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Tuning into empowerment: How community radio affects gender equality

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Raising the value of women’s time for a transition to clean fuels

A majority of women in rural India continue to use traditional fuels, adding to the time that they devote to domestic work. In this post, Farzana Afridi discusses findings from a survey in Madhya Prad...

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Girls in tech: Evaluating IIT’s Supernumerary Seats Scheme

Introduced in 2018, the Supernumerary Seats Scheme seeks to improve gender ratios among undergraduate engineering students at IITs, which have historically been male dominated. This article shows that...

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What is behind the recent rise in women’s workforce participation?

Women’s workforce participation in India increased from 32% in 2022-23 to 37% in 2023-24, with the rise concentrated in rural areas. This article demonstrates that this significant change may be dri...

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Empowering women through direct digital wage payments

India’s rate of female labour force participation dropped from 37% in 1990 to 28% in 2015. Can greater control over earned income incentivise women to work and influence gender norms? This article d...

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Creating safe public spaces for women and alcohol consumption in bars

Bars provide on-premise alcohol consumption and serve as social drinking spaces. Kerala, in 2014, shut down all bars serving hard liquor in the state. This article examines the policy change and wheth...

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Fifteen years of gender budgeting in India: A Retrospective

In this year’s Union Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that she will constitute a committee to evaluate 15 years of gender budgeting. It entails looking at the budget through the...

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Coping with a policy shock in rural South India: Social networks as a determinant of trust

Trust and participation in social networks are inherently interrelated. This article identifies the determinants of trust in rural South India, where a mechanism of coping with shocks through transact...

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Closing gender gaps in India: Does increasing women’s access to finance help?

Gender gaps in women’s economic opportunities – in the labour market and in entrepreneurship – have remained high in India. This article analyses the macroeconomic impact of closing gender gaps ...

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Inequality of opportunity among Indian women

Inequality of opportunity (IOp) in any society is that part of overall inequality which arises from factors beyond an individual’s control such as parental education, caste, gender, religion etc. Th...

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Prevalence and evolution of dowry in India

Dowry payments are an important part of household finances in India, typically exceeding a year of earnings. This article analyses data from an all-India sample of over 70,000 marriages to document fa...

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Traditional hierarchies and affirmative action in a globalising economy: Evidence from India

India has had a long-standing policy of affirmative action to address deep-rooted caste inequities and discrimination. This article compares successive age cohorts of three broad social groups – Sch...

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Women’s work and fertility: Evidence from 200 years, 103 countries

The declining rates of female labour force participation in developing countries in the last two decades have led researchers to focus on the role of fertility in women’s labour supply decisions. Us...

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Where are the Indian female politicians?

When women win elections, does it inspire other women to run for candidacy or does it convince men to close ranks before the next election?

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The road not taken: Gender gaps along paths to political power

Research and policy efforts towards greater female political participation have largely focused on women’s voting behaviour, and their representation as elected public officials. However, there are ...

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The 10% quota: Is caste no longer an indicator of backwardness?

The Constitution (124th Amendment) Bill 2019 seeks to provide for the advancement of “economically weaker sections”, through 10% reservation in government jobs and higher educational institutions ...

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Recent Contributors

Felix

Felix Rusche

University of Mannheim

Farzana

Farzana Afridi

Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi Centre

Nandana

Nandana Sengupta

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Swati

Swati Sharma

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Priyanshi

Priyanshi Chaudhary

O.P. Jindal Global University

Avanindra Nath

Avanindra Nath Thakur

O.P. Jindal Global University

Karan

Karan Bhasin

University at Albany, SUNY

Surjit

Surjit Bhalla

International Monetary Fund

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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...

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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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Measuring caste inequality across Indian states

Although recent research on inequality shows that upper castes have the highest levels of material well-being, there is a wide variation in caste inequality across India. Measuring three forms of cast...

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