Main Banner Image

Defensive cooperation: Understanding pro-social attitudes in Indian Muslims

Mainstream theories of development predict greater willingness to contribute to public goods in more homogeneous settings. This article reports findings from a study in Delhi slums to assess how Hindu...

  • Articles

Reporting of gender-based violence: Why public activism and dialogue matter

The recent case of an on-duty female doctor being brutally raped and murdered in a Kolkata hospital, has sparked nation-wide protests and yet again raised serious questions and concerns around women...

  • Articles

Paternalistic discrimination against women in the labour market

Women in many low-income countries are often excluded from the labour market. This article proposes a new explanation in the form of paternalistic discrimination – the preferential hiring of men to ...

  • Articles
Refine list by:
--Please Select--
--Please Select--

Maternal mortality and gender prejudice

While maternal mortality has fallen sharply in the last decade, it remains unnecessarily high at about 800 deaths a day worldwide. Moreover, there is enormous variation in levels and rates of decline ...

  • Articles

How has land acquisition impacted dalits? A case study from Maharashtra

Land ownership in Indian villages is inextricably linked to caste, with dalits owing little or no land. Based on a survey in Maharashtra, this column assesses the impact of land acquisition and subse...

  • Articles

Missing unmarried women

The developing world has notoriously low sex ratios, a phenomenon that has been described as ‘missing women’. This is believed to be driven by parental preferences for sons, sex-selective abortion...

  • Articles

Role model effects? Women's political participation in India

Women’s political candidacy in India is very low and appears to be an important barrier to their representation in government. Does a deficiency of female role models hold back women’s candidacy?...

  • Articles

Property rights, household conflict and suicide in India

Suicide has become the second leading cause of death among young Indians. This column finds that improved inheritance rights for women are associated with an increase in the incidence of suicide amon...

  • Articles

Religion and health in early childhood: Evidence from South Asia

The widespread malnutrition of children in South Asia is persistent and troubling. Given the importance of religion in the region, this column examines the relationship between inequalities in child ...

  • Articles

Women's empowerment and child malnutrition in rural India

Research has found mother’s empowerment to have a positive impact on the nutrition status of their children. This column analyses this relationship for data from rural India for the period 1992-200...

  • Articles

Women's economic empowerment and domestic violence

The safety of women in India – both inside and outside homes – is a major concern. This column explores the link between women’s economic empowerment, in the form of stronger inheritance rights...

  • Articles

Impact of the two-child limit for local politicians

Some Indian states debar individuals with more than two children from contesting local elections. This column finds that while the law has significantly reduced fertility among the general population...

  • Articles

Enhancing women's participation in water governance

Women’s participation has become a key theme in water and sanitation projects. However, projects that have made provisions for women’s participation have yielded mixed results in terms of the qua...

  • Articles

Women leaders and deceptive behaviour

Are women in leadership positions more dishonest than men? Based on an artefactual field experiment in rural Bihar, this column finds that women in leadership positions deceive more than men, especia...

  • Articles

Does affirmative action reduce productivity? The case of Indian Railways

Critics of job reservations argue that such policies have an adverse effect on work efficiency and productivity. This column analyses the effect of job reservations in the Indian Railways – the wor...

  • Articles

Recent Contributors

Punarjit

Punarjit Roychowdhury

Shiv Nadar University

Bharti

Bharti Nandwani

Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (I

Asha

Asha Sundaram

University of Auckland

Debasis

Debasis Bandyopadhyay

University of Auckland

James

James Allan Jones

University of Auckland

Poulomi

Poulomi Chakrabarti

Harvard University

Melani

Melani Cammett

Harvard University

David

David Romney

Brigham Young University

View all Contributors

Most Popular Social Identity Posts

Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials in India: An update

Building on past research, Saswata Ghosh and Pallabi Das estimate the state- and district-level fertility differentials between Hindus and Muslims using data from the latest round of the NFHS. They sh...

  • Articles

A division of labourers: Caste identity and efficiency in India

Castes in India are closely associated with certain occupations and determine the jobs done by millions. This study uses a new dataset to show that a large proportion of workers still work in their ca...

  • Articles

Sex ratios and religion in India and South Asia

In South Asia, low child sex ratios are increasingly an isolated Indian phenomenon. Within India, child sex ratios are ‘normal’ among Christians and Muslims but much lower among Hindus, Sikhs, and...

  • Articles