Research

Female labor force participation in India remains low despite sustained economic growth, with a large literature pointing to restrictive social norms as an important constraint on women’s labor market participation. We study the role of inherited gender norms in shaping women’s lifetime labor market participation and the consequences associated with these roles later in life. Using data on older women from India and ethnolinguistic measures of ancestral characteristics, we show that women from groups with historically greater female participation in production are less likely to stay outside the labor force over their lifetime. However, conditional on never working, these women experience worse later-life outcomes, including higher mistreatment and poorer psychological well-being. A conceptual framework distinguishes between inherited norms that shape lifetime roles and how these roles are evaluated, as reflected in individual outcomes such as mistreatment, financial support, and psychological well-being. The results suggest that gender norms influence not only whether women work, but also how the non-working role is valued within households.

Early-life health is a key determinant of long-run human capital, yet the role of intra-household violence in shaping these outcomes is not well understood. This paper examines the causal impact of maternal intimate partner violence (IPV) on child health in India. To address endogeneity, we exploit variation in the district-level presence of All-Women Police Stations as a proxy for institutional responsiveness to gender-based violence, using repeated cross-sections from the National Family Health Survey.