Female Business Ownership and Informal Sector Persistence (India)

. . . [T]he unorganized [informal] sector has more than kept pace such that the unorganized sector’s share of employment has increase from 80.3% in 1994 to 81.5% in 2005 . . .  What is striking is the substantial increase in female-owned business from 9.2% of employment in 1994 to 18.7% of employment in 2005. 

In the graph "mfg" is probably manufacturing growth. 
From a paper by Ejaz Ghani, William R. Kerr, & Stephen D. O’Connell.

The explain (p. 5)

Cross-country data from the World Bank Entrepreneurship Snapshots find that India’s rate of entrepreneurship is lower than its stage of development would suggest; similar comparisons also highlight that India’s gender ratio among entrepreneurs is lower than its peers. This dual under-performance has cultural and economic antecedents, but it is starting to change. Women are making economic gains in the Indian economy, and further progress represents a tremendous growth opportunity for the country. This paper identifies how this process can contribute to persistence of the informal sector, which is an important consideration for how policy makers view and treat the informal sector.

HT: Catalina Granda Carvajal