Title: An empirical investigation of inequality among the self employed women entrepreneurs in informal sector in India

Authors: Annapurna Dixit; Alok Kumar Pandey

Addresses: Department of Economics, Arya Mahila PG College, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India ' Centre for Integrated Rural Development, Faculty of Social Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

Abstract: The present study takes into account self employed women entrepreneurs engaged in running vegetable/fruit/flower/fish, beauty parlour, boutique, stationary/gift/toy, general store, cosmetic/bangle, grocery store, tea/cold drink/egg/pan, clothes/garment and others. Based on 935 women entrepreneurs Gini coefficient and Theil index have been the highest for those women entrepreneurs who are engaged in tea/cold drink/egg/pan business and the lowest for those engaged in vegetable/fruit/flower/fish. Subgroup indices of general entropy and Atkinson for economic activities shows that GE (–1) is the highest for and district wise general stores, GE (0) is the highest for beauty parlour, GE (1) is the highest tea/cold drink/egg/pan and GE (2) is the highest for cloth/garments. Subgroup indices of Atkinson A (0.5), A (1) and A (2) for economic activities are the highest for tea/cold drink/egg/pan business, vegetable/fruit/flower/fish and for beauty parlour business. It is worth mentioning here that within group inequality is more than the between group inequality.

Keywords: inequality; Gini coefficient; Theil index; women entrepreneurs; self employment; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2020.104957

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2020 Vol.24 No.1, pp.57 - 77

Received: 26 May 2017
Accepted: 30 Oct 2017
Published online: 10 Feb 2020 *

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