Ahmedabad has emerged as the third-best city in Western India for women’s employment, behind Pune and Mumbai, said a report by Avtar, a firm specialising in workplace inclusion. Chennai emerged as the best city across India for women’s employment, followed by Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. The report ranks 111 cities on parameters nurturing a conducive ecosystem for women’s employment.
Along with Ahmedabad, Visakhapatnam, Kolkata, Coimbatore and Madurai form the rest of the Top 10 cities — each has a population of more than one million — in terms of women’s employment.
“The fact that the South and West regions are more women-friendly in terms of employment is not a surprise, given the politico-historic context of these regions,” Saundarya Rajesh, founder-president, Avtar Group, was quoted in a report.
The rise of cities like Hubli, Nagpur, Ahmedabad and Coimbatore as promising hubs of women’s employment, due to their high Industrial Inclusion scores is very heartening,” Rajesh said. Metros such as Delhi and Kolkata have fallen behind in terms of social inclusion due to lower standards of safety and poor enablers for women to pursue employment, Rajesh said.
The study, apart from indexed scores, considered steps taken by states and cities in empowering women in the last one year. It considered key inclusion measures required for increasing women’s workforce participation.
The survey outlined the importance of transforming cities as spaces that can be freely navigated by women to pursue career and economic self-sufficiency goals.
“We are very excited about the possibilities to increase women’s employment being offered by cities such as Visakhapatnam, Madurai and Vadodara, which are growing centres of both industrial activity and social development,” Rajesh said.
“As rightly called out by our prime minister, to reap the benefits of the fourth industrial revolution we must enable more women in workplaces, especially in the growing industries. It is imperative that we look at the problem of low representation of women in India as not only something to be solved by corporates, but also as a goal for the state,” Rajesh said.
In north India, the top three cities are Delhi, Srinagar, and Amritsar.
In the south, the top three slots are taken by Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.
In the western region, Pune, Mumbai and Ahmedabad secure first, second and third places respectively. Raipur, Indore, and Bhopal secure the first, second and third places in the central region.
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