PremiumNEW DELHI: India’s efforts at gender equality are helping, but the changes are most visible at the bottom of the pyramid and a lot more ground needs to be covered to meet the country’s goals, show official data.
While one in three in the labour force is a woman, only 19 among 100 managerial roles have women and less than nine women in 100 persons make it to legislative assemblies, as per NITI Aayog’s sustainable development goals (SDG) 2020-21 report.
Although there has been improvement on various counts, more than half of the ground needs to be covered to meet specific goals by 2030, the federal policy think tank said in its report released on Thursday.
Gender equality has been a focus area for the government with specific schemes and fund allocation for women beneficiaries. Recent steps include campaigns for education for the girl child and the Sukanya Samridhi scheme meant to help parents build a fund for the future needs of their girl child.
The corporate affairs ministry has mandated at least one woman director on the board of specified companies while the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Swbi) requires the same for listed companies. In the past, more than 200 unlisted public companies were prosecuted for violating these norms.
The government aims to have 245 women for every 1000 director roles on the board of companies, which is currently at 190. Given that the number of companies set up every month is growing in double digits, it would require a lot of effort not to slip from the current score. As per data available from the corporate affairs ministry, as of March 2017, a little more than 25% of the directors on the boards of companies were women.
According to NITI Aayog ranking, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, and Puducherry have exceeded the target.
In the case of women in leadership roles, on an average, 8.46% of seats in the state Legislative Assemblies are held by women against the sustainable development target of 50% to be achieved by 2030. Chhattisgarh has the highest representation of women at 14.44%, followed by West Bengal at 13.61% while Nagaland and Mizoram have no women representation, as per the NITI Aayog report.
In the case of ability for financial transactions, women owned only 37% of all the 43.5 crore permanent account numbers (PAN) numbers issued till March 2019, showed data available from the Income Tax department.
The gender disparity in PAN ownership is significant as any person having income above the limit that is not chargeable to tax needs to get a PAN. This alphanumeric identification number is crucial for both tax payment as well as for a host of banking transactions and for issuance of debit and credit cards.
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