IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ess/wpaper/id12999.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Anomaly of Women’s Work and Education in India

Author

Listed:
  • Surbhi Ghai

Abstract

This paper utilizes a large cross-section of data sets such as the ILOSTAT, NSSO Quinquennial Employment and Unemployment Survey, Labour Bureau Annual Employment and Unemployment Survey, National Family Health Survey and CMIE Consumer Pyramid Household Survey to comment on the falling female labour force participation rates in India. It is found that not only has there been a fall in the female labour force participation rates, but the size of the total female labour force has also shrunk in recent years. Besides presenting a series of demand and supply side factors that might possibly explain this trend, it aims to look at it particularly in conjunction with education and provide a commentary on the same. It is proposed that prevailing social norms and patriarchy hinders the participation of women in the economy despite high levels of education. Bivariate and multivariate analyses is conducted on state level cross-sectional data and it is found that patriarchy is indicative of the large proportion of women out of the labour force at high levels of education. It is concluded that education in the current form alone might not be sufficient to spur growth in female labour force participation rates in India. Government schemes must target the fundamental cultural and social forces that shape patriarchy. These coupled with policies that simultaneously address some of the other demand and supply side constraints will go a long way in bolstering the participation of women in the economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Surbhi Ghai, 2019. "The Anomaly of Women’s Work and Education in India," Working Papers id:12999, eSocialSciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:12999
    Note: Institutional Papers
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.esocialsciences.org/Download/repecDownload.aspx?fname=A20192313030_29.pdf&fcategory=Articles&AId=12999&fref=repec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Esther Duflo, 2012. "Women Empowerment and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1051-1079, December.
    2. Isis Gaddis & Stephan Klasen, 2014. "Economic development, structural change, and women’s labor force participation:," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 639-681, July.
    3. Geeta Gandhi Kingdon, 1998. "Does the labour market explain lower female schooling in India?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 39-65.
    4. Vinoj Abraham, 2008. "Employment growth in rural India: Distress driven?," Centre for Development Studies, Trivendrum Working Papers 404, Centre for Development Studies, Trivendrum, India.
    5. Afridi, Farzana & Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop & Sahoo, Soham, 2012. "Female Labour Force Participation and Child Education in India: The Effect of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme," IZA Discussion Papers 6593, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. repec:ilo:ilowps:486789 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Chaudhary, Ruchika. & Verick, Sher., 2014. "Female labour force participation in India and beyond," ILO Working Papers 994867893402676, International Labour Organization.
    8. Orazio Attanasio & Hamish Low & Virginia Sánchez-Marcos, 2005. "Female Labor Supply As Insurance Against Idiosyncratic Risk," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 755-764, 04/05.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Surbhi Ghai, 2018. "The Anomaly of Women's Work and Education in India," Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) Working Paper 368, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi, India.
    2. Antara Bhattacharyya & Sushil Kr. Haldar, 2020. "Does U Feminisation Work in Female Labour Force Participation Rate? India: A Case Study," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 63(1), pages 143-160, March.
    3. Chaudhary, Ruchika. & Verick, Sher., 2014. "Female labour force participation in India and beyond," ILO Working Papers 994867893402676, International Labour Organization.
    4. Stephan Klasen & Janneke Pieters, 2015. "What Explains the Stagnation of Female Labor Force Participation in Urban India?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(3), pages 449-478.
    5. Syamantak Chattopadhyay & Subhanil Chowdhury, 2022. "Female Labour Force Participation in India: An Empirical Study," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 65(1), pages 59-83, March.
    6. repec:ilo:ilowps:486789 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Amit Nandan & Hrushikesh Mallick, 2020. "Does Gender Equality Matter for Regional Growth and Income Inequality? An Empirical Analysis for the Indian States," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(4), pages 439-469, May.
    8. Chhavi Tiwari & Srinivas Goli & Anu Rammohan, 2022. "Reproductive Burden and Its Impact on Female Labor Market Outcomes in India: Evidence from Longitudinal Analyses," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(6), pages 2493-2529, December.
    9. Mehrotra, Santosh & Parida, Jajati K., 2017. "Why is the Labour Force Participation of Women Declining in India?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 360-380.
    10. Nadir Altinok & Abdurrahman Aydemir, 2015. "The Unfolding of Gender Gap in Education," Working Papers halshs-01204805, HAL.
    11. Doepke, M. & Tertilt, M., 2016. "Families in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1789-1891, Elsevier.
    12. Sonali Das & Ms. Sonali Jain-Chandra & Ms. Kalpana Kochhar & Naresh Kumar, 2015. "Women Workers in India: Why So Few Among So Many?," IMF Working Papers 2015/055, International Monetary Fund.
    13. El-Mallakh, Nelly & Maurel, Mathilde & Speciale, Biagio, 2018. "Arab spring protests and women's labor market outcomes: Evidence from the Egyptian revolution," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 656-682.
    14. Sarkar, Sudipa & Sahoo, Soham & Klasen, Stephan, 2019. "Employment transitions of women in India: A panel analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 291-309.
    15. Klasen, Stephan & Pieters, Janneke, 2012. "Push or Pull? Drivers of Female Labor Force Participation during India's Economic Boom," IZA Discussion Papers 6395, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Emran, M. Shahe & Jiang, Hanchen & Shilpi, Forhad, 2020. "Gender Bias and Intergenerational Educational Mobility: Theory and Evidence from China and India," GLO Discussion Paper Series 497, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    17. Muhammad Qahraman Kakar, 2021. "Ethnic Disparities, Women Education and Empowerment in South Asia," Erudite Ph.D Dissertations, Erudite, number ph21-01 edited by Manon Domingues Dos Santos, September.
    18. Nthabeleng Lillian Moshoeshoe & Baorong Yu, 2021. "Economic Growth and Participation of Women in Labor Markets: The Case of Southern Africa," International Journal of Science and Business, IJSAB International, vol. 5(1), pages 30-41.
    19. Canessa, Eugenia & Giannelli, Gianna Claudia, 2021. "Women's Employment and Natural Shocks," IZA Discussion Papers 14055, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Humaira Husain, 2016. "Economic Development, Women Empowerment and U Shaped Labour Force Function : Time Series Evidence for Bangladesh," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 6(12), pages 719-728, December.
    21. Sanghamitra Kanjilal-Bhaduri & Francesco Pastore, 2018. "Returns to Education and Female Participation Nexus: Evidence from India," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 61(3), pages 515-536, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:12999. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Padma Prakash (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.esocialsciences.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.