The Multi-dimensionality of Development and Gender Empowerment : Women ’ s Decision-Making and Mobility in India

The relationship between development and gender empowerment remains unclear, especially in low-income societies where economic growth has not brought about any noticeable change in gender relations. We argue that this is largely due to the multidimensional nature of both concepts so that different aspects of development may have quite different relationships with different aspects of empowerment. Further, both development and gender empowerment are dynamic processes which require data and methods that enable us to examine their relationship over time. In this paper, we use longitudinal data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) on 20,507 women ages 15-49 who were interviewed at two points in time, 2004-5 and 2011-12, to map the relationships between change in important aspects of India’s development with that of women’s autonomy over household decision making and their own mobility. Findings from cross-sectional, over time as well as fixed effects methods consistently show that education has an empowering effect while economic advance has a more conservative effect on gender empowerment. Women’s Empowerment in India 3 The Multi-dimensionality of Development and Gender Empowerment: Women’s Decision-Making and Mobility in India

[1]  A. Krueger,et al.  The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. , 1960 .

[2]  Michael M. Ames,et al.  Caste in Modern India and Other Essays. , 1964 .

[3]  Cyril E. Black,et al.  Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries , 1976 .

[4]  R. Blumberg.  A General Theory of Gender Stratification , 1984 .

[5]  M. Gupta.  Selective Discrimination against Female Children in Rural Punjab, India , 1987 .

[6]  Status and Sacredness: A General Theory of Status Relations and an Analysis of Indian Culture. , 1995 .

[7]  M. Mather,et al.  Do Schooling and Work Empower Women in Developing Countries? Gender and Domestic Decisions in Sri Lanka , 1997 .

[8]  M. Kritz,et al.  Determinants of Women's Decision-Making Authority in Nigeria: The Ethnic Dimension , 1999 .

[9]  N. Kabeer.  Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women's Empowerment , 1999 .

[10]  Z. Sathar,et al.  Women's Autonomy in India and Pakistan: The Influence of Religion and Region , 2001 .

[11]  Herbert L. Smith,et al.  Muslim and Non-Muslim Differences in Female Autonomy and Fertility: Evidence from Four Asian Countries , 2002 .

[12]  K. Allendorf.  Couples' reports of women's autonomy and health-care use in Nepal. , 2007, Studies in family planning.

[13]  L. Subaiya,et al.  Understanding women's empowerment: a comparative analysis of demographic and health surveys (DHS) data , 2008 .

[14]  Shuzhuo Li,et al.  Evidence for an Incipient Decline in Numbers of Missing Girls in China and India , 2009 .

[15]  Amaresh Dubey,et al.  Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition , 2010 .

[16]  Angus Deaton.  Instruments, Randomization, and Learning about Development , 2010 .

[17]  P. Simkhada,et al.  Women's autonomy in household decision-making: a demographic study in Nepal , 2010, Reproductive health.

[18]  D. Wypij,et al.  Dimensions of women’s autonomy and the influence on maternal health care utilization in a north indian city , 2001, Demography.

[19]  A. Thornton.  The developmental paradigm, reading history sideways, and family change , 2001, Demography.

[20]  Stan Becker,et al.  Measurement of Women's Empowerment in Rural Bangladesh. , 2012, World development.

[21]  Michael C. Frank,et al.  Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science , 2015, Science.

[22]  J. Klugman,et al.  Exploring Women's Agency and Empowerment in Developing Countries: Where do we stand? , 2016 .

[23]  Friedrich Engels.  The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State , 2021, Politics and Kinship.