Context

• India is predicted to be the third-largest economy in the world by 2030. Despite its economic growth, women’s participation in the country’s economy, polity and society has not kept pace.

Status of Women in Bureaucracy

• As per Indian Administrative Services (IAS) data and the central government’s employment census of 2011, less than 11 per cent of its total employees were women. In 2020, this reached 13 per cent. 
• Out of a total of 11,569 IAS officers entering service between 1951 and 2020, only 1,527 were women. Only 14 percent of Secretaries in the IAS were women in 2022. There are only three women chief secretaries across Indian states and union territories.
• India has never had a woman cabinet secretary and also there have been no women Secretaries of Home, Finance, Defence and Personnel, either. 
• As per the latest official data of the Union Public Services Commission (UPSC), in 2019, the number of women candidates who applied and qualified was far less than the number of male candidates.

Reasons for Underrepresentation

• • The factors that lead women to opt out of the civil services include: 
    • Service conditions involving postings in distant cadres; 

• Patriarchal conditioning; 

• • Balancing family commitments; 

• Women candidates are more likely than men to seek voluntary retirement from service;
• General perception that women should be preferred for “soft” ministries like Social Welfare, Culture, Women and Child Development.

Status of Women in Politics

• The female voter turnout has increased in the country. However, the increasing proportion of women voters seen in local, state and general elections has not translated into more women contesting elections.
• As per data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), in India, women make up 14.44 per cent of the Lok Sabha. 
• According to a report of the Election Commission of India (ECI), women represent 10.5 per cent of all Members of Parliament as of October 2021. 
• Female MLAs’ representation stands at an average of 9 percent for all the state assemblies.
• India’s ranking in this regard is behind Pakistan (20 percent), Bangladesh (21 percent) and Nepal (34 percent).

Status of Women in Other Sectors

• Only 20.37 per cent of MSME owners are women, 10 percent of start-ups are founded by females, and 23.3 percent of women are in the labour force. 
• Most of the available statistics on India’s female labor rate do not incorporate the unpaid work that females do.