A little more than 48 per cent of the Indian rural population is female, according to the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 (SECC) released on Friday. This is in keeping with the rural gender ratio found in the Census of India 2011.
Marking the first all-India Census to be released since the Supreme Court recognised transgenders as the third gender in 2014, the SECC found that transgenders comprise 0.1 per cent of India’s rural population. Andaman & Nicobar islands, West Bengal, Gujarat, Odisha and Mizoram have the highest proportions of transgenders.
The Census also found that 41.6 per cent of rural Indians were unmarried, 40 per cent are currently married and 3.5 per cent are divorced.
Daman and Diu lead the country in the proportion of their rural population that has remained unmarried — at 55.9 per cent, this is far higher than the national average. Chandigarh, on the other hand, has only 23.2 per cent of its population that has never married.
Puducherry and Kerala have the highest proportion of widows, at 6 % and 5.5 % respectively.
The average household in rural India has close to five members, and only 12.8 per cent of them are headed by women. Lakshadweep bucks this trend, with over 40 per cent of its rural households headed by women.
