Women literacy in Kashmir is among the highest in the country but women employment isn’t. A rise in the former without a simultaneous increase in the latter, makes limited sense and almost no difference in the gendered welfare outcomes. A study of the pattern of women education in Kashmir, in particular, manifests a skewness towards social sciences and subtle literatures and language genres. Though STEM education has increased lately but the former continues to dominate women’s education map of the region. 

The pure formal sector, the government sector, has steadily saturated over time; more so because the global dynamics have altered and the contemporary day already has the first trillionaire of the world! Capitalism continues to spread its wings unstoppably. In Kashmir, the private sector started very late and continues to be small. The formal part of the private sector is immensely minuscule while its informal part is comparatively larger. At the same time, the average household income of a Kashmiri household is more tilted towards an egalitarian universality than towards inequality and wealth concentration amongst a top few. Over time, multiple factors like social structures, religious overshadowing, geographic isolation etc. have shaped the ideology of the people in a way that if women weren’t able to find work in the formal government sector, they would rather not work. This choice didn’t affect the basic levels of the household........

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