Reducing gender disparities in workforce participation is an important policy goal in several developing countries. India, in particular, has historically had low levels of women’s workforce participation as compared to men and as compared to peer economies. Prior research has identified both supply and demand-side explanations for low levels of women’s participation in paid work. On the supply side, social norms constraining women’s mobility and autonomy are commonly invoked as one explanation. We test the relevance of such norms in explaining heterogeneity in women’s employment using district-level data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015 – 16 and the Sixth Economic Census (2013). Norms indices are constructed using Principal Components Analysis for 640 districts of India. The findings indicate that less restrictive norms related to decision-making, mobility, and asset ownership are positively correlated with higher levels of women’s employment.

Authors:

Subhapriya Chakraborty and Amit Basole