Women's Low Employment Rates in India: Cultural and Structural Explanations

Abstract

Indian women's labor force participation rates have long demonstrated a U‐shaped relationship with their education, rather than a more conventional positive linear relationship. The low rates of employment for moderately educated women are usually explained either as a result of the cultural stigma of women's employment in a patriarchal society or because of the lack of demand from white‐collar and light manufacturing jobs for women with middle levels of education. Using especially well‐suited data from two waves of the India Human Development Survey, we test these explanations by examining the education–employment relationship in districts with low cultural stigma (low observance of purdah) and high proportions of (salaried) employment considered “suitable” for women. We find little support for either the cultural or structural explanations: the education–employment relationship remains U‐shaped in districts with low stigma or with more “suitable” salaried employment. Instead, we suggest a better explanation lies in the high levels of gender segregation where most white‐collar jobs are reserved for men. We simulate what the education–employment relationship would look like if these white‐collar occupations were female‐dominated as they are in most places in the world and find a more conventional linear relationship.

Sustainable women empowerment at the bottom of the pyramid through credit access

“…Conversely, various empirical studies on employment trends documented that the rate of women’s labor force participation (LFP) in India has been declining continuously because of low literacy rate, sociocultural stigma and skill mismatch, especially in manufacturing and agriculture sectors due to high mechanization in these sectors. Moreover, low local market jobs and security are also major issues for declining rate of women LFP (Chatterjee and Vanneman, 2022; Mehrotra and Parida, 2017; Sarkar and Dutta, 2022). A similar trend has been observed in the Female Entrepreneurship Index (FEI) of Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute (GEDA), wherein India stood at 70th position out of 77 countries covered in the study to measure the growth of potential female entrepreneurs across the world (Terjesen and Lloyd, 2015).…”

Time allocation of daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law in India: The role of education

“…Goldin (1994) discusses how social and cultural contexts determine a married woman's labour supply decisions. Chatterjee and Vanneman (2022) find only modest support for stigma, measured by the observance of purdah system in India, on women's employment. Afridi et al (2018) found that education played a substantial role but did not find strong evidence that observable factors like socio-religious identities that are linked with the social stigma of women working outside the house play a substantial role in women's labour force participation.…”

“…Researchers have examined the extent to which cultural contexts and norms can explain women's labour force participation (Afridi et al, 2024;Chatterjee & Vanneman, 2022;Goldin, 1994;Jayachandran, 2021). Goldin (1994) discusses how social and cultural contexts determine a married woman's labour supply decisions.…”