Intra-State Differences in Gender Disparities In order to understand the intricacies of gender disparities at much more dis-aggregated levels, we have utilized district level details of gender as well as non-gender variables separately for rural and urban areas for 2001 and 1991, though we would base more on 2001 results due to the availability of cultural information and also NSS household level data on purchasing power, poverty and inequality. All the required information for 2001 districts is produced in Table 3(a) and 3(b). The interesting findings are noted below.
Sex ratios (both under six and all ages) and female literacy rates do not produce any statistically significant variations at any level of the analysis, all districts taken together, or separately within each of the states, with rural and urban divisions. Work participation rates also vary within tolerable limits except the rural areas of Orissa and Assam thereby meaning quite consistent demographic behaviour among these districts. Female agricultural labourers produce moderately high variation among the districts of Kerala only. In all other gender variables, the districts selected from the two different types of states provide quite consistent relation.
In spite of the above, wide variations are observed in terms of both rural and urban head count ratio among the districts in all the states. On the other hand, there is no major variation among the districts in purchasing power. Interestingly, inter-district disparity is found to be the highest in Kerala in terms of not only poverty ratio and purchasing power but also economic inequality.
What about gross gender inequality (GGI) among the districts within each of the states? Interestingly, in rural areas of Assam and Kerala, the mean value of GGI index has gone in favour of female population with very high coefficient of variations across the districts. For urban areas, the value of GGI also favours the female population in Assam, Kerala and Gujarat. On the other hand, inter-district disparities are highly significant in both rural and urban areas of the all the states except rural Chattisgarh and urban Orissa.
Compared to 1991, the tendency towards gender equality is quite mixed among the districts within these states. For example, a clear equalizing tendency from female towards male is observed in rural and urban areas of Assam and Kerala; a rising rural GGI with declining urban GGI in Gujarat; rising GGI in both rural and urban Haryana; and a rising inequality in both rural and urban areas of Orissa.
These findings make it clear once again that the relationship between gender disparities and other socio-economic factors are not straightforward either among the states or among the districts within the states. But given state as a major linguistic geographical unit, unless districts are assumed to form the basis for estimation of the parameters, no parametric test even if it contains nice properties is effective enough for future prediction.
