Spatial regularity in the distribution of female population and female workers: a study of Sehore Municipal Council, Madhya Pradesh (India)

Abstract

Though the gender gap in workforce participation rate in India is already established, a lack of economic participatory power of females is becoming a major area of concern for overall economic development of the region. India with an upcoming urban economy and rapid transformation into an urban society still lags behind in sending urban women to urban job market and recording only 15.4% of urban females as workers as against the total work participation rate of 35.3% in urban areas. Therefore, issue of analyzing spatial regularity in the distribution of percentage of female population and female workforce participation emerges a significant aspect for finding out the concentration of urban females in relation to their working arena. The present study, therefore, focuses and addresses the issue for spatial regularity in the distribution of females work participation in relation to female concentration in Sehore Municipal Council (Sehore M.C.), an upcoming township of Madhya Pradesh, India, with a high proportion of females, 937 females/1000 males as against state average of 931 females/1000 males, and a female workforce participation rate of 19.15%, which is higher than the state average of 15.1%. Court’s Method of Map Comparison is applied to find out the degree of association of percentage of females in relation to their workforce participation. The study has concluded that there is no spatial regularity in the distribution pattern of female population and female workers as shown by the medial correlation coefficient of − 0.27 with more than 60% of the study area is falling under negative medial correlation. The absence of spatial regularity between female population and female workers is due to lack of economic opportunities for women in Sehore M.C. as well as accessibility and availability to jobs due to social factors and regional economic constraints. Therefore, few suggestions are given for proper planned economic development as well as promotion of secure job avenues for all socio-economic strata of female group of population for Sehore M.C., a forthcoming urban centre of Madhya Pradesh in India.