Rohini Pande standing against a concrete packdrop
Photo by Porter Gifford

Rohini Pande in Article 14 Magazine: Indian Women’s Education Rates Are Rising, Fertility Falling, But A Marriage Penalty Keeps Them From Working

February 8, 2023: EGC's Rohini Pande uses survey data to find that Indian women want to work, largely without preference for job salary or location. She says policy should thus focus on enabling women to join the workforce, as gaining a wage can increase women's intra-household authority and lower the risk of suffering from domestic violence.

Indian Women’s Education Rates Are Rising, Fertility Falling, But A Marriage Penalty Keeps Them From Working

By Kavitha Iyer
February 8, 2023

Every country in the G-20 that India has taken the presidency of has a higher rate of women’s participation in the labour force. But why should Indian women go to work?

Many reports talk about how talent is misallocated when women don’t work especially as education gaps between men and women close.  But the simplest answer one can give to why women should be able to work is simply that women want to work. 

As a democracy, given that surveys of women show they want to work, then we owe it to them to give them full access to the labour market. Certainly that will also be something that's good for growth, but I think rather than thinking about those instrumental reasons for why women should work, we should start with the fact that in survey after survey, what we see is young women, married women, with different preferences on where they want to work or how much, all state that they want to work. 

Read more at Article14.com