Gender Development Indicators: Issues, Debates and Ranking of Districts

The present study emphasizes on independent variable analysis in assessing gender development at the disaggregated district level to account for problems such as the major contradiction facing this century which relates to development sans equality, growth without equitable distribution, prosperity alongside rising gender inequalities, none of which are natural but are rather influenced by social and cultural factors.This paper is divided into seven sections. After the introduction, the second section deals with some of the debates and measures of development indicators. Section three presents the methodology, objectives and scope of the study. The fourth section discusses the selected indicators along with a state level analysis of each of them. A detailed presentation of district-wise data analysis is undertaken in the fifth section under specific sub-heads of demographic, educational, health, sociocultural and economic indicators. The main findings are presented in the sixth section. Some concluding remarks, including directions for further explorations and limitations of the present study are provided in the last section. [CWDS]