Electrification and Women's Empowerment : Evidence from Rural India
Electrification has been shown to accelerate opportunities for women by moving them into more productive activities, but whether improvements in economic outcomes also change gender norms and practices within the household remains unclear. This pap...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/112131553786901131/Electrification-and-Womens-Empowerment-Evidence-from-Rural-India http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31491 |
| Summary: | Electrification has been shown to
accelerate opportunities for women by moving them into more
productive activities, but whether improvements in economic
outcomes also change gender norms and practices within the
household remains unclear. This paper investigates the
causal link between electricity access and women's
empowerment, using a large gender-disaggregated data set on
India. Empowerment is measured by women's
decision-making ability, mobility, financial autonomy,
reproductive freedom, and social participation. Using
propensity score matching, the study finds that
electrification enhances all measures of women's
empowerment and is associated with an 11-percentage point
increase in the overall empowerment index. Employment and
education are identified as the two most important causal
channels through which electrification enables empowerment. |
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