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Social Identity

How social norms hold women back: A look at recent evidence

  • Perspectives

India’s Women’s Reservation Act: A big win for governance and beyond

Amidst debates about the recently passed women's reservation act and whether it will reduce gender disparities on the ground, Wattal and Gopalan summarise evidence from a number of randomised evaluati...

  • Perspectives

The distributional consequences of political reservations

This article identifies and attempts to fill in the gaps in understanding the effects of reservations for Scheduled Castes (SCs) in Panchayats. Using data from a state-wide census, multiple administra...

  • Articles

The complexity of female empowerment interventions

In the final post of I4I’s month-long campaign to mark International Women’s Day 2023, Siwan Anderson unpacks the complex dimensions and interactions between measures of female empowerment. She hi...

  • Perspectives
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Is it safe? Threat of sexual violence and women’s decision to work

Despite significant improvements in women's educational attainment and reduced fertility rates, India’s female labour force participation (FLFP) remains among the lowest globally. Using nationally r...

  • Articles

Countering violence against women with awareness creation and self-defence training

The 2019 National Crime Records Bureau report shows a 7.3% increase, compared to 2018, in violence against women, with one in three women being subject to physical, emotional, or sexual violence. In t...

  • Perspectives

The escalating financial burden of child births

Data from the 2019-20 National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 show that in several states, the proportion of institutional deliveries remain below the national average, with high out-of-pocket expendit...

  • Perspectives

Evolution of dowry in rural India: Evidence from 1960-2008

Despite being illegal since 1961, dowry continues to be a widespread phenomenon in rural India. In the first of a two-part series, this article tracks the evolution of dowry during 1960-2008 across st...

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How dowry influences household decisions in rural India

It is widely believed that Indian parents start saving for dowry as soon as a daughter is born. In the second of a two-part series on dowry in rural India, this article examines how dowry influences h...

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India’s ‘missing girls’: Women’s education and declining child sex-ratios

Although women’s education has been proposed as a solution to the persistent issue of ‘missing girls’ in India, studies have reached contradictory conclusions on the impact of female education o...

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Lineage norms and women’s political participation

While reservation for local political representation of women has made major headway, this has not addressed the structural problems that prevent the full incorporation of women into politics. Based ...

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Reducing intimate partner violence: Laying the groundwork with young males

Two out of five ever-married women in Bihar have experienced marital violence. Based on a study of ‘Do Kadam Barabari Ke Ore’ – a programme imparting gender-transformative life skills to young ...

  • Notes from the Field

Fruits of liberation? Women’s work participation and adoption of household appliances

Does increase in women’s work participation lead to greater adoption of household appliances, or is it the other way round? To address this question, this article analyses US data from the Second Wo...

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Does gender (still) determine destiny in India?

Emerging evidence of convergence in educational attainment between girls and boys seems at odds with a large body of research on gender-based discrimination against girls in India. In this context, th...

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Sex workers, stigma, and self-image: Evidence from Kolkata’s brothels

Being poor or marginalised often brings stigma, which may distort a person’s self-image, inducing sub-optimal choices and resulting in a psychological poverty trap. Based on a study conducted in Kol...

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Women and work: How much does measurement matter?

Female labour force participation in India has been on the decline – dropping from an already low 29% in 2004-05 to 17% in 2017-18. However, the extent of women’s economic participation depends o...

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Sarah Vincent

Aix Marseille School of Economics

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Aditi Singh

University of British Columbia

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Bipasha Maity

Ashoka University

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Sutirtha Bandyopadhyay

Indian Institute of Management Indore

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Nikita Mujumdar

Deputy Managing Editor, I4I

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Anamika Priyadarshini

Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3)

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Madhu Joshi

Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3)

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Shubha Bhattacharya

Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3)

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Most Popular Social Identity Posts

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...

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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...

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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...

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