Gender and social differentials in the employment situation In India

Vini Sivanandan, Gokhale Institute of Politics & Economics, India
Arokiasamy Perianayagam, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

The educational and occupational backgrounds are marginally related to the family background rather than talent and ability. The main objective of this paper is to examine the levels of employment penetration by type of employment, gender and social groups with a focus on participation in employment. Employment is linked to higher education and demographic characteristics. The main focus is differentials in gender with social groups. Methods using Geometric Mean and Theil index for studying the distribution pattern of employment structure in India are extended to analyse the differential pattern by demographic characteristics. The influence of gender and race on employment pattern in the case of employment in India is implicitly incorporated into the distribution of work, which in the limit of education reduces to its well-known pattern. The method is verified by demographic characteristics and both the results and convergence properties compare favorably with male belonging to upper strata in terms of employment in India.