User:Nazsultana/Women in India

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Workforce participation
A woman working at an Aadhaar center in India.

A farm worker selling eggplants in Gujarat

Contrary to common perception, a large percentage of women in India are actively engaged in traditional and non-traditional work. '''Despite the large number of women involved in the workforce, the country has a female labor force participation rate of just 23%. ''' National data collection agencies accept that statistics seriously understate women's contribution as workers. Reasons for these misleading statistics can be attributed to cultural biases and expectations about women's roles in society. Additionally, more Indian women are employed in the informal economy than their male counterparts. However, there are far fewer women than men in the paid workforce.

In urban India, women participate in the workforce in impressive numbers. For example, in the software industry 30% of the workforce is female. These high numbers are also due to the fact that 81% of the urban female workforce is employed in the informal sector. Studies have shown that higher education levels lead to higher income for urban-dwelling women.

In rural India in the agriculture and allied industrial sectors, women account for as much as 89.5% of the labour force. In overall farm production, women's average contribution is estimated at 55% to 66% of the total labour. According to a 1991 World Bank report, women accounted for 94% of total employment in dairy production in India.

Women constitute 51% of the total employed in forest-based small-scale enterprises.

India is ahead of the world average on women in senior management.

Gender pay gap
In 2017, a study by Monster Salary Index (MSI) showed the overall gender pay gap in India was 20 percent. It found that the gap was narrower in the early years of experience.

While men with 0–2 years of experience earned 7.8 percent higher median wages than women, in the experience group of 6–10 years of experience, the pay gap was 15.3 percent. The pay gap becomes wider at senior level positions as the men with 11 and more years of tenure earned 25 percent higher median wages than women.

Based on the educational background, men with a bachelor's degree earned on average 16 percent higher median wages than women in years 2015, 2016 and 2017, while master's degree holders experience even higher pay gap. Men with a four- or five-year degree or the equivalent of a master's degree have on average earned 33.7 percent higher median wages than women.

While India passed the Equal Remuneration Act way back in 1976, which prohibits discrimination in remuneration on grounds of sex. But in practice, the pay disparity still exists and is one of many lingering forms of gender inequality in the Indian workforce.