Education, economic participation, and women's status in India

The concern with women's status worldwide has often focused on the regularity with which women occupy the lowest rungs of the social hierarchy and the impact that formal education can potentially have on improving women's social condition. However, despite the increasing attention that is paid to women's status in social scientific research, much remains to be understood about this complex concept. We also still have much to learn about education and exactly what female schooling does for women. This study examines the effects of education on measures of women's status and further explores the impact that paid work activity has on the relationship between women's education and their social status. This objective is carried out by studying women in India, a place where considerable emphasis continues to be placed on their domestic role. Traditional measures of women's status are analyzed along with measures of women's education, employment experience, and socio-demographic characteristics, recorded in the second installment of the National Family Health Survey collected in India in 1998--1999. The responses of women who participated in focus group discussions and interviews, in Mumbai and Goa, India in 2002--2003 concerning their experiences with formal education and their thoughts on status are also analyzed in order to more fully understand the nuances in the relationship between education and status. Results indicate that while the measures in large scale demographic surveys tap into manifest power dynamics, these survey instruments are not well suited to measuring latent and hidden power dynamics. Formal schooling has a positive effect on improving women's status as it is commonly defined by these manifest power measures. Paid work activity also has effects that are commonly defined as positive, though it is also associated with an increased risk of physical violence. Analyses of focus group and interview data indicate that participants conceptualize women's status more as a function of women's relative place in social hierarchies rather than in individual behavioral terms. Important aspects of women's status relating to latent and invisible elements of gender power dynamics are revealed by participants' comments.