The Motherhood Penalty and Female Employment in Urban India

Das, Maitreyi Bordia ; Zumbyte, Ieva

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: GENDER;    LABOR MARKET;    MOTHERHOOD;    WOMEN IN WORKFORCE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8004
RP-ID  :  WPS8004

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Since the 1990s, India has seen robusteconomic growth, rising wages, steady fertility decline,increased urbanization, and expanded educational attainmentfor males and females. But unlike other countries that haveundergone similar transitions, urban women's employmenthas refused to budge, never crossing the 25 percent mark.This paper fills a critical gap in policy research onwomen's employment in India. The discussion is situatedin the normative construction of motherhood and the genderednature of caregiving in India. The analysis uses pooled datafrom six rounds of the National Sample Surveys to examinethe effects of having a young child on mothers'employment in urban India over 1983-2011. The analysis alsolooks at household structure, and analyzes the effects ofother household members on women's labor supply. Theresults show that although the onus of childbearing may havereduced, that of caregiving has increased. Having a youngchild in the home depresses mothers' employment, aninverse relationship that has intensified over time.Further, living in a household with older children and womenover the age of 50 is positively associated withwomen's employment. These results show that the care ofyoung children is an increasingly important issue inwomen's employment decisions, in a context where formalchildcare is practically nonexistent. These results havesignificant implications for policy to raise women’s laborforce participation in India.