Owners’ Gender and Gross Value Added in India’s Unincorporated Non-Agricultural Enterprises (2023–24): An Empirical Investigation

Self-employment dominates and continues to increase its share in India’s employment landscape whether agricultural or non-agricultural. A large part of it is necessity-driven and undertaken for survival, as opposed to entrepreneurial self-employment driven by innovation and opportunity. By incorporating gender-specific effects, this study uncovers sources of disparities in gross value-added (GVA) based on gender of the proprietor, using data from India’s Unincorporated Non-Agricultural Enterprises (UNAEs) survey for 2023-24. Cross-tabulations reveal a pronounced gender gap in firm performance: female-led UNAEs are disproportionately concentrated in the lowest GVA quartile. Lower-GVA firms have less educated proprietors and operate from household premises as own account workers; features that typically characterise female proprietors. Quantile regression analysis of the log transformed GVA shows that, controlling for other covariates, compared to urban men, urban women close in by the top quartile, while rural women close the gap by nearly one-half between the 25th and 75th percentiles. The median regression model, allowing for proprietor- and firm-level factors to differ across male-and female-led enterprises, further shows that female proprietors diverge from male proprietors primarily in hiring patterns, business location, and industry choice, while education and social background have relatively uniform effects across genders. This relatively underexplored analysis of UNAEs also highlights that data limitations permit only a minimal assessment on the role of gender composition of hired workers. Length: 44 pages