Paper short abstract:

In the absence of equal access to opportunities, even an expansion of the educational system might reinforce inequalities with predictable winners and losers. This paper reflects on the empirical evidence of educational development and intergenerational mobility for girls & women in eastern India.

Paper long abstract:

The dearth of longitudinal data in developing countries implies most studies on group- based inequalities concentrate on the intergenerational mobility analysis of fathers and sons. Household survey- based datasets have virtually no information on young married women, because of the customary practice of patrilocality in South Asian societies. This paper uses a novel region-specific dataset ,to overcomes this exclusion bias by including relevant information on married daughters.

The analysis presents considerable persistence of inequality, despite massive educational expansion, especially based on gender and caste identity. Additionally, by employing feminist methodology this paper combines the quantitative study of gender stratified educational outcomes with the qualitative analysis of life aspirations to unearth insights regarding the gendered mobilities in the context of a transitioning agrarian society. The qualitative study is based on the data collected from in-depth interviews as part of fieldwork, to map a typology of the educational aspirations articulated by the young women given their social location, specificities of gender norms, access to role models, information networks, and education and occupation of parents.