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Work Force Participation in India

Work Force Participation in India by Dr. Nidhi Gupta discusses work force participation trends in India since 1971 based on census data. The document defines different types of workers, including main and marginal workers. It finds that the gap between male and female work participation rates has narrowed, especially in rural areas, but remains high in urban areas. The female work participation rate is typically lower in urban than rural areas. Reducing gender gaps in urban work participation could help reduce overall inequality between male and female work participation rates in India.

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Nidhi Bansal
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115 views

Work Force Participation in India

Work Force Participation in India by Dr. Nidhi Gupta discusses work force participation trends in India since 1971 based on census data. The document defines different types of workers, including main and marginal workers. It finds that the gap between male and female work participation rates has narrowed, especially in rural areas, but remains high in urban areas. The female work participation rate is typically lower in urban than rural areas. Reducing gender gaps in urban work participation could help reduce overall inequality between male and female work participation rates in India.

Uploaded by

Nidhi Bansal
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Work Force Participation in India

Dr.Nidhi Gupta

Definition and Concepts


Work:- In recent Indian censuses, work is defined as participation in any economically productive activity with or without compensation, wages or profit. Such participation may be physical and/or mental in nature.

The concept of work in Indian census was introduced since 1961 census but main activity was introduced in 1971. In the 1981 census, attempt was made to get a detailed profile of the working characteristics of the population.

Dr.Nidhi Gupta

classification of population
Population

Workers

NonWorkers

Those who have worked any time in the last one-year were categorized as workers, and Those who did not work at all were classified as non-workers. This type of classification of population into workers and non-workers category was followed in latter censuses as well. Workers were categorized into main and marginal workers since 1981 census.
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Main Worker:- All those workers who had worked for the major part of the year preceding the date of enumeration i.e. those who were engaged in any economically productive activity for 183 days (six months) and more during the last year are termed as main workers.
Marginal Worker:- All those workers who had worked any time in the year preceding enumeration but did not work for a major part the year i.e. those who worked less than 183 days or less than six months were termed as marginal workers.

Dr.Nidhi Gupta

The 2001 census made a special effort to capture women workforce particularly engaged as unpaid family work by improving the instruction manual of enumerators.
The manual included several sketches of unpaid work for sensitizing the enumerators. Apart from various activities in agriculture, milching or milk production was included in work. The enumerators employed in backward and low literacy districts have been specially trained through Census Advisors to enumerate the women workforce.
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Crude work participation rates (CWPR)


CWPR is defined as the ratio of total workers to the total population multiplied by 100. The crude work participation rates were calculated for the total, main, and marginal workers by gender and rural and urban residence.

Labour force in India


With changing technology and scale of production there was a shift in the location of industry from rural to urban centers, especially large metropolitan cities. These changes were unfavorable to womens participation in work.
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Since labor force participation rates tend, typically, to be lower for both males and females in urban areas than in rural areas, the historical impact of urbanization on crude activity rates has been negative. In post independence India we had a series of laws passed for the upliftment of women.

The constitutional recognition of equal status for women and progressive enactments has undoubtedly empowered Indian women with judicial equality.
But the principles of equality enshrined in the constitution of India are far from reality.
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Today the situation has changed and there are remarkable changes in the attitude of women, particularly employed, towards the natural superiority of men. Many girls are getting opportunities of entering the portals of higher education and they are working in non-traditional jobs like men.

Dr.Nidhi Gupta

Work participation rate in the rural and urban areas of males and females in India is given in following Table .
MALE FEMALE 15.9 7.2 23.1 8.3 26.8 9.2 30.9 11.5
Dr.Nidhi Gupta

MALE FEMALE GAP 37.9 41.7 30.7 40.8 25.8 39.7 21.4 39.3
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1971 RURAL URBAN 1981 RURAL URBAN 1991 RURAL URBAN 2001 RURAL URBAN

53.8 48.9 53.8 49.1 52.6 48.9 52.3 50.8

Labor Force Participation Rate by Age: 2000-2004


Age Male Female Rural female L/F participation rate higher to their urban counterpart mainly due to Agriculture.

15-29 Rural Urban


30-44 Rural Urban

75.10 67.30 98.7 98.4

30.9 17.9 46.6 26.6

Source : NSSO, 61ST Round


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Total Workers 1971 RURAL URBAN 1981 RURAL URBAN 1991 RURAL URBAN 2001 RURAL URBAN
Dr.Nidhi Gupta

35.3 29.6
38.8 30.0 40.1 30.2 42.2 32.2
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Findings: 1. As per 2001 census about 42 percent of the rural population and 32 percent of the urban population are workers. In both areas the increase is by 2 percentage points over the position of 1991. 2. The gap between the shares of male and female workers has also narrowed down during 1971-2001 period. And this gap is very high in the urban areas and it remains almost in the same position from 1971 to 2001. But the gap in rural areas become narrowed.

3. In 1991, the country had about 2.5 male workers per female worker .

4. The gap in the male-female participation rates in India is due to the wide gap that existed in the urban areas.
4. Inequality between the male and female participation rates can be reduced only by reducing the male-female gap in urban areas or by increasing the participation of urban females.

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Work Participation Rates (Main+Marginal) by Residence


The crude work participation rate in rural India was around 39 per cent in 1981, which has increased to 40 per cent in 1991 and 42 per cent in 2001. This is true for both males and females (see next Table). It is observed that in all EAG states, except Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and some northern states/ union territories like, Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh and Delhi the female work participation was very low and the gap between both the genders was high. However, in the northeastern states of India the difference between male and female work participation rates is the lowest than rest of the country. Kerala and Lakshadweep stand discretely than rest of India as the work participation of females in the rural areas is showing a declining trend during the reference period.
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Dr.Nidhi Gupta

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