Can India achieve its goal of becoming the next superpower without empowering women? While India is poised to become a powerful global player in the coming years, the paper argues that India is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman. The aim of the paper is to provide a set of recommendations for policy-makers to bridge the gender wage gap, which in turn will promote gender equality in India.
Results of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition (a popular method to measure outcome differences between groups, 1973) indicate that there is a gender wage gap in India which favours men, and that more than half of this gap is unexplained. It also proves that while the explained gap has decreased, the unexplained gap has increased. These results have important implications for policy-makers in India in terms of increasing educational opportunities for women, reducing social discrimination, reforming data collection methodologies, as well as increasing post-implementation accountability.
This paper examines the gender wage gap in India between the years 1999-2000 and 2009-2010, and analyses its determinants. The paper is divided into four sections: Section 1 describes previous literature on gender wage differentials from developed and developing countries; Section 2 outlines the models and sample used in this study; Section 3 presents the empirical results; and Section 4 discusses the results and draws conclusions.
Recommendations made include creating committees that oversee the process of implementation in order to ensure that policies are reaching and benefitting targeted people. India has formulated many laws to enforce gender inequality, but these laws are not implemented. Attempts at bridging the gender gap can only be successful if appropriate laws are made and practically implemented.
Adapted from author’s summary