Trends and Levels of Female Literacy in Belagavi District

Women education plays a very important role in the overall growth of the country. It does not only help in the development of half of the human capital but also improves the standard of living. The progress of the nation or region is shown by the level of education and literacy of its population. Education, particularly among women has been considered as one of the major aspects for socio-economic development of the people of a region. Belagavi district is among the rapidly developing districts in Karnataka with respect to socio-economic and agricultural development. According to 2011 census, average literacy rate of Belagavi district (73.48%) is lower than the average literacy rate of Karnataka state (75.60%).(Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, 2011) This can be attributed to greater regional disparities throughout Belagavi district in literacy. In this paper, we present Provisional Population Totals of census 2001 and 2011 and examine the extent of literacy disparities at the taluk level. Here, we found that literacy rate in the study area was 64.21 % in 2001 which has increased to 73.48% in 2011. We also found that the urban literacy (85.56%) is significantly greater than the rural literacy (69.28%) which is concurrent to the wider gender disparities from the rural to the urban population