Women miners of India: Gender wage gap

India is richly endowed with mineral resources that are essential for promising future; Since Independence (1947), India's mining industry has shown rapid growth from production of 20 minerals valued at INR 700 million in 1950 to 84 minerals valued at INR 757130 million during the year 2007-08 (increase by thousand times). But during the same period employment in mines has decreased by 4% from 0.549 million to 0.526 million.  However, there is not much recorded involvement of women’s participation in the formal mining industry in India. This paper explores gender wage gap and absence social security for women miners in small-scale and artisanal sector in India. For determining the size of miners, data were collected from Census of India, 2011 and wage data was collected from National Sample Survey Organization that provides wage as per weekly status for the year 2004-05. Since mining sector is spread over organized and unorganized sector and Census does not provide sectoral data, workforce in organized sector is calculated as 10% of total miners that amounts to 2 million miners and unorganized miners as 0.188 million.  Since, women workers constitute 6 to 7 % of the workforce in the unorganized sector that is known as small-scale and artisanal mining, number of women miners in small scale and artisanal mining comes to 0.13 million. Regarding wage data also, sectoral distribution is not given. On an average, as per NSSO, wage ratio is 0.39. On a closer look by National Classification of Occupations, it is observed that in the basic labour-intensive rudimentary jobs where women workers occupy sizeable force, wage gap ranges between 0.22 to 0.28 and provisions of social security are completely non-existent. Women in mining sector are drawn mainly from landless agricultural background demands greater attention from policy makers.