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.

This study investigates the causal impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) experienced by mothers on the nutritional status of children under age five in India. To address endogeneity, IPV is instrumented using the district-level presence of an All-Women Police Station, serving as a proxy for institutional responsiveness to gender-based violence. Using repeated cross-sections from the National Family Health Survey, we estimate substantial effects of maternal IPV on child nutritional outcomes. IPV increases the probability of stunting by 34.5 percentage points and underweight by 26.9 percentage points, and it raises the likelihood of anaemia by a similar magnitude. Children of mothers exposed to IPV are also less likely to receive core micronutrient supplements. We do not find evidence of effects on short-term morbidities such as diarrhoea or fever.