How Do Upper Middle Class Women Fare in the Rapidly Growing Indian Economy?
Sonalde Desai, University of Maryland and NCAER
Lekha Subaiya, NCAER and the Institute for Social and Economic Change
Amy McLaughlin, University of Maryland
Reeve Vanneman, University of Maryland
Research on gender and globalization often sees increasing incomes and incorporation in global
culture as leading to greater autonomy for women and more equitable gender norms. Nowhere is this
discourse more visible than in countries like India where incomes have risen rapidly with emergence of a
new middle class that is avidly consuming global culture (Fernandes 2007). However, empirical research
suggests that this middle class in the developing world may be far more conservative when it comes to
gender norms than when it comes to consumption of material goods (Liechty 2003, Derne 2003). The
intersectional approach has established the need to complicate our investigations into class, gender, and
inequality (Choo & Feree, 2010; McCall, 2005). This paper will use insights from the literature on race,
class and gender intersectionality and apply them to our understanding of how class and gender are
shaping each other in a society where social class composition is rapidly changing.
Prima facie evidence from India Human Development Survey (IHDS) of over 40,000 households
shows that households with higher incomes are actually more rather than less conservative in gender
norms. As Table 1 indicates, women from higher income households are more likely to need permission
to venture outside the home, less likely to participate in household decision making jointly along with
other family members and less likely to have the most say in important decisions.
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Household Income
Quintile
Poorest
2nd Quintile
Middle Quintile
4th Quintile
Richest
No. of Places where
R needs permission
to go
3.01
3.01
3.07
3.15
3.12
No. of decisions in
which R has any
say
0.78
0.74
0.74
0.70
0.61
No. of decisions in
which R has most
say
0.78
0.74
0.74
0.70
0.61
How do we account for these counterintuitive findings? Part of the explanation may lie in
changes in education and labor force participation of women among higher income households. Higher
household incomes are associated with rising male education. These men engage in assortative mating
and tend to marry more educated women (Dalmia and Lawrence, 2001). Thus, upper income
households may have more educated women which should lead to more egalitarian gender norms. At
the same time, prior research suggests that both rising male incomes and rising female education in
India are associated with lower female labor force participation (Desai et al. 2010, Klasen and Pieters
2012). Table 2 below describes the U shaped curve in women’s labor force participation with education
as well as the negative relationship between women’s labor force participation and household income.
This is consistent with the observations from international literature (Goldin, 1986; Jensen, 2012). A
large amount of literature on intra-household bargaining power suggests that women’s power within
households is associated with their independent income (Agarwal 1997, Thomas 1994). The balance of
these countervailing forces forms the central topic of this paper.
Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses:
Historically, higher social class in India has been implicated in greater gender inequality since gender
norms are often relaxed for women from lower social classes who cannot afford to follow traditions like
not venturing outside of the home unless accompanied (Sharma 1980). But as a family or a caste
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advances in social status, they are more likely to enforce stricter restrictions on women (Srinivas 1977).
However, the extent to which these traditional notions of social status continue to operate depend both
on processes that accompany an increase in household income as well as the social context within which
these households are located.
Linkage between Household Income, Women’s Education and Women’s Work:
We argue that women in upper middle class households may be subject to contradictory processes
as their families rise economically. For example, data from IHDS shows that these women are likely to be
more educated in higher income brackets (Table 2) but at the same time, they are also less likely to be
participating in the labor force. This is true for both rural and urban women.
Table 2: Women's Labor Force Participation by Education and Unearned Income
Quintiles**
Rural
Poorest
2nd Q
3rd Q
4th Q
Richest
None
1-4
5-9
10-11
12 &
some
College
Graduate
81%
74%
72%
67%
65%
79%
72%
58%
56%
58%
70%
67%
59%
50%
45%
59%
61%
51%
39%
43%
46%
36%
53%
46%
Urban
Poorest
62%
2nd Q
45%
3rd Q
39%
4th Q
27%
Richest
19%
** Data from IHDS II 2012.
60%
31%
34%
23%
17%
51%
30%
23%
16%
11%
36%
28%
23%
13%
9%
27%
20%
14%
46%
27%
23%
In this paper we will examine the following dimensions of context:
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1. Rising household incomes are associated with compositional changes that include higher
education due to assortative mating, which may well increase women’s bargaining power in the
household.
2. Rising household incomes (net of women’s own earning) are associated with lower female labor
force participation rate. This may reduce women’s bargaining power in the household.
Role of Social Context:
These conflicting trends show that there is a need to contextualize the impact of both education and
labor force participation in the lives of these women, illustrating Malhotra and Mather’s (1997) point
that researchers must “take into account the broader cultural and normative context of the society
under consideration.” (p.626). Since improving social class is associated with incorporation in a global
culture (e.g. via mass media), it may lead to a shared imagination creating a dispersed cosmopolitan
impulse (Appadurai 1996) that can include an improvement in women’s lives; in contrast, if higher social
class is associated with deeper connectivity into traditional social networks (e.g. through greater
participation in social and caste organizations) it may lead to greater expression of conservative ideology
– now made possible by higher income (Liechty 2003).
We suggest that two aspects of social context are particularly important: (1) Geographic location
changes the way in which social class is expressed. Families living in metropolitan areas as well as
generally more gender egalitarian contexts of Southern India (Jejeebhoy and Sathar 2001) may be more
likely to respond to rising incomes by increasing women’s physical mobility and participation in
household decisions compared to rural areas and Northern states. (2) Households that are more closely
integrated into caste and kinship structures may be less likely to be receptive to the potential of social
change associated with rising income and education.
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We will examine the interaction between household income, women’s own education and labor
force participation on one hand and place of residence as well as participation in traditional
organizations on the other in our analyses of women’s physical mobility and decision making.
Data and Analytical Techniques
We will use the 2012 India Human Development Survey (IHDS) which sampled over 40,000
households spread across 33 states and union territories1. For this analysis, we focus on 33,394 women
who are currently living with their husbands. These women are ages 15 to 49 and come from diverse
segments of the Indian society.
We measure gender autonomy and control over resources with a series of questions that gauge
women’s agency vis-à-vis other family members. Specifically, we focus on three aspects:
1. Need for Permission to Go Outside the Home: Number of items for which women require
permission from husband or other household members to go outside the home. These include:
(1) Local health center; (2) Visiting friends and relatives in the village or town; (3) To go to a
kirana shop; and, (4) To go short distance by bus or train. When women (almost) never go to
these places, we mark them as requiring permission.
2. Ability to Go Alone to these Places: Regardless of whether they need permissions or not,
whether they can go alone to the above-mentioned places. This variable, like the one above is a
simple count ranging from 0 to 4.
3. Primary Decision Making Power: Number of decisions in which the respondent is a primary
decision maker. These include: (1) Purchasing an expensive item; (2) How many children to
have; (3) What to do if the respondent falls sick; (4) Whether to buy land or property; (5) How
1
The IHDS II was conducted in 2011-12 and involves a household level interview about income and employment of
various household members. It has interviews of ever married women ages 15-49 about intra-household gender
relations as well as a variety of other dimensions of their lives.
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much money to spend for a social function; (6) What to do if a child is sick; and, (7) Whom her
children should marry. This index ranges from 0 to 7 and includes both minor and major
decisions.
These dimensions reflect a range of gendered behaviors. Needing permission to go to commonplace
locations as kirana (grocery) shop reflects a social milieu in in which women’s agency is constrained
through day-to-day interactions within the household. Inability (or unwillingness) to go alone is far more
constraining, particularly when it comes to visiting places like a health center and the homes of friends
and relatives. In contrast, authority in decision-making reflects both powers within the household as
well as importance of any given decision in the household’s economic context. This is a particularly
crucial test of our argument. When households are financially able to undertake minor expenses
involved in taking a child to a doctor or to make decisions regarding social gifts and other expenses, we
would expect it to be far more likely that women will have greater decision making authority than where
these decisions impose serious strain on household finances.
These dependent variables will be analyzed using ordinal logistic regression in a series of models.
The first model includes household structure, husband’s education and household income (excluding
women’s own earnings) as well as place of residence. The second model adds women’s own education
to see if the effect of household income is mediated through assortative mating and higher female
education. The third model adds women’s own income. Subsequent model interacts household income,
women’s education and income with membership in caste and religious organizations to see if social
context dampens the effect of these variables. The final model adds interactions with place of residence.
Conclusion
This paper seeks to explore how Indian women from upper income households experience
considerably greater restrictions on their physical movements and authority within the household than
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do women from other classes. Poverty constrains many choices for women from lower income groups
and the point of this paper is not to establish who has the greater burdens in life. Rather, it is part of a
larger project to understand how the growing middle class in India does not automatically equate to
greater freedom from conservative gender attitudes and that our assumptions about the benefits of
development must consistently be questioned and rigorously investigated using an intersectional
approach that contextualizes gender across class and caste categories. It is also an attempt at adding to
the literature on intesectionality by focusing on a relatively overlooked aspect of intersection – social
class.
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