Women and men in India 2000

It has always been the endeavour of the Central Statistical Organisation [CSO) in the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation as the nodal department for the Official Statistics: to bring out at regular interval up-to-date and reliable statistics on various issues of current nature relating to the socio-economic conditions of the country which may be used for development planning and policy formulation. The requirements of statistics undergo constant change with the changing socio-economic pattern of the society. During the last decade, the issues concerning gender equality in the context of development planning has assumed greater importance, particularly, in the wake of the economic liberalization programme. This issue got more focus in recent years, in view of better educational facilities and also enhancement in the social awareness among the women. As a consequence and in order to give more emphasis to the empowerment of women, the year 2001 has been declared as the 'Woman's Empowerment Year.

In order to address the needs of planers, policy makers, researchers and other data users CSO brought out a publication entitled "Women & Men in India for the first time in the year 1995 (The publication contained Time Series Data on number of indicators reflecting the status of women encompassing various facets of development of women in the contemporary Indian society and also changes over time. The publication has also served an important purpose of sensitizing the data producers and users on the gender issues.) The publication was very well received and appreciated by policy makers, research workers and academicians. Keeping in view its utility, a combined issue of the publication for the years 1996 and 1997 was brought out in 1998 and the last issue pertaining to the year 1998 was brought out in 1999. The issue in hand is the fourth one in the series. In the successive issues of this publication, efforts have been made to make the presentation more and more user friendly by incorporating sufficient number of graphs and charts. In the current issue, a large number of new tables from various sources have been incorporated to make the publication more comprehensive. In this issue, for the first time, a number of text boxes have been included in various sections, giving a brief interpretation and analysis of the results presented in different tables, enabling the users to have a quick zest of the important trends