Women’s Autonomy within Household and School Participation in India

Dhiman Das, National University of Singapore

In this research I examine the effect of women’s decision making power within household on their children’s participation in education. I plan to study this in case of India, which has a very high rates of non-participation in education and drop out after age 11 among those who participate. This has important consequences for the realization of the country’s developmental potentials. In the literature on access and retention of childhood schooling in developing countries, the problems of poverty, social exclusion and returns to education are found to be important in determining parental decision towards education. In this research, I plan to examine whether women’s bargaining power at the household level has any additional explanatory power for school participation of their children. In addition I plan to explore how woman’s bargaining power interacts with other factors affecting school participation.