IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/soa/wpaper/175.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When Daughters Migrate and Mothers Do Not: Girl Children’s Paid Outside Work in West Bengal,India

Author

Listed:
  • Deepita Chakravarty

    (Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK)

  • Ishita Chakravarty

    (Vidya Sagar College, Calcutta University)

Abstract

As many of the discriminatory practices against girl children and women primarily take place within the household, the family seems to have a crucial role in determining such outcomes. However, it needs to be remembered that gender discrimination takes different forms in different socio-economic and cultural contexts. Decisions taken by the household are naturally informed by such broader considerations. This paper tries to understand the possible role of the family in determining the country’s highest work-participation rate of the urban girl children in West Bengal, India. This seems to be a paradox as West Bengal is known for its historical bias against adult women’s paid outside work. The paper also explores the possible changes in gender relations within the household with the changes in the relative decision making powers of the different adult members of the family. Our argument is based on both secondary and primary data.

Suggested Citation

  • Deepita Chakravarty & Ishita Chakravarty, 2012. "When Daughters Migrate and Mothers Do Not: Girl Children’s Paid Outside Work in West Bengal,India," Working Papers 175, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
    • Handle: RePEc:soa:wpaper:175
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.soas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-10/economics-wp175.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Diane L. Wolf, 1990. "Daughters, Decisions and Domination: An Empirical and Conceptual Critique of Household Strategies," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 43-74, January.
    2. Dreze, Jean & Sen, Amartya, 2002. "India: Development and Participation," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780199257492.
    3. Weiner, Myron & Burra, Neera & Bajpai, Asha, 2006. "Born Unfree: Child Labour, Education, and the State," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195679908.
    4. Folbre, Nancy, 1986. "Cleaning house : New perspectives on Households and Economic Development," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 5-40, June.
    5. Deborah Levison & Anna Langer, 2010. "Counting Child Domestic Servants in Latin America," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 36(1), pages 125-149, March.
    6. Folbre, Nancy, 1986. "Hearts and spades: Paradigms of household economics," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 245-255, February.
    7. Webbink, Ellen & Smits, Jeroen & de Jong, Eelke, 2012. "Hidden Child Labor: Determinants of Housework and Family Business Work of Children in 16 Developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 631-642.
    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. Weijland, H. & Herweijer, R. & Groot, J.P. de, 1988. "Female participation in agriculture in the Dominican Republic : an analysis of a segmented rural labour market," Serie Research Memoranda 0016, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    2. Elissa Braunstein & Nancy Folbre, 2001. "To Honor and Obey: Efficiency, Inequality, and Patriarchal Property Rights," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 25-44.
    3. Tim Riswick & Ying-Hui Hsieh, 2020. "Between rivalry and support: The impact of sibling composition on infant and child mortality in Taiwan, 1906‒1945," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 42(21), pages 615-656.
    4. Johnson, Susan, 2004. "Gender Norms in Financial Markets: Evidence from Kenya," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1355-1374, August.
    5. Angus Deaton & Jean Dreze, 2008. "Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations," Working Papers 1071, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    6. Yingying Zhang Zhang & Chun Yee Wong & Alessandro Comai, 2024. "Child Labor in Social Media: Exploring a Decade of YouTube Data," Working Papers EMS_2024_04, Research Institute, International University of Japan.
    7. Chavas, Jean-Paul & Smith, Lisa C., 1999. "Supply response of West African agricultural households," FCND discussion papers 69, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    8. María Gabriela Palacio, 2016. "Institutionalizing segregation: Conditional cash transfers and employment choices," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-91, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Vizard, Polly, 2005. "The contributions of Professor Amartya Sen in the field of human rights," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 6273, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Nguyen Thang Dao & Julio Dávila & Angela Greulich, 2021. "The education gender gap and the demographic transition in developing countries," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(2), pages 431-474, April.
    11. Clots-Figueras, Irma, 2011. "Women in politics: Evidence from the Indian States," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 664-690, August.
    12. Cecilia Garavito, 1995. "Oferta familiar de trabajo en lima metropolitana: 1989-1992," Documentos de Trabajo / Working Papers 1995-121, Departamento de Economía - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
    13. Lionel Kesztenbaum & Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, 2014. "Income versus Sanitation; Mortality Decline in Paris, 1880-1914," PSE Working Papers halshs-01018594, HAL.
    14. Gulati, Namrata & Ray, Tridip, 2016. "Inequality, neighbourhoods and welfare of the poor," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 214-228.
    15. Cassan, Guilhem, 2019. "Affirmative action, education and gender: Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 51-70.
    16. Ina GANGULI & Ricardo HAUSMANN & Martina VIARENGO, 2014. "Closing the gender gap in education: What is the state of gaps in labour force participation for women, wives and mothers?," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 153(2), pages 173-207, June.
    17. Teresa Bago d'Uva & Maarten Lindeboom & Owen O'Donnell & Eddy van Doorslaer, 2011. "Education‐related inequity in healthcare with heterogeneous reporting of health," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 174(3), pages 639-664, July.
    18. Henrietta L. Moore, 1995. "The Future of Work," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 657-678, December.
    19. Eastin, Joshua, 2018. "Climate change and gender equality in developing states," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 289-305.
    20. Jihye Kim & Wendy Olsen & Arkadiusz Wiśniowski, 2020. "A Bayesian Estimation of Child Labour in India," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 13(6), pages 1975-2001, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Girl child domestics; internal migration; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:soa:wpaper:175. 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: Chandni Dwarkasing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desoauk.html .

    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.