Paper short abstract:

Female labor force participation has fallen in India after 2005. We argue that districts with inegalitarian gender ideology of men have lower workforce participation rates of women. Additionally, in states with greater proportion of male breadwinner families, women allocate less time to employment.

Paper long abstract:

Utilizing logit and tobit variations of multilevel modeling, we investigate the relationship among individual, household, and community-level factors influencing workforce participation and time allocated to employment for Indian married women. We employ individual-level data from India’s National Family Health Survey-IV (NFHS 2015-16) and Time Use Survey (TUS 2019), supplemented by district and state-level data from Census 2011, RBI, and the National Health Mission.

In our analysis, using NFHS (2015-16), we assess the impact of covariates on women’s workforce participation at the extensive margin, while TUS (2019) allows us to measure the effect at the intensive margin. Individual-level covariates include spousal bargaining measures, life-course variables, and household-level factors. At the district level, factors such as men’s gender ideology, infrastructure, patrilocal exogamy, consanguinity, literacy rates, and workforce participation are considered for NFHS. For TUS, state-level variables include infrastructure, family welfare expenditure, proportion of male breadwinner families, and proportion of graduates.

Results show that women with higher education than their spouses, at least one male child, husbands employed in agriculture, from less affluent households, and residing in rural areas are more likely to be employed. Women with older daughters (15-17 years) allocate more time to employment at the intensive margin. At the extensive margin, in districts where men believe that they should be the primary decision-makers in a marriage or justify violence against women, women have a lower likelihood of being employed. At the intensive margin, women living in states with a greater proportion of male breadwinner families allocate less time to employment.