India-27th Session May 2017-Gender equality

Para 67) Gender parity has appreciably improved with the Gender Parity Index rising to 1.02 at elementary and 1.03 at higher secondary level in 2020-21. With various scholarships to female students and gender-sensitive physical infrastructure, retention rates among girl students have increased to 82.1 at elementary level in 2020-21. Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign has spread awareness on the importance of gender parity in education on a panIndia scale. With Swachh Bharat: Swachh Vidyalaya, more than 450,000 separate toilet facilities for girls have been constructed and this has helped arrest female dropout to a considerable extent. Para 100) Various steps have been taken to incentivize women’s participation in the workforce. The Maternity Benefits Act, 1961 was amended in 2017 to increase the duration of maternity benefits from 12 to 26 weeks and to provide 12 weeks of maternity leave to adopting mothers and commissioning mothers. To overcome information asymmetry in the women entrepreneurial ecosystem, a unified access portal called Women Entrepreneurship Platform has been established to seamlessly provide information. Para 101) The involvement of women in paid economic activity continues to increase. The labour force participation of women has increased from 17.5% in 2017-18 to 22.5% in 2019- 20. Worker population ratio among women has also risen from 16.5% in 2017-18 to 22.8% in 2019-20. Correspondingly unemployment ratio has declined from 5.7% in 2017-18 to 4.2% in 2019-20. Political representation of women in Parliament also witnessed a rise from 11.86% in 2014-19 to 15.03% in 2019-24. In Panchayati Raj Institutions, representation of women is approximately 46% (1.45 million) as against the constitutional provision of 33% reservation. Para 102) The Government has made enabling provisions for allowing women’s participation in non-conventional sectors such as fighter pilots in Indian Air Force, Commandos, Central Police Forces, admissions in Sainik Schools, etc. In Lt. Col. Nitisha v. Union of India the Supreme Court of India applied the test of indirect discrimination to recognize women’s exclusion from permanent commission in armed forces as discriminatory and took the historic step of inclusion of women in a hitherto male bastion. The Government also advised the States to increase representation of women in non-gazetted posts in police to 33% and twenty states have so far adopted varying targets ranging up to 38%.