What is the percentage of Employment of Currently married women and men?

National Family Health Survey -2019–21 gives out some interesting statistics about women’s empowerment.

Employment of currently married women and men:

Thirty-two percent of currently married women age 15–49, and 98 percent of currently married men age 15–49 are employed. Among employed women, 83 percent earn cash and 15 percent are not paid at all. More than four-fifths of employed women (85%) participate indecisions about the use of their own earnings.

Let us look at states which are above the national average for married women who are employed in the past 12 months

North India, all states are below the National Average except Ladakh, where 47.7% of the married women are employed. Even developed Union Territories like Chandigarh, Delhi and Punjab have less than 25% of the married women employed.

Now let us contrast this with Southern India. Here in Andra and Karnataka, more than 49.8% and 45.8% of the married women are employed.

The same is also visible in Puducherry ( 40.5%), Tamilnadu ( 46.0%), Telangana( 53.3%)

Kerala the state where female literacy levels are higher than other states, does not fare that well in employment. Notice that only 29% of the married women are employed.

In Maharastra and Gujarat also more than 40% of the women work

Now surprisingly in West Bengal, Uttarpradesh and Bihar the percentage of married women working is less than 20%. These are large states and a lot of work needs to be done for creating employment among married women.

Even states like Chattisgarh and Madhya pradesh have large population of married women working.

We can conclude that women employment is much higher in South, West, North East compared to North.