Determinants of regional inequality in female work participation in Lower Gangetic Plain Region of India

Abstract

The present study is aimed at analysing the pattern of female work participation by disaggregating the information at regional level and further by inter-district variation. Moreover, this study tries to explore the factors which affect inter-regional variation in the percentage of female workers in rural areas and analyses the reasons of such. An attempt to reveal the differentiation in male and female work participation rate in different physiographic regions of West Bengal based on the secondary data collected from Census of India, 2011. Different statistical measures are employed to assess the level of inequality in work participation in different social strata of the society. Spatial pattern of work participation has been identified with the help of GIS techniques. The study reveled that the all-India pattern shows a great accentuation in regional differences in female work participation rate depending upon agro-ecological conditions prevailing within a physiographic region. The result has shown that female participation is generally lower (16.69%) compared to their male (41.63%) counterparts in 2011. The study found that socially deprived segments such as the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribe women display much higher level of participation compared to their more fortunate sisters belonging to the non-scheduled category. The study found that disparity is far less in geographically difficult areas and where agriculture is not well developed due to physiographic constraints such as in Hill and Terai region or in West Rarh Plateau Fringe.