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Gender Gaps in Vidarbha: Education, Jobs, and Financial Access Still Unequal

Gender Gaps in Vidarbha: Education, Jobs, and Financial Access Still Unequal
Gender Gaps in Vidarbha: Education, Jobs, and Financial Access Still Unequal

In several households across Vidarbha, the calendar year may change, but its routines do not. Who fetches water, who cycles to college, who opens a bank account, and who migrates for seasonal labour is not left to chance.


These are often determined by gender. Vidarbha’s social indicators show how structural inequality plays out quietly but persistently in daily life.


The region continues to display stark gaps between men and women in areas like schooling, job participation, and economic agency, revealing the long shadow of institutional and cultural disparities.



Unequal Paths in Education


Vidarbha’s educational landscape reflects a duality that’s difficult to ignore. According to the 2011 Census, Amravati district, one of Vidarbha’s urban centres, recorded a female literacy rate of 88.98%, significantly above the national average of 65.46% for women.


Still, it trailed the local male literacy rate of 93.88%, leaving a gap of nearly five percentage points. At the state level, Maharashtra’s average literacy figures stood at 82.14% for males and 65.46% for females, revealing a broader 17-point disparity that contextualises Vidarbha’s partial progress.


In more recent years, the dropout rate for girls in schools has emerged as a crucial indicator of retention and progression.


The Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) shows a steady decline in dropouts at the primary level in Maharashtra, from 1.1% in 2018-19 to 0% by 2021-22. Upper-primary levels remained relatively stable around 1.6%, but the data at the secondary level showed more troubling trends.


Although the dropout rate for girls improved from 12.8% in 2018-19 to 10.6% in 2021-22, it still reflected a disproportionately high attrition during adolescence, a period when societal and economic pressures often converge to push girls out of school.


These figures, while not Vidarbha-specific, carry clear implications for the region, where rural poverty and cultural restrictions intersect to limit female education beyond early grades. In households with limited resources, sons are frequently given priority for continued schooling, while girls are expected to contribute to domestic work or prepare for early marriage.


The quality of education has further complicated the issue. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 recorded a noticeable decline in basic learning outcomes.


Across Maharashtra, only 18.5% of Class 3 students in government schools could perform basic subtraction tasks, down from 28.1% in 2018.


Reading ability also fell from 44.2% to 26.6% over the same period. Although these trends are not gender-disaggregated, they carry added weight for girls, who are more likely to be pulled from school if performance deteriorates or if the value of education is brought into question.


The National Achievement Survey 2021 added further cause for concern, with 77% of Class 10 students in Maharashtra falling below the basic proficiency level in science. Mathematics outcomes followed a similar trajectory, underscoring a broader decline in learning that cuts across subjects.


Beyond dropout rates and academic scores, gender disparities also manifest in the medium of instruction.


A study published in December 2024 in the Journal of Social Policy, Social Change and Development uncovered a pattern in Vidarbha where families with some financial means enrol boys in English-medium schools while girls are placed in vernacular-language institutions.

The significance of this practice is not only symbolic. In India, English proficiency acts as a key driver of economic and social mobility. Excluding girls from English education limits their long-term access to higher education, competitive employment, and participation in the urban job market.


The period between 2022 and 2025 brought further challenges. Board examination results in the Nagpur division show a decline in the SSC (Class 10) pass rate from 97% in 2022 to 92.05% in 2023, while the HSC (Class 12) pass rate dropped from 96.52% to 90.35%. In Amravati, the HSC pass rate stood at 92.75% in 2023.


These declines, likely due to teacher shortages, irregular academic schedules, and structural neglect, further endanger girls’ educational continuity. When school systems begin to falter, girls are often the first to be withdrawn.



Gendered Participation in the Workforce

Gendered Participation in the Workforce
Gendered Participation in the Workforce

Census data from the Gadchiroli district reveals a widening gender gap in workforce participation. In 2001, 55.5% of men and 46.9% of women were part of the workforce. By 2011, male participation was nearly unchanged at 55.3%, while female participation fell to 44.7%, expanding the gender gap to 10.06 percentage points.


Across the district, average female workforce participation decreased from 45% to 44%, a drop that contradicts expectations of economic inclusion rising with development.

This reversal is particularly telling. While overall economic conditions may have improved, structural barriers, including lack of child care, gendered job expectations, safety concerns, and domestic obligations, have continued to limit women’s access to paid work. These factors exist even in areas showing positive workforce trends.


Within Gadchiroli, differences between administrative units are notable. The highest workforce growth (20–25%) occurred in Gadchiroli, Armori, Korchi, Dhanora, and Sironcha. Moderate growth (15–20%) was recorded in Chamorshi, Kurkheda, and Desaiganj, while Mulchera, Ettapalli, Bhamragad, and Aheri saw growth rates below 15%.



Despite these variances, there is no corresponding improvement in women’s employment share, indicating that economic expansion does not equate to gender parity.

Unpaid work remains another invisible dimension. Although specific time-use statistics for Vidarbha were not cited in the available research, broader studies in rural India reveal that women spend considerable hours on domestic labour, caregiving, and subsistence farming, often alongside any paid employment they manage to secure.


This “double burden” is not captured in official labour statistics but heavily influences women’s ability to pursue full-time, skilled, or better-paying work.


Financial Access and Informal Exclusion


Financial inclusion has seen tangible gains in recent years, with government-backed schemes playing a notable role.


According to National Family Health Survey-5 (2019–21), the proportion of women in India who operate their own bank accounts rose from 53% in 2015–16 to 78.6%. Though no region-specific data for Vidarbha is provided, this growth likely includes parts of eastern Maharashtra.


These advances have been linked directly to the PM Jan Dhan Yojana, under which more than half of the newly opened accounts were in the names of women, according to commercial bank data.


However, account ownership does not automatically translate to financial empowerment. Active use, independent access, and decision-making power remain critical factors that often go unmeasured.

Mobile phone access is a related indicator. NFHS-5 noted a marginal decline in phone ownership among women in states like Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh, suggesting that broader access cannot be assumed everywhere.


In many rural areas, phones are shared among household members, and women's usage is often restricted by cost, supervision, or social norms. Without personal access to mobile technology, women are excluded from digital banking, government apps, and job alerts, widening the gap between formal inclusion and practical empowerment.



Property ownership is another area where data limitations obscure the full picture. While the NFHS collects information on women owning houses or land, it does not track the size, control, or economic utility of those assets.


A woman named on a document may not have the authority to sell, lease, or use the land as collateral.


No data was found on Vidarbha-specific trends, highlighting the absence of meaningful metrics to evaluate women’s access to land-based security and wealth creation.


Cultural and Structural Barriers

Cultural and Structural Barriers in Gender Roles in Vidarbha
Cultural and Structural Barriers

The persistence of gender disparities in Vidarbha is not merely an outcome of policy gaps or uneven development. Cultural practices, historical hierarchies, and patriarchal norms continue to shape how resources are distributed within families.


A recurring theme in the research is the tendency of households to treat education and professional development for sons as investments, while similar expenditures for daughters are often seen as expendable.

The divide is sharper for girls from marginalised caste communities. The research draws on a framework shaped by thinkers like Savitribai Phule, Jotirao Phule, and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who argued that caste and gender oppression are deeply interlinked.


In this context, English education becomes not just a skill but a tool of social mobility, one that is selectively denied to many Dalit and Adivasi girls in Vidarbha.


Developmental imbalances between Western and Eastern Maharashtra compound the issue. While districts like Pune and Thane benefit from high per-capita income and dense infrastructure, Vidarbha has lagged in industrial diversification, transport access, and healthcare coverage.



The absence of these enabling conditions increases the cost of opportunity for women, especially those living in villages or forest-fringe settlements.

Further limitations stem from outdated datasets. Much of the employment data still relies on the 2011 Census. There is limited publicly available, updated information on female workforce trends, time-use patterns, and land control in the post-pandemic period. Without these figures, planners cannot track emerging risks or measure the impact of recent policies.


In Vidarbha, gender disparities are not always loud, but they are consistent. The indicators of school enrolment, dropout rates, literacy, job participation, banking access, and asset control move, but they do not converge.


Small gains in one area are often offset by losses in another. For every girl who enters an English-medium school in Nagpur, dozens leave school early in rural Washim or Gadchiroli.

While account ownership rises, many women still lack phones to operate mobile banking apps. While the workforce grows in a tahsil, women's share shrinks.


These trends suggest that structural inequality operates through a series of small decisions and exclusions.


Each one may appear minor, but together they build a system where women’s social and economic agency is restricted across stages of life.


Vidarbha’s disparities are not incidental, they are built into its educational priorities, job structures, and development plans. Addressing them will require precise knowledge, not assumptions, and measurable change, not just outreach.



References




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The NewsDirt is a trusted source for authentic, ground-level journalism, highlighting the daily struggles, public issues, history, and local stories from Vidarbha’s cities, towns, and villages. Committed to amplifying voices often ignored by mainstream media, we bring you reliable, factual, and impactful reporting from Vidarbha’s grassroots.

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