Imparting skills to women in administration, agriculture would raise GDP: National Commission for Women

NEW DELHI: Imparting training to women in planning and administration as also provision of technical skills to women engaged in agriculture will help increase country's GDP, Lalitha Kumaramangalam, Chairperson of National Commission for Women ( NCW), underlined today.

She also called for more representation of professional women in the boards of companies and flexi-time to women by their employers.

"There is a need for imparting training to women in planning and administration as also provision of technical skills to women engaged in agriculture. If this was carried out in right earnest, the country GDP would rise by two percentage points," Mangalam said while inaugurating a seminar on Accelerating Women Entrepreneurship, organised by FICCI in partnership with Intel India.

"Women must take to mentoring other women which should become part of the ecosystem," she stressed, adding there was a need to look at entrepreneurship beyond the traditional sense.

Kumaramangalam said that women suffer from poor asset ownership and fare poorly on the awareness levels of their legal rights. Even those who are aware, do not demand their rights vociferously, she pointed out.

She favoured providing flexi-time to women by their employers as it has been observed that those between the ages of 30-45 drop out of employment because of family responsibilities and because of the fact that the age group represents the reproductive years of their life.

Also a report titled Accelerating women entrepreneurship in India: roadmap for the national capital region was released at the event.