FOREWORD

Promoting gender equality has been a key priority of the Government and is also plays a focal role in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda 2030. Gender statistics cuts across all areas of official statistics and provides a lens for policy makers to evolve targeted strategies to address gaps and bridging the gender-based disparities. The National Statistical Office has been bringing out "Women and Men in India" as an annual publication since 1995 and the current issue is the twenty first in the series. In each release, efforts are made to improve its coverage and presentation by incorporating latest available information in different domains of the Government and also based on the inputs and feedback of the varied users. In the current issue, information on a minimum set of gender indicators has been incorporated in the publication so as to accelerate existing efforts to generate internationally comparable gender indicators on health, education, employment, entrepreneurship and asset ownership.

I am confident that this publication would be useful to planners, policy makers, researchers and academicians to recognize the impact of policy interventions and suggest measures to reduce gender disparities as India moves towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

We look forward to comments and suggestions for improving the quality and coverage of information presented in this publication.

Pravin Srivastava

Chief Statistician of India