Does Religion Affect Women’s Agency? Empirical Evidence from India

India has passed several legislations and implemented policies to promote gender equality within the intimate space of the household and in the public sphere. Despite such measures, there are continuing and widening gender disparities for some indicators. In this paper, we use two sources of analysis: firstly, data from the Indian Human Development Survey-2 survey to explore differences in women’s autonomy by religion using conventional indicators of autonomy, and secondly, a descriptive analysis of divorce by religion using Census 2011. We empirically explore whether Muslim women suffer especially lower forms of agency compared to Hindu women as per the widespread belief in India or whether other markers (such as caste or marital status) appear more significant. Our analysis reveals that firstly, with regard to divorce rates, states that have an above-average proportion of Muslims in the population and that have other positive gender indicators such as better female literacy rates, less skewed sex ratios, less entrenched patriarchal norms, and similar rates of divorce exist for Hindus as for Muslims. However, for some states, we find higher rates of divorce among Muslim women than among Hindu women, and these states have less gender-equitable indicators and norms suggesting that in a more intense state of patriarchy, a husband’s unilateral right to divorce might be disadvantageous to women. Secondly, except for the gender difference in divorce rate for Muslim women, there is no substantial difference in measures of autonomy for Hindu and Muslim women in rural India across other indicators we use, such as decision-making abilities around accessing healthcare for themselves, how many children to have, and the purchase of land or household property. Thirdly, in urban regions, Muslim women are less likely to participate in the labor market than Hindu women. Unlike upper-caste women in urban and rural settings, women from lower castes have historically worked for pay as salaried or casual workers. Fourthly, marital status is a more important indicator of work participation—divorced and widowed women are more likely to report higher workforce participation and participation in public affairs, as are women from historically marginalized groups. Overall, we find that all women lack agency in several aspects of life. Drawing from two bodies of scholarship, one that engages with women’s autonomy and agency and another that analyses state feminism, along with our empirical analysis, we discuss factors other than religion that also play a major role in shaping women’s lives in India.