Gender Wage Gap in Rural Labour Markets: An Empirical Study of North East India

Even after three decades of economic reforms, India’s labor market is characterized by stark inter-gender differences in terms of both participation rate and working time. Identification of the causes is necessary to remove the disparity and unequal sharing of economic opportunities to make way for women’s empowerment. This research attempts in that direction, examining the prevalence of these inequities in rural areas of North-East Indian states using unit-level data from the 2017–18 Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). The methodology for the estimation here is based on Blinder- Oaxaca decomposition method after correcting for sample bias forwarded by Heckman. The analysis shows that in both labor force participation and the wage gap, the females in the region lag behind their male counterparts by a huge margin. Further, the analysis shows that one of the main factors leading to the difference is the disparities in human capital assets. On top of female educational enrollment being low, there is also a huge lack of higher educational attainment, while males have accomplished much better in both the parameters. Moreover, the presence of social stigma against women working and discrimination put the female labor outcomes in a gloomy state.