Why Higher Education Doesn't Ensure Better Jobs For Women In India?

Once a year, the history lecturer Vijay Kumar Ballani and his colleagues go door-to-door in this rural village, imploring parents to send their children especially girls to a cinderblock complex that lacks classroom space, bathrooms, and desks. He gives the same stock speech.

- Vibha Singh

“Education is free, lunch is free, books are free, sanitary napkins are free,’’ Ballani tells parents, urging them to visit this government-run school on the edge of the Thar Desert, where, on a warm day late last spring, 12 teachers were overseeing the education of 260 students from first grade through high school. “Your kids will have a better life if they are educated. No one will cheat you.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s slogan ‘Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao’ means education is the key to women empowerment. It is assumed that higher education for women leads to jobs and financial empowerment for women. We break down the numbers to assess why access to higher education for women does not necessarily lead to more jobs for women. Access to higher education for young women has increased by seven percent in India. Out of 33.3 million enrolments in higher education In India in 2014-15, 17.9 million were male and 15.4 million were female.

Yet, the disparity between the number of male and female students still remains wide. For every 1,000 men who never get access to education, there are 1,403 women who do not. That is almost one and a half times more women out of college than men.

Which is why, inspite of more women accessing higher education, India’s Female Labour Force Participation (FLFP) has dropped by eight percent in the last decade and a half.

India is way lower than the global average when it comes to female labour force participation: ILO (2013) ranks India’s FLFP rate as 121 out of 131 countries, one of the lowest in the world. In 2013, India had the lowest FLFP rate in South Asia, with the exception of Pakistan. Globally, only parts of the Arab world held a lower FLFP rates than India in the same year.