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Study Shows 43% Of 1.6 Million Indian Women Factory Workers Are Employed In Tamil Nadu Alone

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.”

A paper published by an Ashoka University researcher at the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) has identified significant gender gaps in India's manufacturing sector. The study is based on data from the 2019-20 Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), which claimed that women made up less than a fifth of the eight million individuals who worked in India's factories in 2019-20. It continued by stating that this proportion had remained largely unchanged for the previous 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.”

Dhruvika Dhamija, the author of the CEDA paper stated the broad geographical and industry-wide variants among this small share of women in the manufacturing industry in the paper published Monday (February 6). She wrote, "Of the 1.6 million women workers across India, 0.68 million (43 per cent) were working in the factories of Tamil Nadu alone. In fact, nearly three-fourths (72 per cent) of all women working in industries were employed in the four southern states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala", The Print reported.

Gender Gap In Other States

Furthermore, she noted that the gender gap varies greatly across states. Manipur is the only state that has a gender balance in its manufacturing sector. In 2019-20, the state's female labour force participation rate was 50.8 per cent. Manipur was followed by Kerala (45.5 per cent), Karnataka (41.8 per cent), and Tamil Nadu (40.4 per cent)," she wrote.

According to Dhamija, Chhattisgarh has the most unequally distributed industrial workforce, with women accounting for only 2.9 per cent of those employed in the state's manufacturing units. This was followed by Delhi, where women accounted for 4.7 per cent of the workforce, and Jammu and Kashmir and West Bengal, where women accounted for only 5.5 per cent of the total manufacturing workforce.

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