Gujarat's 8% females employable; it's 31% in Rajasthan, 17% in West Bengal, 15% in UP: GoI-supported, CII-backed report

By Rajiv Shah
A new Government of India (GoI)-supported report, prepared by Wheebox, an online talent assessment company, in alliance with the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has found that just about 8% of Gujarat’s female workforce is employable in as against 31% in Rajasthan, 23% in Andhra Pradesh, 21% in Karnataka and 20% in Telangana.
Even the so-called Bimaru state Uttar Pradesh with 16% employable female workforce ranks better than Gujarat, finds the report, which gives details of top ten states. Maharashtra’s 18%, West Bengal’s 17% , Haryana’s 15% and Tamil Nadu’s 11% female workforce is found to be employable in industries, says “India Skills Report 2017”, whose academic partner is GoI’s All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
Prepared in order to tell industry leaders where to get the male and female talent they have been needing in order to keep their enterprises running, the report claims to be based on a sample size of 5.6 lakh final students cutting across different disciplines in 29 Indian states and seven union territories. Though it is a special section of females, interestingly, the report does not say what is its female sample size.
Further, the report does not find any of Gujarat’s cities in the top 10 cities with employable female workforce. Here, Kolkata tops the list at 73.13%, followed by New Delhi 65.96%, Udaipur 62.18%, Dhule 64.54%, Pune at 60.08%, Tonk 57.87%, Sholapur 55.39%, Tipurpati 54.51, Hyderabad 52.77%, Mysore 51.83%, and Nashik 49.17%.

Pointing out that Bengaluru at 45% and Lucknow 39% have employable female workforce, the report states, while colleges located in Tier 1 cities provide better exposure to students, what is noteworthy is that “even with limited resources and average education facilities the youth in tier 2 and tier 3 cities is empowered and is performing better than its peer.”
Pointing out that “Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan are the top states preferred by females, whereas Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh are the top states preferred by males”, the report says, “With nearly 80% of the employable female population coming from tier 2 and tier 3 cities, their preference is cities like Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad etc.”, which is not surprising.
The report states, “Sectorwise data show that, of 11 the sectors covered as part of the survey, hardly half of the sectors have 30% of their workforce as women”, adding, “38% of post graduate women are job market ready, whereas in case of graduation, this percentage is 45%, but these numbers do not find uniform reflection in the hiring strategy.”
The report says, “Women constitute more than 50% of the workforce in Sectors like E-commerce and Retail, manufacturing and engineering have less than 25% of females in their workforce whereas for Sectors like BFSI and BFS, BPO, ITES this percentage is restricted to 25.”