Economic report shows bad state of gender parity

Revealing a dismal state of gender parity in the city, women entrepreneurs only own a mere eight per cent of the private establishments in Delhi and female employees constitute only eight per cent of the total workforce in the non-agricultural sector, according to the Sixth Economic Census of Delhi, released by the AAP government on Monday.

The report, prepared on the basis of data collected in February-June 2013, said that out of the total 8,75,308 private economic establishments in the city, 70,434 are managed by women entrepreneurs, accounting for 8.05 per cent.

The first Economic Census was conducted in 1977, followed by 1980, 1990, 1998 and 2005. The Economic Census includes all types of entrepreneurial activities in the field of agriculture, except crop production and plantation, as well as non-agriculture, except public administration and defence.

The number of workers engaged in those women-owned and managed establishments is 1,59,421, accounting for a mere 5.28 per cent of the total workers engaged in different economic activities.

The report has also provided a break-up of sex-wise distribution of employment. The report said only 3,201 (19.37 per cent) females were found to be employed in agricultural establishments as opposed to 13,323 (80.63 per cent) males.

The non-agro sector (minus services) employs 89,970 female workers. The same sector employs 9,78,678 men, highlighting the gender disparity. “Under the women-owned establishments, as many as 99.14 per cent are engaged in non-agriculture activities. Being predominantly urban in character, only 606 establishments (0.86 per cent) are returned as agricultural enterprises under women entrepreneurship,” the report said.

“Out of the total persons engaged in the rural areas, 85.44 per cent were male and 14.56 per cent were female. Out of the total workers in the urban areas, 91.61 per cent were male and 8.39 per cent were female,” added the report.

Releasing the report, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said there were 8.75 lakh establishments in Delhi during 2013 as compared to 7.58 lakh establishments in 2005 at the time of the 5th Economic Census, registering an annual growth of 1.94 per cent. Out of 8.75 lakh enterprises, only 12,441 (1.4%) were in the rural areas and 8.63 lakh (98.6%) were in urban.

Mr Sisodia said out of the total, 4.77 lakh (55 per cent) establishments had no hired workers and remaining 3.98 lakh (45 per cent) had at least one hired worker.

Average number of persons employed in the establishments with employees worked out to 6.1 as against 1.3 in the establishments with no hired worker.

He pointed out that out of 8.75 lakh establishments, around 7.96 lakh (91 per cent) establishments were under private proprietorship. Around 4.70 lakh (53.7 per cent) worked outside household with fixed structure and remaining 4.05 lakh (46.3 per cent) were operated outside household without fixed structure or inside household.

The report also revealed around 7.9 lakh (90 per cent) of total establishments in the national capital were of employment size class one to five, followed by 57,200 (6.5 per cent) of size class 6-9, 29,101 (3.3 per cent) of size class 10-99 and 1,516 establishments (0.17 per cent) had employment size of 100 and more.

He also said that for the first time, information on handicraft and handloom establishments was collected in the Sixth Economic Census report. The total number of handicraft/handloom establishments has been reported as 9,260 with 35,553 workers (an average of 3.8 workers per establishment).

According to the report, the central district has the highest number of establishments (1.5 lakh), followed by West district with 1.06 lakh establishments, North-West district 93,297, North-East district 86,597, East district 80,061, South-East district 75,049, North district 73,724, Shahdara district 71,738, South district 57,126, South-West district 42,166 and the lowest in New Delhi with 38,153 establishments. In terms of number of persons employed, Central district led the way with around 6 lakh (19.8 per cent) of total employment, followed by South East district with 3.5 lakh (11.7 per cent).