Hypothesis 6

Looking at the maps below, we observed a sharp fall in female employment as marginal workers (less than six months of employment in a year). This could be either due to an increase in formalization that saw more women moving from marginal workers to main workers (more than six months of employment in a year), or an overall decrease in female employment itself. There are approx 200 districts which saw a fall in female marginal employment but with no change in main employment and some districts also saw a fall even in the main employment of women. Very few districts have actually shown an increase in their levels for female main employment. This is something that is also clearly visible in the maps below. This seems to indicate that although there is a positive movement from marginal to main employment in some districts, but overwhelmingly more often women are actually falling out from the workforce, especially in marginal employment. Several studies try to explain the falling out of women from the workforce and cite reasons such as poor working conditions and wage disparities between men and women, which demotivate women to take up work, especially as women are getting more educated. Some models of development that relate economic growth with gender equality suggest that this is actually expected. As household income increases at the same time as the economy moves from agricultural to non-agricultural employment, women who earlier were involved in agricultural work begin to move out from the workforce. Eventually as education and formal employment increases, women begin to enter the workforce again, leading to a U-shaped function for female employment. According to our data analysis, India seems to have been on the falling part of the curve during 2001 to 2011. Upon further observing these changes in female employment patterns for different types of districts, we find that agricultural and non-agricultural districts are not very different from each other. This seems counter-intuitive because non-agricultural districts should expect to see a stronger movement to main employment than agricultural districts.