Study finds 43% of 1.6 million women factory workers in India work in Tamilnadu alone
Contents News/Article Date:7th February 2023
Relating to which Act: The Factories Act 1948
Applicable to which State: Whole of India
Type: The Print Team – news report
Pertains to: All industries in India
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And in this instance: A paper published by a researcher at the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) has flagged major gender gaps in India’s manufacturing sector. The research is based on the 2019-20 Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) data which claimed that less than a fifth of the eight million people who worked in India’s factories in 2019-20 were women. It added that this share had largely remained unchanged for two decades
Subject: Study finds 43% of 1.6 million women factory workers in India work in Tamilnadu alone
Appended is the complete news item
43% of 1.6 million women factory workers in India work in Tamil Nadu alone, finds a study
Source: The Print
Ashoka University examined the Annual Survey of Industries data, which said less than 5th of the million who worked in factories in 2019-20 were women.
Mumbai: A paper published by a researcher at Ashoka University’s Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) has flagged major gender gaps in India’s manufacturing sector.
The research is based on the 2019–20 Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) data, which claimed that less than a fifth of the eight million people who worked in India’s factories in 2019–20 were women. It added that this share had largely remained unchanged for two decades.
The paper also pointed out that ASI provides gender-segregated data only for “direct employees” involved in the manufacturing process but not for workers hired on contract or those involved in “clerical, supervisory, managerial, sales, watch and ward staff.”
In the paper published on Monday, CEDA wrote about the wide regional and industry-wide variations among this small share of women in the manufacturing sector.
“Of the 1.6 million women workers across India, 0.68 million (43 percent) were working in the factories of Tamil Nadu alone. In fact, nearly three-fourths (72 percent) of all women working in industries were employed in the four southern states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala.
In addition, the gender gap varies widely across states.
Manipur is the only state with a gender balance among those working in its manufacturing sector. The share of women workers in the state stood at 50. *% in 2019-20. Manipur was followed by Kerala (45.5%) Karnataka (41.8%) and Tamil Nadu (40.4%)
Chhattisgarh had the most gender-skewed industrial workforce with women making up just 2.9% of those working in the state’s manufacturing units. This was followed by Delhi where women comprised 4.7% of the workforce, and Jammu and Kashmir, and West Bengal where women made up just 5.5 % of the total manufacturing workforce.
The percentage of women workers in the manufacturing sector varied across India’s most industrialized states with Maharashtra (12%), UP (5.7%), and Gujarat (6.8%) having large gender gaps and Tamil Nadu (40.4%) and Andhra Pradesh (30.2%) faring much better. Women’s share among industrial employees was less than 10% in 16 States and union territories.
Among major industries, those that employed 50,000 workers or more, women outnumbered men only in tobacco and met them halfway in the wearing apparel sector but were significantly outnumbered in the rest,
Incidentally, in five of the 22 major industry groups, such as food products, chemicals, and computers, women’s employment registered a significant fall in the decade 2009-2019.
The research also touched upon salaries, pointing out that women workers earn much less than men. According to ASI, 2019-20, a female industrial worker made an average of Rs.382 per day compared to Rs.439 earned by male workers. In simpler terms, that means that for every INR 100 a male industrial worker earned as wages in 2019-20, his female counterpart earned only INR 87.06.