Beyond the Norm: Scope of Non-Traditional Livelihood Skilling For Women in Achieving Women’s Economic Empowerment.

Abstract

The last four decades of Indian history is marked with rapid economic growth along with a rise in population with increasing rates of urbanisation (World Bank 2014, World Bank 2015). It has also been the time when women’s education, marital age and child-bearing patterns have changed with primary school enrolment of girls reaching a parity with that of the boys and women’s rate of attending secondary and high school doubling in the country (World Bank, 2014; Neff et al, 2012, Kapsos et al, 2014). Such positive changes however did not get reflected in women’s participation in paid labour force, which has remained dismally low with India having one of the lowest female labour force participation (FLFP) rates in the world.