A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Gender Related Educational Development Index of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Literacy is an important indicator of human resource development. It is crucial for the overall
development of society as it has the potential to increase human capital, removes inequality from society,
affects the growth of employment opportunities, and above all liberates them from social evil. As in the
development process, both men and women play an equally crucial role but the fruits of development are
not equally shared among them. Therefore the study of literacy and its differential on the gender of an area
is indispensable. According to Census (2011), literacy rate of India is 74.04% out of which the male
literacy rate is 82.14% and female literacy rate is 65.46% and has a huge gender gap of 16.60% while at the
state level in Uttar Pradesh this gender gap figure amounts to 20.10%. From a population point of view
Uttar Pradesh is a very important state of the country as 16.17% of India's population lives in the state and
as literacy is one of the important measures of any region's human resource development. This paper is an
attempt to evaluate the Gender disparity present in the literacy level of Uttar Pradesh. For this GenderRelated Educational Development Index (GEDI) has been used on the lines of Human Development
Index of UNDPto measure the disparity level. The paper uses the data of two consecutive census i.e. 2001-
2011 to measure the GEDI both in a spatial and temporal context. It is found that the state has improved as
the GEDI value increased from 0.530 in 2001 to 0.662 in 2011, showing that there still exists a disparity
which needs to be reduced.