Gender Disparity at Regional Level – An Inter-District Analysis of Women Empowerment in Kerala

Abstract

Women empowerment is an inevitable part of development discourse in modern scenario. Kerala exhibited remarkable achievement in women empowerment, and has tarnished most other Indian states on the basis of performance of different gender empowerment variables. But, the levels of gender empowerment vary widely between different regions of the state. This imposes a micro level investigation of the issue throughout the state. The present work inquires the intra-state variation in gender empowerment, primarily by employing National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data. The analysis is conducted by assessing the attainments of different districts of Kerala on certain crucial indicators. Accomplishment on empowerment indicators like education attainment, labour force participation, decision making autonomy, political participation, gender-based violence, etc. are assessed here along with their dynamics. A Composite Empowerment Index is estimated for each of the districts in Kerala, by which the inter-district comparison is made. The paper reveals that there is considerable inter-district variation in women empowerment across the state.