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Is gender disparity greater in North India? This paper seeks to answer this question by examining gender differences in probability of completing school education across regions in India. A Gender Disparity Index is calculated using National Sample Survey Organization unit level data from the 61st Round and regional variations in this index analyzed to examine the hypothesis that gender disparity is greater in the North, comparative to the rest of India. This is followed by an econometric exercise using a logit model to confirm the results of the descriptive analysis after controlling for socio-economic correlates of completing school education. Finally, the Fairlie decomposition method is used to estimate the contribution of explanatory variables in explaining differences in probabilities of completing schooling across regions. The results reveal that gender disparities are greater in North India, for total and rural population, and in Eastern India, for urban population. However, the ‘residual effect’ after accounting for effect of explanatory variables - often referred to as ‘discrimination effect’, as opposed to disparity – is higher in Eastern India, irrespective of the place of residence.

It was initially believed that the rapid growth of the Information Technology (IT) industry in India would generate less exploitative avenues of employment for women. Further, economic empowerment would strengthen the bargaining power of women within the household and improve her self-esteem. However, recent studies argue that the IT sector has been unable to isolate itself from the social context, so that the organizational process continues to be shaped by the conflicting and asymmetrical gender relationships that prevail in Indian society. This leads to the imposition of a dual burden (of work and home commitments) on working women. Based on a survey of women workers in Calcutta’s IT sector, this paper agues that contextual developments have weakened the patriarchal foundations of the family. This has allowed women workers to break out of a passive mould and attempt to carve out their individual destinies. However, organizational constraints and the family structure impose structural constraints on their agency, so that women workers have to adapt their aspirations to contextual realities. Decision-making of working women may, in this emerging situation, be conceptualized in terms of Simon’s satisficing model.