Occupational Segregation in the Indian Labour Market

This article measures the extent of occupational segregation for gender and social groups in India. It is based on a recent round of a nationally representative employment and unemployment survey of the Government of India. We use overall and local measures of occupational segregation. We find that occupational segregation for both genders and social groups is higher in the urban sector than in the rural sector. Females are more segregated than their male counterparts in both sectors. Among social groups, scheduled caste and scheduled tribe groups have higher levels of segregation. Furthermore, we find that regular workers and the elderly are more segregated when we examine segregation, respectively, by nature of employment and across age groups.