantify the economic potential of closing the gender gap around the world, used a new score – India Female Empowerment Index or Femdex – based on a subset of 10 of the 15 indicators for which data are available at the state-level in India, Gandhi said.
The five states with the highest aggregate Femdex values are Mizoram, Meghalaya, Kerala, Goa and Sikkim. In contrast Bihar Jharkhand, Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh have been grouped as India’s bottom five states as per the Femdex value.
The report, however, says that the top five states account for just 4% of the country’s female working-age population, while the bottom five comprise a much larger 32%.
“Indian women face extremely high inequality on two of three dimensions – physical security and autonomy (sex ratio at birth and intimate partner violence). They face high inequality on the third, child marriage,” the report adds.
The report adds that gender inequality in India is high or extremely high on three dimensions – gender equality in work, legal protection and political voice, and physical security and autonomy – and medium to high on the fourth dimension of essential services and enablers of economic opportunity. In terms of gender equality in work, just Meghalaya and Mizoram show parity.
In case of gender equality in physical security and autonomy, Himachal Pradesh scores highest.
The report says, “Indian women face high or extremely high inequality on all five indicators related to work: labour-force participation rate, professional and technical jobs, unpaid care work, wage gap and leadership positions.”
The study is based on 15 gender equality indicators of societal and work inequality that cover about two-thirds of the proposed gender-based indicators being used to measure the goals adopted by 193 countries under the Sustainable Development Goals framework adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. These 15 indicators are grouped into four categories, the Union Minister said.