Rural-Urban Gender Disparities in Access to Higher Education in Haryana (India)

In the Indian system, higher education includes the education imparted after the higher secondary stage. According to World Bank, Tertiary education broadly refers to all post secondary education including but not limited to universities. Education is an important social resource and a means of reducing inequality in any society. It helps the individual to raise his or her socio-economic status, knowledge, skills, values and attitudes acquired through education helps one to lead a desired quality of life. It is the most important agent of social change, particularly among the females and socially backward sections. Compared to equality, equity is a modern concept. As a concept equity means equality among the equals, broadly the disparity between the castes is a case of inequality, but the disparity within the caste such as rural-urban and male-female shows the inequity within the population. The access to higher education is generally measured by enrolment ratio. Three alternative methods are used to estimate the access to higher education namely Gross Enrolment Ratio, Net Enrolment Ratio and Eligible Enrolment Ratio in paper study. In this paper an attempt to analyze the rural-urban gender disparities in access to higher education in Haryana (India) at the block level and to identify reasons thereof. The statistical tool of Kundus Index for disparity, GER, NER& EER, correlation and cartographic technique (GIS, bar& pie diagram) has been used in the study. The study is based on secondary data from the Census of India, 2011 and field work report.