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In this paper, I examine the relationship between three distinct attitudes of mothers (pro-boy, egalitarian, and pro-girl) and stunting among boys and girls of age 0–14 years in India using the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2004–2005. Probit model estimates suggest that mothers' pro-girl attitudes are associated with less likelihood of observing stunting among girls and boys. Additional analysis by wealth categories shows that stunting among girls reduces when they have mothers with pro-girl attitudes and live in wealthy households. Robustness tests conducted with "severely stunted" as the dependent variable confirm the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The COVID-19 outbreak has significant psychological effects because of reduced support system and social quarantine, making women the worst-hit population of shadow pandemic, i.e. domestic violence. While food shortages, unemployment and increased domestic-work burdens are the immediate effects of the lockdown, women at home have to bear its far-reaching impacts in the long term in the form of domestic abuse, making the study of the psychological impact of domestic violence against women imperative. This paper aims to identify the factors and causes responsible for domestic violence and its psychological impacts on women in different aspects. This paper further focuses on the reasons behind an escalation in psychological violence against women. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is based on extrapolating data from various journal articles, Indian Government reports, newspaper articles and other printed materials that are recent, relevant and discuss domestic violence and mental stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers use Indian National Commission for Women's (NCW) data on complaints received regarding violence against women and domestic abuse in the year 2020 and 15 journal articles that discuss domestic violence against women during the COVID-19 period in different countries to discuss social inequalities and power relations impact on women' mental health. Findings: The findings suggest that economic instability during the pandemic and social and cultural norms of India ignited psychological abuse against women during the pandemic. The number of monthly complaints of dowry death, dowry harassment and protection of women against domestic violence reflect on increased registered complaints in the postlockdown period in the year 2020. The number of monthly complaints received by the NCW from January 2020 to December 2020 in India represents that WhatsApp chat is a powerful tool for reporting domestic violence. Originality/value: The pandemic lockdown has an adverse psychological impact on women, making them suffer from posttraumatic symptoms, substance abuse, panic attacks, depressions, hallucinations, eating disorders, self-harm, etc. This paper strives to reflect upon mitigation strategies to curb domestic violence in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between conflict trajectories and years of schooling in India for girls and boys. It adopts propensity score matching methods on panel data from the India Human Development Survey (2004/05-2011/12) merged with conflict data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal. Conflict is measured according to the dynamic trajectory of Naxal violence-related fatalities at the district level, distinguishing areas of chronic conflict with those experiencing dynamism in conflict intensity over time. ATT estimates indicate that conflict is associated with a reduction in years of schooling for both genders, though relatively high for girls (by a quarter of a year for girls and by 0.16 of a year for boys), driven by large reductions in school accumulation for girls living in areas of chronic conflict. Results are consistent when adopting different methods, alternative measures of conflict fatalities, and accounting for other conflicts and selective migration. Examining transmission mechanisms suggest that household spending on girls' education may be de-prioritised amidst conflict, while conflict may also weaken or destroy school infrastructure. Results suggest that policy responses should prioritise girls' education in areas of chronic conflict, not only in 'fragile states' but in countries where conflict remains a subnational concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: India's recent increase in urbanization alongside with feminization of rural agriculture could increase the existing gender disparities in dietary diversity. With many rural men migrating to urban areas, women have increased domestic burdens as well as productive burdens such as making informed crop production decisions so household members consume a diverse diet. Given the rapid and recent onset of this phenomenon, there is a need to explore gender differentials in diet diversity across urban and rural areas to assess if certain populations are being disproportionately impacted by this trend. There are limited established quantitative studies discussing this gender disparity with respect to urbanization. Therefore, this paper compares dietary diversity among adult men, adult women, adolescent males, and adolescent females in urban and peri-urban locations. The authors also assess if various sociodemographic factors correlate with dietary diversity. Methods: Analyses were conducted on dietary diversity data collected by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) from selected urban (1108 individuals) and peri-urban (808 individuals) locations of Hyderabad, India. The total sample size of the population is n = 1816: 660 adult males, 662 adult females, 205 adolescent males, and 289 adolescent females. Results: Adult women and adolescent females have a higher diet disparity between peri-urban and urban areas when compared to adult males and adolescent males. Multivariate analyses followed by post hoc multiple comparisons testing further support that peri-urban adult women consume a less diverse diet compared to their urban counterparts and less than other peri-urban adult men and adolescent women. It was also found that marital status, type of household card owned, and the highest degree of education are statistically significant correlators of an individual's dietary diversity. Conclusions: Given that urbanization could negatively impact already vulnerable populations such as peri-urban adult women, who play a key role in children's nutrition, it is important to provide support to these populations. This paper suggests it is possible to do so through government subsidization of peri-urban farmers to grow more diverse crops, fortifying easily accessible foods with commonly lacking micronutrients, including Vitamin A, folic acid, and iron, market access, and affordable prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the intimate labour of corporate cleaners in India. Their intimate labour involves removing the bodily waste of others, as well as working on their own bodies to meet employer demands. These workers are situated within India's lavish corporate offices which serve as prominent symbols of development. Yet toilet cleaning continues to be embedded within histories of gender, caste, and class hierarchies in India. Based on original field research in Pune, India, we explore the experiences of the workers who perform corporate cleaning jobs that allow round the clock operation of multinational technology industries. We argue that while corporate cleaning is sanitized, professionalized, and mirrors the neoliberal visions of a global India, it is complicit in a denial and entrenchment of caste and gender hierarchies. Our analysis contributes to debates around gendering of intimate labour by exploring its salience as well as invisibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The paper aims to explore the process of identity regulation and identity creation on social media for employees in the IT sector of India and how this process is different for men and women. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on the thematic analysis of in-depth interviews of 31 IT professionals. Findings: The authors find that identity regulation and identity creation is a complex process when it is mediated on social media as cues and guidelines for professionals are ambiguous. Enriching Ibarra's model of identity creation, the authors find that this process consists of five steps: (1) motivation to build a desirable self, (2) experimenting with identity boundaries, (3) failed identity experiences, (4) active self-regulation and (5) enacting inauthentic selves. The authors further find that this self-regulation for men is driven by the pressure to conform to the identity of an ideal "corporate man", whereas for women it is driven by the need to conform to societal and cultural expectations. Practical implications: Since identity regulation is a cognitively demanding process that affects both the productivity and well-being of employees, organisations can proactively help employees manage their social media presence through training and mentorship programmes. Originality/value: The paper provides an enriched version of Ibarra's (1999) model on identity creation and regulation and highlights the role of gender in the process. The paper is practically relevant as it provides a window into how employees can feel the need to manifest inauthentic selves which is cognitively demanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debt bondage is one of the most widespread forms of unfree labour today. The majority of the existing studies focuses on bonded labourers as a homogenous group rather than examining group dynamics within the population of bonded labourers. This paper tries to overcome these limitations and examines experiences of women bonded labourers from the Sahariya tribe in India. It argues that gendered norms intersect with other patterns of structural violence creating a situation where women are doubly exploited but also opening new (limited) agentic spaces for these women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the prevalence of child labour and long working hours in India using 2019 data, with estimates for boys and girls that deal with age-related child development concerns related to long hours of work. We use international suggestions to define harmful child labour from ILO and UNICEF and a nationally defined time-threshold model in analysing the child-labour phenomenon. Measuring time by the three measurement systems and splitting children by age, gender, and cultural components make harmful forms of labour become clearer. The results show that girls doing agricultural labour and boys working as non-agricultural labourers had the longest average working hours in India. Important social-group differentials emerge. This study implies that policy-makers can be, and need to be, aware of explicit measures of hours worked by children aged six to 17. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of studies have analyzed the determinants of financial inclusion in India, but few if any have focused specifically on the factors that shape women's access to finance. This paper draws on the trove of women‐specific data collected in the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS‐4), conducted in 2015–16 in India, to examine the factors that influence women's access to finance. The results indicate that while the forces that shape women's access to finance function at multiple levels, micro‐level factors appear to be powerful drivers of inclusion. The analysis reveals that household‐level economic indicators like wealth, gender of household head and their rural‐urban location are crucial, but so are individual‐level characteristics which explain approximately 83% of the variation in the multilevel regressions. Informal gender norms that govern women's mobility and economic activity crucially influence the ability of women to access loans and open bank accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does a legal change in women's inheritance rights have long-term effects on child health outcomes? This paper examines the effect of an improvement in women's inheritance rights on child nutritional health outcomes in India using a difference-in-differences estimation approach. We use the staggered implementation of the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 to investigate the impact of the reform on anthropometric indictors of child health: being underweight, stunted, and wasted. The findings of this study reveal that an improvement in women's inheritance rights has a positive impact on children's health and reduces the probability of nutritional deficiency in the child. We identify mechanisms such as increased educational levels, better marital outcomes, and improved intrahousehold bargaining power of women as potential pathways through which inheritance rights affect child nutritional health outcomes. The results of the paper lend credence to growing evidence that legal recognition of women's inheritance rights can have sustained and second-generation effects, in spite of poor enforcement mechanisms and persistence of deep-rooted societal bias against women holding property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising numbers of young unmarried men in India reflect a marriage squeeze that goes beyond the shortage of brides created by sex-selective abortion. We describe a decline in men's marriageability caused by their falling economic prospects at the same time as families of brides are increasingly seeking grooms with stable employment. We group young men into those without jobs or much education, those with education but no work, and the privileged few with education as well as employment. This classification resolves some of the seeming contradictions in the qualitative literature on marriage in India. Some of this literature talks about the rising prevalence of bride price and some about the persistence of dowry, while some papers reflect in general on the costs of being young, male, and aimless. Our commentary includes a review of the growing literature on the physiological and (perhaps) consequently behavioural and health outcomes of men's anomie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dams are the biggest 'development' displacement agent. In this paper, we explore the gendered processes and structures of dam-induced displacement and resettlement on Indigenous communities and how displaced men conceptualise masculinities and gender relations within those communities. Drawing upon results of previous research undertaken in India and Malaysia, these two disparate cases allow us to examine how displacement affected men and changed their lives, and subsequently how they (re)constructed and (re)negotiated masculinities and gender-social relations in post-resettlement lives. We highlight two critical issues, namely, household and community land/resources, and compensation and rehabilitation processes to illustrate how gender roles, and in particular masculinities and men's roles, were transformed in dam displacement in both the countries, and analyse the consequences for women, family life and gender relations. We argue that the outcomes of gender and social asymmetries have largely depended on the realities of power, allowing men to reconstruct their masculinities to retain stereotyped notions of male superiority and female subordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines discourses about sexual risk and respectability in the South Indian city of Chennai, through an ethnographic study of young women's participation in practices of public sex. Focusing on middle-class women located at the heart of neoliberal and national fantasies of the 'good life', it makes two arguments. First: the paper unpacks the ways in which urban publics have been stigmatised as 'unsafe' for respectable women. It demonstrates that in practices of publicly-located sex, young women subvert this. They instead see private and commercial spaces – which have been celebrated as the locus of their liberation – as places of surveillance and discipline. Second: the paper interrogates how spatial governmentalities produce regimes of legitimacy that accrue to particular sexual acts. It argues that what 'counts' as sex is also determined geographically: by where the sex act occurs and what geographies of discipline and imaginaries of risk and respectability it evokes in its location. Both arguments draw attention to the ways in which contemporary discourses about the 'risk' of urban publics evoke the logics of development within which the construct of respectable femininity is located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to test for spatial convergence in financial inclusion across major Indian states and union territories. Design/methodology/approach: After initially building an Index of Financial Inclusion (IFI) for major Indian states between 2003 and 2016, exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) is employed to draw inferences about mean and variance of IFI. The paper then seeks to confirm the ESDA results through spatial panel regression techniques. Finally, spatial results are correlated with results from aspatial convergence measures. Findings: The study finds that there is no evidence of spatial convergence in financial inclusion over the study period, suggesting that those states that were relatively less financially included remained so through the study period. The study also asserts the relevance of certain important determinants, namely, per capita income, infrastructure, industrialization and gender. Research limitations/implications: This study has two limitations. First, only banking institutions are considered in measuring financial inclusion. Second, due to lack of a consistent indicator of gender participation across states, we had to employ sex ratio as a proxy. Practical implications: The study suggests that policies to expand financial inclusion in Indian states, especially those with low inclusion levels are likely to benefit neighbouring states also, thereby accelerating the financial inclusion drive across states. Originality/value: The study is a first in the Indian context to estimate the spatial dependence of financial inclusion and provides relevant implications for policymakers and bankers to target financial inclusion schemes in backward states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste is the visible outcome of socioeconomic processes such as urbanisation and industrialisation. Yet the negative impacts of waste mismanagement are often externalised and invisibilised in the metabolism of cities, in which informal waste labourers often assume the heaviest burden. In this paper, we approach cities as sociocultural arenas in which agents work within and around structural constraints to allow transformation to take place. Our paper analyses how grassroots activism, NGO-municipality collaboration, and women's empowerment led to realising transformative potential for both solid waste management and social inclusion in the Indian city of Pune. We analyse the case of SWaCH Pune Seva Sahakari Sanstha (SWaCH), a predominantly-female social cooperative of waste pickers, to show how supporting and enhancing informal labour can produce multiple positive outcomes. Our analysis also examines the role that the women waste pickers themselves played in bringing about change. We consider the structural constraints for achieving deeper and broader impact and assess what these indicate for the long-term success of this initiative. We also illustrate how power structures tend to constrain bottom-up transformation approaches, regardless of their transformative potential. Above all, SWaCH's story shows how working with informality rather than seeking to eradicate it can result favourably in moving towards the legitimisation and gradual institutionalisation of a pro-poor urban solid waste management system in which women's empowerment is expressed not only for their benefit but also for the states, the citizens and the environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The grand narrative of nationalism, which "has typically sprung from masculinised memory, masculinised humiliation and masculinised hope", as observed by Cynthia Enloe, in her book Bananas, Beaches and Bases, is essentially a gendered discourse and excludes any gender location that does not conform to the standards of heteronormative masculinity. Therefore, any attempt to locate and identify instances that debunk this gender binary in the history of the nation creates space for multiple localized narratives and destabilises the hetero-patriarchal power-centre of the nation-state. Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don't Tell You by Devdutt Pattanaik, published in 2014, during the legal tug-of-war regarding section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, tries to create an alternate mytho-historical framework by selecting queer occurrences from Hindu mythologies to challenge the broader discourse of monolithic understanding of "Indian-ness". This paper seeks to interrogate the subversive potentials of these narratives, deliberately chosen from "Hindu" myths, in critiquing and questioning the homogenised, hegemonic and masculinist constructs of the mytho-historiography of the nation. It also aims to explore the use of mytho-history as an agent in shaping nationhood and validating the queer space in the narrative of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies gross labour market flows and determinants of labour market transitions for urban Indian workers using a panel dataset constructed from Indian Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data for the period 2017–18 to 2019–20. Longitudinal studies based on the PLFS have been hampered by data problems that prevent a straightforward merging of the 2017–18 and 2018–19 data releases. In this paper, we propose and validate a matching procedure based on individual and household characteristics that can successfully link almost all records across these 2 years. We use the constructed dataset to document a number of stylised facts about gross worker flows and to estimate the effects of different individual characteristics and work histories on probabilities of job gain and loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An overwhelming body of evidence supports a negative relationship between women's empowerment and fertility. In this paper, we evaluate whether this relationship holds in a setting with a high degree of son preference and limited access to abortion services by focusing on rural India. We exploit the reforms to the Hindu Succession Act that improved female empowerment by mandating equal inheritance rights for women to assess the reform's impact on women's fertility. Using NFHS‐3 data and a difference‐in‐differences estimation, our results show that women who benefitted from the reform had more children than their counterparts. We attribute this increase in fertility to women's ability to use the stopping rule to achieve son preference. Finally, women impacted by the reform had a higher proportion of sons for a given family size, indicating stronger inherent son preference among treated women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses whether living in a locality with high crime against women affects the probability of early marriage—that is, marriage before the legal age of marriage of girls. Using a nationally representative longitudinal data set and tackling the potential endogeneity of local crime rates, we find that perceived crime against women in the locality significantly increases the likelihood of early marriage of girls, while there is no such effect on boys of comparable age group. We also find no such effect of gender-neutral crimes (such as theft and robbery) on the likelihood of early marriage of girls. Moreover, we find that the relationship holds only in conservative households where the purdah system is practised, and also in the northern region of India, where patriarchal culture and gender norms are stronger than in the southern region. A sensitivity analysis assessing the potential impact of unobservable confounders suggests that our estimates are unlikely to be affected by omitted variable bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the food security implications of the out-migration of men for rural households headed by women. Recent transformations in the socio-economic landscape of the Global South involve an increasing number of rural households shifting towards urban-nonfarm, migration-based livelihoods. In many rural societies, social and cultural norms restricting women's mobility means migration is usually undertaken by men, leading to a phenomenon of left-behind women. The absence of men requires women to assume the role of household heads. This often triggers fundamental changes in intrahousehold gender power relations. However, little is known about the effects of these changes on household food security outcomes. Drawing on primary field research in western Bihar in India, this article attempts to highlight interconnections between migration, women left behind and household food security and, in doing so, makes two key contributions. First, with a focus on gender social roles, the paper shows that the two oft-cited impacts of migration of men—'improved autonomy' and 'increased responsibility' for left-behind women—provide conceptual pathways to understand migration-gender-food security linkages. Second, it provides evidence on how changes in women's roles under conditions of such migration intersect with household food security. The findings indicate a gender-based disadvantage in food security outcomes faced by household headed by women, offsetting even the potentially positive influence of improved female autonomy. The paper argues for the need to address socio-economic mechanisms underpinning gender-based vulnerabilities to food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents evidence of gender peer effects in high schools in India using new administrative data. Identification of gender peer effects is achieved by exploiting variation induced by idiosyncratic changes in gender composition across cohorts within schools, in addition to controlling for past scores. The proportion of female classmates in a student's cohort has a sizeable positive effect on the test scores of both male and female students. We find that peer effects vary non-linearly with the proportion of female students. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence on plausible mechanisms. We show that achievement spillovers are not the main driver of positive gender peer effects. Using a supplemental dataset, we show that a greater proportion of female students leads to an improved classroom environment in the context of Indian schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rohingya experiences of displacement and refuge are heavily gendered. Sexual and gender-based violence have been used as weapons against Rohingya women, men, girls and boys in Myanmar for decades. Trafficking and exploitation are rife on the flight out of the country, and host states such as India present their own gendered challenges to family survival and individual coping. In this paper, we examine how some of those violent and disruptive experiences have affected gender roles for individuals and families as they have fled Myanmar (often more than once) and sought refuge in India via Bangladesh. We present new insight into the dynamic subjectivity of Rohingya women as we show how, contrary to dominant depictions of passive victimhood, many have lead family migration across borders, taken up NGO/community leadership roles, or made the best 'home' possible within the limitations of the host context. This is because personal and family agency is sensitive to transitional opportunities and threats—i.e., gender norms of home and host contexts, interactions with host communities, and trust relations with NGOs, to name a few. Crucially, these social practices and experiences are not static or linear; they span generations and sprawling geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between the diffusion of drip irrigation technology, state subsidy programs to encourage its adoption by farmers, and gendered labor dynamics. Drip irrigation is promoted globally as a water conserving agricultural innovation that enhances water-use and productive efficiency by increasing yields with less water, while freeing up "saved" water for other uses. India leads the world in its rate of expansion and in total area. Relying on analyses of government drip irrigation policies and ethnographic field research conducted between 2015 and 2020 in the Indian state of Rajasthan, I find the successful diffusion of drip irrigation is dependent upon state subsidies, farmer adoption decisions and the availability of female labor. I engage conceptual work on water conservation technologies, and from feminist political ecology and infrastructure studies to argue: (1) the diffusion of drip irrigation is better understood as a gendered process of infrastructuring; which (2) is an ongoing process of the assembly of state subsidies, the aggregation of decentralized individual farmer adoption decisions, and the availability of on-demand, underpaid female labor; where (3) female laborers provide a "feminine labor subsidy" that produces productive efficiency gains and lends drip irrigation infrastructure its durability. Conceptualizing drip irrigation as a gendered process of infrastructuring, renders visible its emergent and gendered material politics. The conclusion discusses prospects for reassembling drip irrigation infrastructure in more materially just ways and its implications for the political ecology of water infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines gendered experiences of established adulthood with reference to role-related responsibilities in urban Indian families. In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 married adults aged between 35 and 45 years, from educated, high socioeconomic class families of Vadodara, India. The aim was to examine participants' reasoning about similarities and differences in potentials of men and women; and gender differences in responsibilities. Qualitative analyses revealed that both men and women attributed equal potentials for both genders, in fulfilling a range of adult roles within and outside the family. All participants also agreed that even if responsibilities were 'shared', women's involvement in different roles was much more intense than men's. Women were critical of patriarchal norms that hindered participation in the workforce and led to role overload. However, they navigated diverse roles with increased efficiency and multitasking. Men, on the other hand, showed passive acceptance and reinforced traditional gender norms in spite of complete awareness of demands generated from a rapidly changing socioeconomic milieu. However, in what may seem like a push and pull between the two genders, decisions of balancing work and family were always contextualized and embedded in an ethos of maintaining strong social and familial networks, indicating a clear preference for doing what was in everyone's best interest. Overall, results suggested that navigating traditional gender role expectations in marriage and parenthood, without compromising social and familial harmony, was a significant cultural marker of maturity in established adulthood in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the socio-economic inequalities that exist in the use of unhygienic menstrual practices in India and its states, as well as to identify the contribution of various socio-economic factors that leads to these inequalities. Design/methodology/approach: Data from the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019–21) for 240,285 menstruating women aged 15–24 years is used to examine the above objectives. The concentration index for unhygienic menstrual practices is calculated to measure the socio-economic inequalities, which are then decomposed into their determining factors. Findings: The state of Punjab experiencing the highest level of economic inequality, followed by Telangana and Haryana. The results from decomposition analysis suggest that rural residence (13%), illiteracy (7%), poor economic status (53%), not reading newspaper (12%) and not watching TV (14%) contribute 99% to the total socio-economic inequality in using unhygienic menstrual practices in India. The contribution of economic status to total inequalities is more in all the states except for Kerala and Mizoram, where caste and residence play an important role. Originality/value: This paper signifies the role of economic inequality in the use of unhygienic menstrual practices in India as well as the contribution of various socio-economic factors contributing towards these inequalities. The results from decomposition analysis suggest the need for unique health intervention strategies for different states following the evidence of major contributions to total inequalities in the use of unhygienic menstrual practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on gendered politics of the field has delved into the practices of accompaniment and its implications on research and knowledge production, particularly through the case of researchers' children and partners. In comparison, the tendency to seek assistance from parents is neglected within the scholarship. Drawing on the PhD fieldwork experiences of two researchers in their "native" country, specifically a Sri Lankan researcher conducting fieldwork in Sri Lanka and a North Indian scholar researching in South India, the paper reveals parents' contribution to the research process, in terms of enhancing researcher credibility, facilitating contact‐making and access, and providing emotional and practical care. The discussion illuminates two aspects of parents' involvement in fieldwork: (1) how the unique nature of parent–child relationships shapes the research process at multiple stages, and (2) how the gendered notions of knowledge production result in parents' contributions being typically unacknowledged. The paper emphasises that a researcher's positionality as a daughter shapes her ability to navigate gendered field sites in her "native" country and is implicated in the wider research process. This paper will illuminate why researchers take their parents to field sites and how this strategy helps them to negotiate gendered challenges in the field. Despite the benefits of parental accompaniment, parents' roles are frequently underplayed. This invisibility of certain actors' contributions to the research process reveals the gendered politics of knowledge construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to understand how, in tough economic times, British-owned, English language newspapers such as The Pioneer received and filtered news, especially gender-related and nationalist-related events and thinking. Design/methodology/approach – Using qualitative and quantitative methods to assess communications by and about pro-nationalist women, coverage of female activities was categorised into two groups: first, educational, social and peaceful campaigns and second, direct action such as strikes, burning of British cloth and business/land rent boycotts. Findings – Direct action provided "bad news" coverage, but it simultaneously gave a small window for publicity. Less threatening peaceful campaigns provided a bigger window – enhanced by the novelty value of female activism. Research limitations/implications – Historians need to look specifically at Indian newspapers during the struggle for independence for a counter-hegemonic discourse that reached a wide public. When evidence of women's activism is paired with financial news, it becomes clear that women had a negative impact on British business. Furthermore, The Pioneer's own business dilemmas made the paper part of the economic and ideological maelstrom that it reported on. Originality/value – This is the first time that the colonial press in India itself has been scrutinised in detail on the subject of the rising nationalist movement and women. Findings underline female influence on both economics and ideology – a neglected aspect of Indian gender scholarship and economic history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schoolchildren's embodied subjectivity has often been understood as a bio-political tool to 'clean up' and modernize poor and marginalized communities. In many post-colonial contexts, school uniforms frequently appear as visual symbols of a child's clean, schooled body and democratic access to education. Through ethnographic research with 10–14-year-old schoolchildren in urbanizing areas in northern Tamil Nadu, my paper asks how children inhabit and co-construct the school uniform code's cleanliness discourse in their everyday lives. Studying plural school uniforms through a spatial lens, I explore schoolchildren's embodied and relational work in negotiating with the equalizing school uniform codes within the schools and the circulation of multiple school uniforms in the community outside. Engaging with a shifting visual aesthetic of embodied cleanliness in a context of class segregated schooling. I argue that school uniforms are discursive sites where exclusions of class and gender, with undertones of caste and age, are simultaneously reinforced and negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the understanding of agency among the tribal young women attending college in Pratapgarh (Rajasthan), India. Particularly in light of this shift in their living and academic spaces, I look at how they interpret and perform their agency when it comes to being in a romantic relationship and getting married. It is not uncommon for tribal members to engage in romantic relationships and to seek love marriages. The number of young women migrating for education is increasing. As a result of educational migration, the practice of live-in relationships, romantic relationships, and love marriages has also increased over time among tribal youths. The data for this study were collected over nine months from interviews, group decisions, and participant observation of tribal young women in places they frequent, such as college campuses, hostels, homes, markets, and parks. In addition, the narratives of their parents and other family members are also analyzed to explore this aspect of agency, space, and marriage. In various domains encompassing academic and domestic spheres, my investigation has revealed that tribal young women exhibit agency concerning their involvement in romantic relationships and their preferences for either love or arranged marriages. Notably, a prevailing pattern emerges among most of my participants, regardless of their current romantic status or chosen marital arrangement, which centers around their post-wedding aspirations to pursue their education and attain government employment, thereby fostering financial independence. For these participants, marriage serves as a conduit through which they can sustain their educational pursuits even after entering into matrimony, facilitated by the support and assistance from their partner and in-laws. In addition to providing emotional and moral encouragement, these marital arrangements offer financial assistance, further reinforcing the participants' willingness to embrace matrimony while pursuing their education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers gendered accounts of girls' schooling and childhood from urban India. It challenges global 'girl effect' narratives by grappling with the interplay of poverty and caste patriarchy and how it shapes families' struggles and concerns and girls' (re)productive labour, (un)freedoms and classroom experiences. Moving beyond the notion of 'multiple childhoods' it develops a conceptual framework that accounts for the way the state, the market, economic inequalities and local patriarchies inscribe poor girls' schooling and work. Drawing upon ethnographic work with Class VIII students in a state school it also unpacks girls' negotiation of classed and casted patriarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International development institutions, governments, and social entrepreneurs have become increasingly enthusiastic about 'inclusive innovation' which, to solve problems in low- and middle-income countries, focuses on the development of technologies for and by the poor. Inclusive innovation differs from previous development efforts by focusing on devices instead of infrastructure, claiming to be based on scientific evidence, and relying on market logics to achieve humanitarian ends. Proponents argue that, informed by grassroots efforts, these interventions have enormous potential to catalyze economic, social, and political change. How are the market and technological imperatives of inclusive innovation shaping the international development agenda? What do inclusion and innovation mean in this context? What can inclusive innovation tell us about the proliferation of initiatives that promote technology for public good, from responsible innovation to public interest technology? This article examines these questions through a case study of menstrual hygiene management (MHM) innovation in India. Rather than providing solutions to self-evident development problems, inclusive innovation shapes both development problems and solutions simultaneously, in areas where scientific and market ways of knowing converge. These ways of knowing claim to be legitimate because they are rooted in local knowledge and expertise. MHM in India became a problem, and low-cost disposable sanitary pads an inclusive innovative solution, because of the involvement of Indian researchers and innovators, and Indian girls and women as consumers and producers. However, in the process they reinforced narrow understandings of both inclusion and innovation in international development. Inclusion efforts may be wrapped up in political economies that shape and limit their transformational power by prioritizing scientific, technical, and market expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with debates around microcredit, once a development success story, but now much critiqued. Arguing that microcredit can only be understood within the wider context of debt, we draw on ethnographic material from two villages in Tamil Nadu, to examine how microcredit through self‐help groups sits within a broader context of indebtedness among the rural labouring classes. We describe patterns and sources of borrowing among the poor, the ways in which debts are managed, negotiated and settled within households and the ways in which the management of debt is mediated by gender, caste, class and aspiration. The paper calls for a more nuanced understanding of debt: some debts are seen as 'good' and others as 'bad'. We explore the ways in which microcredit, channelled through self‐help groups, is—against much contemporary criticism—perceived by women borrowers in our study villages as a source of 'good debt' and praised as an enabling factor in their everyday household management as well as in aspirations for mobility and development. We also argue that microcredit can have positive impacts by enabling social investments that enhance status and reduce dependency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the under-researched dynamics of gender, workplace support, and perceived job demands in two different contexts, the United States and India. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws from two studies conducted in different contexts (the United States and India) via different methodological approaches (quantitative and qualitative, respectively). In Study I of this paper, data was collected using questionnaires from a nationally representative sample of adult workers in the United States. In Study II, interviews were conducted with 48 workers in India, selected using convenience sampling. Findings: It was found that both in the United States and India, women perceived considerably greater job demands than men. In terms of workplace support, both the studies found that workplace culture and supervisors' support influenced the perception of job demands, but the same was not true for coworkers' support, which mainly helped in coping rather than actually reducing the perception of job demands. Research implications: The article contributes to research by concluding that job demands as a construct are not clearly segregated from gender demands or expectations, especially in the way women "perceive" it. Women construct job demands as "job-family" demands and workplace support as "job-family" support. Moreover, being a woman in the workplace, women feel the "burden" of gender. Practical implications: It would be useful for organizations and policy makers to understand that women remain "conscious" of their gender in the workplace, and for them, the meaning of job demands and workplace support are "job-family" demands and "work-family" support, respectively. Social implications: This research intends to contribute toward thinking about gender relations and empowerment of people within organizational and work settings from a new light. Originality/value: The present study provides an alternative way of thinking about gender, job demands, and workplace support. Its value underlies in the way it raises the voices of women workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the gendered and racialized discourse on Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) in India. A complex metabolic, endocrinal and reproductive disorder, PCOS is one of the most common endocrinopathies in women of reproductive age today. Due to an unclear etiology, there is no single clinical definition for PCOS, contributing to a sense of confusion around the syndrome. India has one of the highest rates of PCOS in the world. Medical and social discourses on PCOS suggest the high rates are due to the failures of Westernized lifestyle and diet in women from developing countries. Taking the example of India, I argue that the lack of a clear etiology creates a discursive vacuum and that PCOS in itself is not a gendered and racialized syndrome, but the discourse on it is. Through the figure of the "new Indian woman," I address the socio-political anxieties of nationalism projected onto the female body and suggest that the discourse on PCOS in India is in reaction to a rising nationalist rhetoric. As a syndrome that presents through "masculine" symptoms, PCOS acts a unique entryway into the intersectional issues of gender, race, sexuality, class and national identities. An analysis of the Indian setting might shed light on PCOS discourses that are increasingly relevant globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the digital gender gap through an examination of mobile phone ownership, usage, and perceptions within the unique regional context of Kerala, India. Our analysis provides an overview of similarities and differences between women and men in the use of the Internet, mobile phones, and social media based on pre-pandemic survey data collected in 2018 from 296 households in four impoverished areas of Thiruvananthapuram. We analyse perceived advantages and disadvantages of mobile and social media use as well as their relative impacts on both men and women. The paper concludes with a discussion of the gendered implications of technology within Kerala and suggest several areas of investigation for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While authoritarian states promoting neoliberal forms of governance have taken advantage of COVID-19 to weaken the foundations of civil society, there has also been a significant rise in contemporary struggles for a more democratic society during and around the pandemic. From December 2019 to November 2021, India has seen a significant number of protests. The timeline of collective resistance against the state and its divisive, violent and neoliberal agenda represents a critical juncture in Indian politics. This paper focuses on the farmers' protests that started from last November and recently ended in a stunning, hard-earned victory. In a sector that is overwhelmingly male-dominated and deeply patriarchal, women farmers have come out on the streets protesting the controversial Farm Laws hastily passed by the Indian government in September 2019 that threatened to corporatize farming and increase exploitation and marginalisation of small farmers. What is most interesting about the farmers' protests is large-scale participation of women across caste, class, occupational, and religious divide which has changed the composition and dynamics of collective resistance and demonstrate how organised and collective resistance can become symbols of solidarity and intersectional dissent. The paper will examine the role of gender and female agency in protests by female occupying bodies in physical spaces particularly when under the pretext of COVID -19 crisis management the state has severely pushed back against citizens right to dissent and fight for justice. The farmer's protest has brought to the fore women's role in mass mobilisations. Women's participation in the protest has tremendous significance for women's movement for justice, equality and rights and can pose a real challenge to the return of the 'Strong State'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the situation of women working as information technology (IT) professionals in different regions of India within multi-national enterprises (MNEs). The research is part of a cross-national study that compared gendered relations in the UK and Indian IT sectors. The complex roles that region, class and caste and gendered values and norms have in shaping women’s work and lives in India are discussed.Design/methodology/approach The cross-national research assumed common themes as part of a programme of in-depth interviewing and observations during site visits. The “safari method” was adopted with research conducted by a sole fieldworker with intimate knowledge of the languages and cultures of both India and the UK. The research considered intersectionality and difference and aimed to understand material structures and cultural meanings evident from the research process.Findings There are significant differences in organisational culture even within MNEs sharing common legislative and policy environments. The IT sector in India offers opportunities for middle- and upper-class women professionals and the cultural – including identity – barriers to working in technical areas often experienced in western countries are not replicated in India. Nevertheless, this has not meant any significant improvements in gendered relations at work and in the Indian society. There are also particular influences of regional, class and caste differences manifested in IT workplaces, contributing to inequality.Originality/value This paper adds to the understanding of the situation of women in IT sector including within MNEs giving insights into the workings of global capitalist enterprises. The research offers appreciation of the complexity of social differences and whether opening up opportunities for women professionals in India can contribute to the inclusive growth or will maintain the current patterns of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent forest governance practices in India have responded to environmental change and subsequent livelihood insecurity by focusing resource governance policies on communities. A paradigm shift has occurred involving participatory inclusive bottom-up approaches, rather than state-centric, top-down forestry. With the formulation of the 1988 National Forest Policy, several variants of participatory models of forest governance – social forestry, community forestry, joint forest management – have been tried out, with differing degrees of success. The 2006 Forests Right Act adopts a rights-based approach to participatory forestry to address the serious concerns of environmental degradation, livelihood insecurity, tenure reforms and questions of autonomy and identity of forest-dependent communities. Using mainly qualitative methodology, this paper reviews forest governance policies and undertakes a critical examination of recent participatory forestry practices. Drawing empirical evidence from two community-based forest governance institutions in the state of Odisha in eastern India, the paper demonstrates how participatory forestry programmes, albeit successful, may be exclusionary with regard to women’s engagement in cases where their involvement is under-represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the impact of North‐eastern Region Community Resource Management Project for Upland Areas (NERCORMP) and draws inferences on mechanism of change, context of an intervention and implementation design. Utilising data from three waves of surveys, we find that while there is evidence of significant changes in financial inclusion, productivity and social security, there are some issues in replication and sustenance aspects. Since the impact of intervention is observed across various domains such as socio‐economic situation and natural resource management, thus, we believe that this paper presents an important case study in understanding the intervention efficacy, relevance and sustenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using cross‐section data on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the paper examines the importance of gender on discouraged borrowers in India. We distinguish the role of women across various capacities, such as owner, manager and owner‐manager. Controlling for potential endogeneity, the findings indicate that firms with women managers and those where women perform dual roles are more likely to be discouraged from borrowing. Furthermore, we show that interest rates and procedural complexities to be the key reasons that inhibit borrowing. Robustness tests lend credence to these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on moving workspaces into homes during and after the Covid-19-induced lockdown. In our qualitative research in India, we investigate the processes of place-making and redrawing of boundaries between paid and unpaid care work. Through interviews and autoethnographic reflections, we analyse the process of new workspace making. We examine the erasing of the home from the workspace where historical hierarchies of gender and caste mediated the (re) organising of work boundaries between paid knowledge and unpaid care work. The study is based in a context where social and physical infrastructure for paid knowledge work could not be assumed to be available in homes. The paper contributes to the literature on place-making with stories from a new context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional myths such as the poor are misfit to manage smart technologies or that women-led rural enterprises generally fall through faster than men managed ones - have since been broken as evidenced by various empirical studies. However, the research on solar energy enterprises managed by women, particularly in rural or peri-urban areas, has remained largely elusive while the impact of such womenled entrepreneurial energy-based start-ups has significant personal, social and community level consequential impacts. A range of institutional arrangements that support these entrepreneurs starting from identifying, training to building and sustaining of such start-ups are explored and evaluated in this paper. This paper shows that not only do women collectively run these enterprises but they also successfully incubate others in the community. The context of solar energy in rural communities has become all the more important for both a practitioner as well as a theoretical understanding of women entrepreneurship. This research deploys a qualitative method approach that uses both primary and secondary data; this is then put through a lens of systematic thematic analysis for discussion. The work contributes to policy discussions as well as build an empirical knowledge of how women-led solar technology-based enterprises are built, managed, sustained and scaled in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the key pathways linking agriculture and nutrition run through women's work, yet the evidence on these links are weak. Using time-use data from two Indian districts, this paper seeks to fill this gap. In principle, women's agricultural work could have positive and negative implications for nutrition, through increased control over incomes or intensifying work burdens. The emerging evidence points to the nuanced ways in which social identity, seasonality, and context mediate women's work in agriculture and consequently food intakes and feeding practices. Overall, women's work in agriculture seems to have a negative effect on household nutrition through two pathways: lack of adequate time for care work in peak agricultural seasons, and seasonal energy deficits that adversely affect their own health. Recognition of women's physical contributions to both agricultural production and domestic reproduction, and supporting them adequately, is central to improving nutritional outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary figurations of the 'the Indian Woman' over recent years have been heavily influenced by national and international media coverage focused on high profile, gruesome and brutal cases of rape and sexual assault of women in public. The suffering involved in such cases notwithstanding, we argue that investment in such representations runs the risk of limiting our understanding of the varied experiences of female bodies in public life. Most significantly, the bodies of younger girls and how they relate to public life is mostly assumed rather than studied. Drawing on a sub-sample of ethnographies of younger children aged 6–8 living in the city of Hyderabad, India and employing the phenomenological concept of 'orientation', the article explores young girls' everyday embodied orientation towards public life, with an intersectional framework. The paper considers three case studies from different spatial/cultural contexts and the empirical material is organised around the themes of the male gaze in a public space, orienting bodies in a schooled space, and the lived body in a domestic space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a broad overview of welfare schemes in India and their impact on social protection during a period of high economic growth. It summarizes India's performance with respect to select economic and social indicators relative to select low and middle-income countries in the Asia Pacific region. It further overviews trends in some key select economic and social indicators for India and discusses India's attainment in Social Protection relative to an index of such protection provided by the Asian Development Bank. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a comparative statistical approach and evaluates India's performance in key social welfare areas vis-à-vis that of countries with economic performance comparable to that of India. It also evaluates India's progress along these parameters over time. Findings – The basic messages of this paper are: first, compared to low and middle-income countries in the Asia Pacific India's economic performance has outstripped its performance in social and welfare indicators. Second, nevertheless India is spending less on social welfare programs and other welfare schemes than many countries in the Asia Pacific, including some of those whose economic performance has been less impressive than India's. Third, the efficiency and effectiveness of key welfare programs in India need to be substantially improved. Particular attention needs to be paid to female participation in and their access to social welfare programs. Originality/value – Informed analyses of social sector spending in India and their impact on welfare outcomes are relatively scarce although descriptive studies of social sector spending and welfare schemes abound. This paper attempts to fill this gap with a cross-country as well as intertemporal analysis of India's performance in these key areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The patriarchal kinship system in India considers sons as harbingers of prosperity and daughters as liabilities who require significant outlay of resources through their lifetimes. This social system assigns a higher value to sons and perpetuates discrimination in various forms. In this paper, instead of focusing on inferior outcomes for daughters, we provide empirical evidence of disproportionate penalties placed on long-term health outcomes of their parents. Using nationally representative data on health expenditure and outcomes for 2014, we find that a higher number of daughters are associated with increased probabilities of chronic ailment and self-reported poor health among the elderly. The effects are significantly weaker for scheduled tribes, a social group with relatively egalitarian gender norms. Also, these effects are stronger for higher quintiles of standardised number of daughters. Our findings remain robust to a variety of internal validity tests. In particular, we use a recent method that accounts for omitted variable bias to arrive at consistent estimates of bias adjusted treatment effects. Improved access to education and employment for daughters, adequate social protection and milestone-based conditional cash transfers are some ways to ameliorate this bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sudden health shocks may be devastating if their consequences are transferred to human capital formation of children, especially in families that are unable to access affordable healthcare. As such, access to health insurance may play a role in determining schooling decisions. I examine the impact of India's national health insurance scheme (RSBY) on gender differences in school enrolments in this paper. Employing difference‐in‐differences and triple differences approaches, I find that RSBY reduces the gender gap in school enrolments. Therefore, while RSBY was implemented with the aim of reducing financial burden for the poor, I find evidence that it has unintended positive consequences for girls in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identity narratives enhance the understanding of women's leadership, but there exist very few in‐depth analyses of negative identity tensions that influence agency. In this study, we examine the negative identity tensions of well‐to‐do women from small towns in India, who hold two leadership positions: organizational and social movement. We borrow from the discourse on well‐to‐do women's participation in social movements in India to draw on the notions of identity, perceptions of feminism, and patriarchal challenge. Our data are derived from 49 in‐depth interviews with women leaders. Findings from qualitative analysis and creation of a composite narrative show that negative identity tensions arising from two leadership positions are gendered in nature. Furthermore, agency is (i) contingent on one's reflection on challenges, (ii) rooted in an underlying principle, and (iii) practiced through the mechanisms of "managing femininity," a concept that is widely discussed in the Western paradigms of postfeminism and neoliberalism. This paper contributes to the feminist dialog on the global South in the context of gender, class, and geographical location intersection by revealing certain non‐Western ways of managing femininity. However, in the process, the hegemony of Indian men remains intact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]