Demographic dividend that India enjoys and the urgency to build the strategy to become a prosperous nation on the strength of demographic dividend is often talked about. According to the UN Population Division, by the year 2020, almost 20% of the global population in the working age accounting for nearly 1 billion people would be Indians which is indeed an

astonishing fact. One key constituent of demographic dividend is women whose potential to contribute towards economic gains is huge. However, according to the Gender Gap Index 2012, India stands at 123rd position out of the 135 countries surveyed. 94% of the women in the workforce are part of the unorganised sector and just 6% are in the organised sector as per the estimate of the National Commission on Self-Employed Women. The nation faces unique set of challenges with respect to women employed in the organised versus unorganised sector. In this column, we shall examine the status of women in the organised sector and what can be done to enhance their productivity.

The status of women in the organised sector can be assessed by examining three important aspects?the number of women employed in the organised sector, the compensation paid to women and the drop out ratio. India has the lowest percentage of women employees (23%), super seeded by countries such as Japan (24%), Turkey (26%) and Austria (29%), according to the Corporate Gender Gap report brought out by the World Economic Forum. As per the UNESCO Report on Gender Equality in Education in India, there is a large difference even in the salary structure of men and women in corporate India. The average annual income of a woman is less than one-third of a man?s employed in Indian companies. According to Gender Diversity Benchmark for Asia 2011 study,

Indian women dropout ratio at 48% is significantly higher in the junior to middle category as compared to its regional counterparts.

Against this backdrop, it is encouraging to note that 30% of the workforce in the IT/ITeS sector comprises of women and it is heartening to note that there is no inequality in terms of compensation levels although there are other challenges women face in terms of their upward mobility. In the context of higher and professional education, skills are embedded in their learning and such

education enables them to find employment opportunities in the organised sector. Various studies have indicated that once women enter into higher education and particularly professional education stream, have high motivation to study and excel due to various reasons including the merit basis of education system fostering women in professional education, scholarships for women

encourage them to pursue higher education, residential facilities enable women to travel to distant locations to undertake studies and in some locations women?s universities are also found to be contributing a great deal in supporting women for higher education.

Another important requirement would be to constantly upgrade oneself and continue the learning even while

in the corporate sector which is much easier today owing to technology and distance learning, to enable them to

remain competitive in their chosen fields. The training proposition should not merely be an aggregator of course content but also provide a comprehensive platform to address the complex pain-points of India?s skilling dilemma. This has been made possible as education technology has today matured to a degree that the learning experience of even traditionally face-to-face classes can now be enhanced and taught effectively, just by using technology in many disciplines thus making anytime, anyplace learning feasible for women.

Women who are interested in getting back to work after a gap to bring up their children can benefit from the recent breakthrough policy pronouncements resulting in the skills to education framework. Skills to education framework provides a laddered and modular approach to first equipping the learner with skills to make her employable and then providing her with continuous learning opportunities to upgrade her skills or to get a formal qualification right up to a PhD degree. The framework also recognises that learning is not restricted to classroom alone and learning that takes place at the workplace is also valued towards credits required to acquire a formal qualification. This is a great booster for women who may have taken a temporary break in their careers but when they wish to get back to employment, they can encash upon their previous work experience, acquire further formal qualification through focused studies in the chosen discipline and thus not only become equipped to reenter the corporate world but also manage to shorten the duration for accomplishing this.

Networking which involves interacting with people after office hours to develop professional contacts is not a natural phenomenon for most women. However with the social networking sites, this has become quite feasible for women to adopt skills to connect with various takeholders and develop professionally. Social networking and teleworking are a big boon to women employees who now have a variety of opportunities?they can continue with their careers, develop new skills, become self-employed, set up new enterprises or rejoin the corporate sector.

In summary, as economists often state, women index of employability is so low in our country that it can only get better with any focused initiative that can be put in place. For every rupee spent on empowerment of women, the women?s demographic dividend would augur well for the women folk in general and the society at large. The key to the success lies in careful selection of sectors and skills for each of the locations intertwined with the industries prevalent in these areas and providing world class quality training with innovative internship and industry exposure

opportunities.

We have seen the success of the Women?s Self Help Groups supported by some of the State governments and micro finance firms. It is time we emulated this model and created a movement for scalable skill development plan that truly empowers the women and devised more women friendly policies that would enable them build successful careers all of which leading to women demographic dividend becoming a real advantage to the nation.

The writer is CEO, Global Talent Track, a corporate training solutions company