Thiruvananthapuram, April 13: Regarded as a progressive state with total literacy and social sector indices matching even advanced countries and a high gender equality index, Kerala still lags behind most other Indian states in work participation of women.
The state’s female employment rate of 22.9 per cent sharply contradicts its hyped records in gender empowerment, according to the “Economic Review 2009,” released by the state Planning Board recently.
In contrast to 55.9 per cent of rural males and 54.7 per cent urban males employed in Kerala in 2004-05, work participation rate of rural and urban female counterparts were only 25.6 per cent and 20.0 per cent in the same period, it said.
–PTI