UPSC Exam Preparation: Topic of the Day – Digital Gender Atlas

The Department of School Education and Literacy, under the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD), has developed a Digital Gender Atlas for advancing Girl’s education. It has been developed for highlighting the low performing geographic areas, issues and social background of the girls, especially belonging to the marginalised groups such as the Muslim minorities, scheduled tribes and scheduled castes on a fixed set of gender-related education indicators.

Digital Gender Atlas is designed considering two broad areas of performance of education of girls and vulnerabilities visualized in five different segments:

1.Comparative Composite Index based Quartile Ranking:

The index is grouped under categories of outcome indicators, teachers, infrastructure and access and based on 25 indicators pertaining to secondary, primary and upper primary level. This will be available for State, district and block level.

2. Trend Analysis of the performance status:

The performance status and the trend analysis of the performance of 25 individual indicators is made available for over three years viz 2011-12, 2012-13 & 2013-14 at the block, district and state levels.

3. Spatial Distribution of Special Focus Districts:

Special Focus Districts are the  districts where the population of 25% and above of people belonging to Educationally Backward Blocks (EBB), Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) districts, Left Wing Extremist affected districts, minority community districts as identified by Ministry of Minority Affairs, districts with a Muslim population of more than 20%, Schedule Castes  districts,  Schedule Tribes districts.

4.Vulnerability status:

The atlas provides a clear picture of vulnerability status of an area based on a composite index of 3 broad indicators

(i) Female literacy in rural areas

(ii) Percentage of boys or girls married below the legal age of marriage and

(iii)Working children

Separate visualisations are made available for working children for the following sub-indicators: disaggregation by age and gender for the age group of 5-9 years, 10-14 years and 15-19 years and also for marriage below the legal age. These maps are available up to the district level.

5.Children with Disabilities:

The performance status of six individual indicators can be visualized at the state and district level across three years i.e. 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14.

The Digital Gender Atlas maps all the states. It is being used as a planning tool by the states for coming up with strategies for inputs for the state SSA and RMSA annual plans. It is accessible on the rmsaindia.gov.in website

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