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Understanding the gender norms leading to normalization and perpetuation of the spousal violence

The widespread normalization of spousal violence, particularly among women, as revealed by the latest NFHS (National Family Health Survey) data, is a major concern. In addition to numerous other factors leading to under reporting of spousal violence like lack of financial support, fear of social stigma and children’s well-being getting compromised, the normalization also prevent victims from resisting violence or seeking justice, leaving it unaddressed. Psychology suggests that victims often normalize spousal violence to maintain consistency between their attitudes and their tolerant behaviour[1]. This coping mechanism is influenced by some deeply rooted gender norms, in addition to the social stigma associated with divorce. Traditional beliefs regarding the social superiority of men over women, men’s right to discipline their female partners, and the acceptance of physical violence as means of resolving conflicts, contribute together to the occurrence of intimate partner violence. Moreover, the adherence to traditional gender roles within the household, the expectation that women would be submissive to the husband and her in-laws and women should prioritise their family’s health and well-being, the perception of physical intimacy as a male prerogative in marriage, coupled with the belief that a woman’s deviation from these social norms can justify violence inflicted on her as punishment, reinforce the prevalence of spousal violence.  These gender norms not only shape the attitudes and behaviours of the perpetrators but also influence the way in which the victims often perceive and address such acts of violence.

The NFHS collects data on the prevalence of spousal violence among married women and the attitudes of both spouses toward spousal violence. It assesses tolerance for spousal violence by examining spousal responses to questions about the justification of physical/domestic violence against the female spouse. These justifications often revolve around various grounds such as disrespecting in-laws, neglecting children, refusing sex, going out without permission, burning food, or arguing. The latest round of NFHS, conducted between 2019-21, reveals that around 35% of rural women and 30% of urban women reported to justify domestic violence on grounds of wife being disrespectful to their husband/in-laws. Women from the middle-income households are observed to normalise domestic violence relatively more as compared to upper-most and lower income classes, pointing towards the higher prevalence of regressive patriarchal norms among the middle-income households as compared to others. Although education can challenge these cultural beliefs, still 25% of women with higher level of education are found to justify domestic violence in cases of wives disrespecting their husbands. Patriarchal cultural beliefs have been found to be negatively correlated with women’s agency. For example, approximately 41% of women with no decision-making power justify domestic violence when the wife is disrespectful to her husband. This percentage decreases to 31% among women with some say in intra-household decision-making. Working women reportedly normalise domestic violence more as compared to non-working women as 38% of working women think that domestic violence is justified if the wife disrespects husband as compared to 32% of non-working women thinking so. This might be attributed to the ‘female guilt’ among the working women arising due to their thinking that care-giving and other domestic responsibilities are getting compromised for their work.  Also, younger women reportedly justified domestic violence relatively less as compared to the older age-cohort. As NFHS captured whether respondents justifies wife-beating on several grounds, it is found that wife-beating is justified by 31% women in rural areas and 27% women in urban areas if the wife neglects the children, 26% women in rural areas and 19% women in urban areas if the wife argues with her husband; 21% women in rural areas and 17% women in urban areas if the wife goes out without justifying; 13% women in rural areas and 10% women in urban areas if the wife refuses sex with husband; and 16% women in rural areas and 11% women in urban areas if the wife burns the food. As mentioned before, highly educated women are relatively liberated from the clutches of these regressive patriarchal norms. Thus, less women with higher level of education justified wife-beating as compared to women with no education or lower level of education, but still among these highly educated women, wife-beating is justified by 22% of them if the wives neglect children;  14% of them if the wife argues with the husband; 13% of them if the wife goes outside without justifying; 7% of them if the wife refuses sex with the husband; and 8% of them if the wife burns the food.

Whereas legitimising spousal violence reflect individual’s norms which again get influenced by the community norms, and as the community norms differ across societies and regions, an inter-state comparison of these statistics is worth looking into. The findings reveal that higher share of women legitimised spousal violence in southern states as compared to northern states on average. As neglecting children is observed to be the most common reason for justifying spousal violence at the national level, a single indicator based on the share of women legitimising spousal violence on this ground, is considered for the inter-state comparison. The highest share of women is found to justify spousal violence on the ground of neglecting children in Andhra Pradesh (70%), followed by Telangana (68%), Tamil Nadu (66%), Karnataka (53%), whereas the corresponding shares are relatively lower in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh (21%), Haryana (16%), Rajasthan (16%), Himachal Pradesh (10%), Jharkhand (11%), Punjab (14%). This contradicts the common perception of less entrenched patriarchal practices in southern region as compared to northern region. However, the issue of higher normalisation of spousal violence in southern region where more gender-equitable beliefs are expected due to higher levels of female education and other human development indicators, needs further investigation.

The normalization of spousal violence reinforces its perpetuation by preventing victims from seeking help. Recognizing spousal violence as a serious issue is the first step in the help-seeking process, and its normalization at the individual level delays or denies this recognition. Moreover, these regressive social norms often reflect broader societal issues, and their existence at the familial or societal level can negatively impact family and community support for women facing spousal violence. While these social norms can be resistant to change, well-designed interventions like mass media campaigns to bring positive socio-behavioural changes can effectively alter them. By conveying clear messages about healthy relationships, correcting misconceptions about masculinity and attaching a social stigma to harmful behaviours, these interventions can promote positive behavioural changes among couples.

This blog is written by Bidisha Mondal[1] works as a Senior Research Fellow with IWWAGE, Aneek Choudhury[2] works as a Research Associate with IWWAGE.

 

National Conclave on Gender Mainstreaming

National Conclave on Gender Mainstreaming

The Gender Snapshot Report by the United Nations (2023) highlights slow progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. It projects that by 2030, over 340 million women and girls may live in extreme poverty, and close to one in four will face food insecurity. Urging immediate action, the report calls for integrated approaches, greater collaboration, sustained funding, and policy reforms to achieve gender equality and empowerment.

The G20 declaration reinforces this urgency with a focus on reducing gender gaps in labour force participation, promoting equal access to education, and increasing women’s participation in STEM and digital fields. It also emphasizes promoting access to social protection, eliminating gender-based violence, and ensuring women’s inclusion in the formal financial system.

Background

In recent years, the Gender Programme under Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihood Mission has made significant strides, moving from policy integration to large-scale implementation. Notable achievements include the establishment of Gender Resource Centres across 15 states, and estabilishment of 44,528 Gender Point Persons collectives, 33,736 and 1,461 Block level Gender Forums respectively as platforms for dialogue and action.

The national campaign ‘Nayi Chetna,’ launched in 2022, has seen widespread engagement, fostering inter-ministerial convergence and community action to combat gender-based violence. The campaign, actively carried out in 32 states has seen close to 6 crore participation in activities over the two years advocating the need to speak up and take action against all forms of gender-based violence. Four editions of the ‘Gender Samvaad’ have further amplified advocacy efforts, drawing participation from community resource persons, practitioners, and policymakers.

 

Overview and objective

As the programme enters its second phase, the conclave will draw insights from practitioners, policy makers, experts and cluster level federations and explore:

  1. Building Gender Responsive Community Institutions through stronger institutional mechanisms.
  2. Enhancing inter-ministerial convergence to address gender issues collaboratively.
  3. Integrating gender perspectives into NRLM’s thematic verticals to shift gender norms at the household level.
  4. Expanding stakeholder engagement through alliances and advocacy, with a focus on engaging men and youth.

Event Proceedings of The National Conclave on Gender Mainstreaming

Our Publications

Handbook for Institutional Mechanisms for Addressing Gender Issues

Gender Resource Centre: An Advisory

An Assessment of the National Gender Campaign for DAY-NRLM

Nayi Chetna- Coffee Table Book Year One Snapshot

SWAYAM Process Evaluation

Process Documentation Report

An Assessment of the Compiled Case Stories

Gender Modules
Lack of census data and use of electoral roll-based sampling frame in specific studies

Selection of households and individuals is one of the most important tasks of developing sampling designs. Traditionally, in developing countries where population data is mostly available in the censuses conducted by the government, this information forms the basis of the house-listing done for the purpose of selection of households in a sample survey. In India as well, researchers mostly depend on the census data for constituting robust and representative sampling frames using a house-listing exercise to implement a particular sampling technique, unlike in the USA or other similar countries which already have readily available sampling frames. The house-listing process is a cumbersome process and often requires time and financial resources, which may, at times, deter researchers from using these probability-based sampling techniques and resort to purposive sampling which often may not be representative and may not provide unbiased information and data.

In this context, IWWAGE explored using electoral rolls as an alternative to using population census as sampling frames in the selection of household or individuals for some of our recent studies. Using electoral rolls for studies aimed at policy-making is a relatively new trend. In the absence of updated census data as well as to ensure minimised time and resource requirements, exploring electoral rolls as sampling frames may be useful, although its use for household surveys is relatively sparse in India (Vaishnav, 2021; Joshi et al. 2020). At IWWAGE, we have used electoral roll sampling frame for selection of individuals for the surveys in two of our studies on labour force participation. The data collection for one study, viz., ‘Women’s Labour Force Participation in Select States in India’, was conducted during November, 2021 and January, 2022 and the other one is an ongoing study on ‘Capturing women’s work to measure better’.

The completed study majorly aimed at unpacking the enablers and barriers of women’s labour force participation and suggesting actionable points based on the findings. For this study, approximately 5000 females and 1000 males were interviewed, from five states of India, namely Jharkhand, Karnataka, Delhi, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh. The main objectives of the ongoing study are to capture women’s work comprehensively by identifying the varied, yet major, forms of paid and unpaid activities, listing activities by categories of work, and developing mechanism of estimating the simultaneity of engagement of women. Approximately 4000 females and 800 males have been surveyed from the states of Jharkhand and Karnataka for the study.

It is worth mentioning that, in a multi-stage cluster sampling context, selection of individuals (or households) from the electoral roll frame entails selection of polling booth in the previous stage of sample selection as opposed to more traditional approach of selecting villages in rural areas and census enumeration blocks (CEB) or urban frame survey (UFS) blocks in urban areas. In this note, we outline the advantages and challenges of using electoral rolls in selecting individuals based on our experience of conducting the two studies mentioned above.

Advantages of using electoral rolls in constructing the sampling frame

In addition to being time and cost efficient, there were multiple other advantages of using electoral-rolls as an alternative sampling frame, particularly in our studies. This technique provides us direct access to individual-level information like age, gender etc, that enables selection of a random sample, stratified on the basis of individual characteristics. It also allows us to minimise respondent bias by enabling enquiry from each individual rather than elicit information from only one member of the sample household who may then be the representative of the sampling unit and respond ‘on behalf’ of others, which may carry certain biases.

Also, the electoral-roll based sampling is a better alternative to the non-probabilistic sampling methods where sample selection often relied upon the ease of access to respondents and thus leads to a non-random, non-representative sample.

  1. Challenges of using electoral-rolls in constructing the sampling frame:

However, there exist a few challenges of the electoral roll-based sampling, as described below.

  1. Categorizing polling booths into rural and urban centers: In case of a few states, the rural-urban bifurcated list of polling booths is not directly available anywhere. In those cases, each polling booth has to be located in the Geographic Information System (GIS) software maps and categorized on the basis of information provided in the software. For example, in case of Karnataka, to know the rural/urban location of a polling booth, it has to be located in the GIS map and then the rural/urban location has to be decided depending on whether the polling booth is falling under a Hubli (indicating a rural area) or town (indicating an urban area).
  2. Translation from local language: In case of a few states (for example, Karnataka), where the list of polling booths and the electoral rolls are available in local languages only, translating in English and digitizing them, increase the risk of errors, and require robust monitoring and quality checks.
  3. Unavailability of voter rolls in convertible PDFs: Voter rolls are sometimes available online in standard PDF but in many cases, they are available as scanned copies of voter lists. These are difficult to convert into excel files, and hence sometimes entries of the listed individuals need to be done manually – increasing the cost and time in the digitization process. It also inbuilds a cost of manual supervision after the entries are completed in the excel file. In case of a large-scale coverage/nationally representative study, the manual process of making entries will be challenging.

 

  1. Challenges arising for electoral roll-,zbased sampling method while implementing the survey:
  2. Less frequent updating of the voter rolls: Less frequent updating of the voter rolls leads to difficulties in locating the respondents, especially in urban areas with high intra-city or inter-city out migration. Combining two of our studies, in about 20-30% instances, the respondents could not be located due to out-migration. However, as the geographical area of survey expands, this percentage comes down.
  3. Difficulty in locating respondents in dense settlements: In case of the densely populated urban areas, the houses located near the boundaries of the polling booths often get excluded from the electoral rolls corresponding to their own polling booth and get enrolled in the electoral rolls of the adjacent polling booths. This arises due to the fact that there is a cap on the number of voters in a polling booth and once the limit is reached, the remaining voters are to be enrolled in the neighbouring polling booth.
  4. Difficulty in locating women in younger age-cohort: It is also realized that locating women in the age-cohort of 18-24 years is far more difficult as compared to others. Younger women are much less likely to be listed in the voter rolls than other individuals and they also relocate more often after marriage, rendering themselves as untraceable in that particular polling booth.
  5. False entries: Sometimes the names or other information like age of the individuals does not match exactly leading to minor mismatch between the electoral roll entry and the original information of individuals. Also, the existence of false entries is found in the voter’s list.
  6. Voters not residing in the delimited area of a particular polling booth: In some cases, it is found that most of the respondents selected from the voter list of a particular booth, actually reside in a village far from the polling booth demarcated area. This is because voters in a particular area are assigned to other polling booths besides the one officially demarcated for the area.

To tackle the challenges of non-response and difficulty in locating the respondents, digitizing data of extra polling booths as buffers and preparing a list of respondents which include more numbers in addition to the required sample size for each group of respondents in each polling booth, would be a mitigating mechanism.

  1. Suggestions to facilitate a more convenient use of electoral rolls in constructing sampling frame:

Below are a few suggestions from our experience of using electoral rolls for constructing sampling frame to make the process more efficient:

  • providing the list of polling booths and electoral rolls in English;
  • indicating the rural/urban location of the polling booths in Chief electoral officer’s website;
  • making the electoral rolls available in convertible PDFs; and
  • more frequent updating of the electoral rolls.

Lastly an important limitation of using electoral rolls pertains to specific age cohorts. Since the electoral rolls include only the eligible voters, the sampling frame thus includes only those individuals who are 18 years and above. It would thus be relevant mainly for surveys that include specific age groups above a certain threshold.

 

This blog has been authored by Dr. Sona Mitra, Director- Policy and Research, IWWAGE; Dr. Bidisha Mondal, Research Fellow, IWWAGE; Prakriti Sharma, Senior Research Associate, IWWAGE; and Aneek Chowdhury, Research Associate, IWWAGE[1].

We are very thankful to Dr. Santanu Pramanick for his guidance through the process of developing a sampling frame. We are also grateful to Shri P C Mohanan for his comments in both phases of using the electoral rolls for our purpose.

IWWAGE at the 64th Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) at Hyderabad, Telangana

IWWAGE at the 64th Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) at Hyderabad, Telangana

 

IWWAGE participated in the 64th Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics held in Hyderabad, Telangana in March 2024. The ISLE engagement included organizing a panel discussion on “care,” participation in a panel on time use methods as well as paper presentations by team members.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

  1. Caring for the Caregivers: Pathways to Strengthen the Care Economy

29th March 2024

IWWAGE along with the Institute for Human Development organized a panel on “Caring for the Caregivers: Pathways to Strengthen the Care Economy” which highlighted pressing issues around care based on specific contexts, advocating for better working conditions and facilities including access to key amenities like toilets and transportation. The discussion delved into the scope and environment of care work, emphasizing the need for financing, enhanced investments, and adequate legal frameworks to protect the rights of care workers. The panel was chaired by Yamini Mishra (India Director, Mac Arthur Foundation) with introductory remarks by Sona Mitra (Research & Policy Director, IWWAGE). The panellists included Ritu Dewan (Visiting Professor, IHD), A K Shivkumar (Visiting Professor, IHD), Valeria Esquivel (Employment Policies and Gender Specialist, ILO), and Prabha Kotiswaran (Professor, King’s College London) with Dipa Sinha (Assistant Professor, Ambedkar University, Delhi) joining as a discussant. The session concluded with remarks from Radha Chellappa (Executive Director, IWWAGE) encapsulating the importance of the dialogue and its implications for policy and practice.

 

 

  1. Integrating Time Use Module with Labour Force Surveys

30th March 2024

Organized by the Centre For Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi, this panel delved into the possibilities and challenges of integrating time use data into labour force surveys, a crucial step towards understanding the unseen aspects of labour and productivity. The panel was chaired by TCA Anant (Adjunct Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences). Sona Mitra (Director – Policy and Research, IWWAGE) presented insights from a primary study that incorporated gendered activities and time-budget components. The esteemed panel was chaired by TCA Anant (Adjunct Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences) and also included the following experts: Padmini Swaminathan, Former Director, Madras Institute of Development Studies; G.C. Manna, (Professor, IHD India, Former Director General, CSO and NSSO) P.C. Mohanan (Chairman, Kerala State Statistical Commission), Kripa Ananthpur (Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies) and Neetha N. (Professor, Centre for Women’s Development Studies).

 

PAPER PRESENTATIONS
1. Paper Title: “Informant bias’, a key factor behind underestimation of women’s work: Evidence from two IWWAGE surveys”
Authors: Sona Mitra, Bidisha Mondal, Prakriti Sharma and Aneek Choudhury
Summary: Using two primary surveys, the paper assessed the ‘informant bias’ across various economic and non-economic participation of working-age women and further investigated how it varied across the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of individuals and households.
2. Paper Title: How care responsibilities influence women’s labour force participation and the nature of their employment: Evidences from PLFS 2022-23
Author: Bidisha Mondal
Summary: Women belonging to households with childcare responsibilities are two times more likely to stay engaged in full-time domestic duties and thus stay out of the labourforce, as compared to women without childcare responsibilities. Moreover, when women with childcare responsibilities participate in the labourforce, they are more likely to be engaged in non-remunerative opportunities like unpaid family work probably due to the flexibility these types of engagement provide. Elderly care responsibilities are found to restrain women’s labourforce participation decision and remunerative engagements marginally.
3. Paper Title: “Formalising Care Economy will have Far-Reaching Implications for Women’s Employment ”
Authors: Mridusmita Bordoloi (IWWAGE), Prof. Rajshree Bedamatta, IIT Guwahati
Summary: This paper defines the care sector and the care workforce in India, based on the definition suggested by International Labour Organisation (ILO), using unit level data from PLFS, 2022-23, and explores the characteristics of the care workers. The paper argues that if the care sector can be developed further and formalised, it can have far-reaching implications. It will not only create new job opportunities in the economy for individuals across gender, but can also work as an enabler in women’s labour market participation, which is significantly low at present.

 

Women’s control over their economic resources: Evidence from NFHS 5

Economic violence refers to any act or behavior causing economic harm to an individual and generally involves coercive control of economic resources of a person . It is one of the many interconnected forms of violence often taking place at the domestic realm in the context of intimate relationships leading to adverse consequences on mental, physical, and financial well-being as well as other development opportunities of the victims and their dependents both in the short and long-term. This blog attempts to provide estimates of the incidence of economic violence in India based on the National Family Health Survey 5, conducted during 2019-21.

Although economic violence is now legally recognized in a few of the European Union member states like Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia and it is a commonly used tactic by perpetrators for coercive control over the victims and co-occurs with other forms of violence, it is less talked about and underreported. The under-reporting arises majorly due to the general lack of awareness about what constitutes economic violence. The gap in empirical understanding of economic violence and the factors influencing the occurrence of this form of violence also leads to a vacuum in the policy-making space through prohibitive measures to support the survivors.

There are majorly three types of economic violence categorized by the European Institute of Gender Equality: economic control which includes preventing, limiting, or controlling a victim’s finances and related decision-making; economic exploitation which means using the economic resources of a victim to the abuser’s advantage; and economic sabotage which involves preventing a victim from pursuing, obtaining, or maintaining employment and/or education. However, the identified indicators from NFHS 5 allows us to explore only the extent of economic control and economic exploitation experienced by women in India.

According to NFHS 5, 49% of women, aged between 15 to 49 years, don’t have the decision-making power on how to spend their own money. The situation is relatively better for urban women as compared to their rural counterparts since the share is relatively lower at 43% for urban women and 51% for rural women. This is because urban women face less restrictive socio-cultural norms and enjoy better agency as compared to rural women. Also, there exists vast state-wise variation when it comes to women’s control over their own money. The three states with highest shares of women with decision-making power over their own money, are Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, and Karnataka with the shares being 62%, 61%, and 59% respectively, whereas the worst performing states are Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Assam with the shares being 32%, 29% and 28% respectively. The state-wise patterns indicate varying levels of women’s agency and the associated socio-cultural norms across the states. 

The control over one’s own money also varies among women in different age-cohorts, with the control steadily increasing with age. While only 35% women in the age-cohort of 15-19 years can decide how to spend their own money, this share rises to 59% for women in the age-cohort of 45-49 years. As women transition from young adulthood to middle age, their growing social network often make them collectively empowered, help them challenge the restrictive social norms and exercise better agency. Moreover, financial distress has been a contributing factor to the prevalence of economic violence as 54% women in the ‘poorest quintile’ reported not having the control over their own financial resources. This percentage goes down among women belonging to upper expenditure quintiles.

The partner pay gap- the difference in earnings between the partners – turns out to be a significant influencer of economic violence as women’s relative earning position tends to determine the interpersonal power dynamics within the couple. Around 65% of women who earn equal to their husbands or more than their husbands, are found to have command on how they spend their own money, and the share is 59% for those earning less than their male spouses. The findings from NFHS 5 reveal a U-shaped relationship between women’s control over their own economic resources and their education level. This implies that women at very low levels of education have better command over their economic resources as compared to women in secondary/higher-secondary levels of education; the control increases for women with graduation/post-graduation levels of education. As NFHS 5 reveals, this too can be explained by the partner pay gap. According to the data, the share of women earning more or less similar to their male spouses is high among women with lower levels of education and thus on average they enjoy better command over their economic resources. Women at secondary/higher secondary levels of education, earn much lower than their spouses on average, leading to lower agency and less control on their own economic resources, and again the ‘partner pay gap’ declines for women with tertiary level of education, leading to better agency. Additionally, as the education levels of the male spouses increases, the females are found to enjoy more decision-making power over their own earnings as educated men are supposed to conform to more gender-equal norms. Approximately 50% of women whose male spouses received no education, don’t have any command over their own money. This share goes down to 36% for women with male partners educated above the secondary level.

Another commonly found example of financial abuse is the male spouse depleting the wife’s savings without her knowledge/consent. According to NFHS 5, around 44% of women stated that they have a bank savings account of their own, but they are not in control of the money in it. This share again varies by education levels, with the share being 44% for women without any education level and the share declining to 36% for those with education level above secondary level, reflecting higher agency among educated women.

Despite the pervasiveness of low agency of women when it comes to controlling their own incomes and financial resources, the recognition of it is lower. This lack of recognition is often due to not acknowledging the exclusion as another form of discrimination and assault on women. This points to the need for generating more evidence and awareness around the various forms of exclusion both in the legal and scholarly spheres. Criminalizing economic abuse would help to send a firm message about the unacceptability of this form of violence. Allocating significant budgetary resources for training legal professionals for increasing their capacity to recognize, investigate, and prosecute economic violence would be needed to address and prevent its occurrence. Along with this, the access to the services to combat familial violence must be provided to its victims too. Lastly, we need more sophisticated surveys capturing the various dimensions of economic violence to fully comprehend the subject.

 

This blog is written by Aneek Choudhury, Research Associate and Bidisha Mondal, Research Fellow at IWWAGE.

 

Picture credit: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images/Images of Empowerment

Panel on “Advancing Women’s Work in Global South: Towards Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality” at the IHD Global Conclave 2024
Panel on “Advancing Women’s Work in Global
South: Towards Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality” at the IHD Global
Conclave 2024

IWWAGE along with Niti Aayog organized a Panel on “Advancing Women’s Work in Global South: Towards Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality” at the Global Conclave organized by the Institute of Human Development on 12th January, 2024 at the India International Centre.

Chair and Moderator

Sonalde Desai, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, US, and Professor, National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi

Panelists

  • Wei-Jun Jean Yeung, Professor and Provost’s Chair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
  • National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • Marina Durano, Adviser on Care Economy and Partnership, Engagement, UNI Global Union, Geneva
  • Sakshi Khurana, Senior Specialist, Skill Development, Labour & Employment, NITI Aayog, Government of India
  • Sona Mitra, Principal Economist, IWWAGE – An initiative of LEAD, Krea University
  • Kyoko Kusakabe, Professor, Gender and Development Studies, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand
  • Grace Wamue-Ngare, Professor, Gender and Development Studies, Department of Sociology, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya

 

The panel was Chaired by Dr. Sonalde Desai, and included presentations by a diverse group of speakers offer a comprehensive panorama of the intricate landscape surrounding women’s work on a global scale. Sakshi Khurana, Senior Specialist at NITI Aayog, illuminated the gender disparities prevalent in labor force participation, wage pay, and managerial roles, drawing attention to the transformative impact of digital technologies on women. Wei-Jun Jean Yeung provided an insightful analysis of the Asia-Pacific region, detailing economic dynamics, gender parity trends, and the varied challenges confronting women in the region. Marina Durano delved into the constitutional recognition of care work, shedding light on the evolving discourse around the right to work within the framework of a care economy. Sona Mitra’s focus on the declining Female Labor Force Participation Rate in India highlighted the qualitative distinctions in women’s work, with an emphasis on care and unpaid activities. Kyoko Kusakabe’s case study on Thailand explored the nuanced effects of automation and digitization on women’s roles in the workforce. Grace Wamue-Ngare offered a lens into the persistent gender disparities in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly through the lens of initiatives by the KU-WEE Hub in Kenya aimed at dismantling barriers to Women’s Economic Empowerment. Together, these presentations weaved a rich tapestry that underscore the imperative for nuanced, context-specific strategies to bolster women’s economic participation, acknowledging regional nuances and the intersectional challenges that women face globally.

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