Gender and Social Differentials in Employment Situation in India

Vini Sivanandan, Gokhale Institute of Politics & Economics

Assessment of social disparity in various grades of employment provides comparative insight about the impact of affirmative policies in India. Affirmative policies in India have been implemented for almost six decades, which are expected to bring the historically backward caste groups representation in employment in par with the forward caste group. In this paper, we use the simple arithmetic and geometric ratios and further theil index of disparity to measure between and within group disparities among the social groups in terms of representation in various grades of employment. Results reveal that The difference between the social groups in terms of participation in employment further increased with the inclusion of persons with higher education. Consistently, the gap between the caste Others and ST, SC, OBC further widened in participation in employment when higher education is taken into consideration..