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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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Women empowerment in nutrition: Do women really have a say in preparing and providing food?

Decision-making capacity of women within the household and in the community is considered to be a reflection of their empowerment. In this note, Sweta Bhusan discusses one dimension of decision-makin...

  • Notes from the Field

Women empowerment in nutrition: Ideas of empowerment

As part of the ‘Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index’ project, a group of researchers spoke with rural women and community workers from Araria in Bihar, and Ganjam, Rayagada, Kandhmal, and Nay...

  • Notes from the Field

How female foeticide has influenced fertility and parental investments in girls

The introduction of ultrasound technology in India has been documented to have led to a phenomenal increase in abortion of female fetuses. However, this column finds that it also decreased son-biased ...

  • Articles

Encountering deprivations in the field

Several women in India face domestic violence, are not allowed to work, and need to seek permission from husbands or in-laws to carry out basic tasks. In this note, Singhal and Vernekar share their e...

  • Notes from the Field

Quota policies and career advancement: Evidence from Indian politics

Can quotas for women in politics induce institutional change in the long run? This column examines whether affirmative action for women in Indian local government had spillovers into state and nation...

  • Articles

The demographic impact of extended paid maternity leave in Bangladesh

In March 2017, Indian Parliament passed the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016 extending paid maternity leave to 26 weeks. This column analyses the impact of extension of paid maternity leave i...

  • Articles

Cash transfers to end child marriage: The Indian experience

For over two decades, policymakers in India have been experimenting with conditional cash transfers to address the issue of child marriage. In this article, Amin et al. contend that financial incenti...

  • Perspectives

Holy wars: Temple desecrations in medieval India

The rise of extremist groups such as the Taliban and the Islamic State, and their destruction of religious relics, have led some to magnify the presence of religious bigotry in Islamic societies. Usi...

  • Articles

Getting India's women into the workforce: Time for a smart approach

In this article, Rohini Pande, the Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, contends that raising India’s stubbornly low rate of female labour force participation will r...

  • Perspectives

Women and work in Asia: Insights for India's low female labour force participation

In this article, Sher Singh Verick, Deputy Director, ILO’s Decent Work Team for South Asia and Country Office for India, shows how India compares with other countries in Asia as well as with other ...

  • Perspectives

Declining female labour force participation in rural India: The demand side

National Sample Survey data shows a decline in rural women’s workforce participation between 2004-05 and 2011-12. Rising rural incomes and women’s education over the same period have been taken a...

  • Articles

Declining female labour force participation in rural India: The supply side

Analysis of National Sample Survey data shows that low rates of female labour force participation in India are concentrated among married women in rural areas. This column suggests that this is partl...

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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...

  • 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

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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