- Sociology and Social Anthropology of Kinship, Marriage, Gender, Urban Sociology, Indian Sociology: Sociological Theory, Impact of Social Sciences and Humanities, and 20 morePoverty, Livelihoods, Female Agency, Sex Ratios, Declining Sex Ratios, Khaps, Unwanted Daughters, Cross region Marriage, Khap Panchayat, Education, Anthropology, Popular Culture, South Asian Studies, Anthropology of locality, Sociology, Critical Theory, Social Media, Cultural Theory, Ethnography, and Urban Studiesedit
- I am a social anthropologist working in the areas of gender, marriage, family, kinship, youth, sociology of engineeri... moreI am a social anthropologist working in the areas of gender, marriage, family, kinship, youth, sociology of engineering education, anthropological demography and new reproductive technologies, with an enduring interest in understanding patterns of social change in rural and urban India. I am interested in a comparative understanding of the social. I am also interested in population and gender issues in China.edit
This chapter explores the challenges of creating belongingness and the price of belonging for female marriage migrants in long-distance, cross-regional marriages in India. Due to bride shortages, women are brought into marriage to the... more
This chapter explores the challenges of creating belongingness and the price of belonging for female marriage migrants in long-distance, cross-regional marriages in India. Due to bride shortages, women are brought into marriage to the northern Indian states of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (UP), from diverse eastern and southern states such as West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Kerala and also from neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal. Given the stark cultural differences between brides and grooms stemming from differences in region, caste, class, ethnicity and occasionally, religion, migrant brides must struggle hard to create belongingness for themselves and for their children. The chapter focuses on several everyday strategies that the women employ – such as conforming to local ideals of the “good wife” and leveraging the intimacy of the marital relationship – to find footholds in their marital homes. Despite the tremendous difficulties that many of the stranger brides face and the overall precarity of the belonging forged by them, there is a creative dynamics of kinship at work where the women learn to imagine and live new worlds.
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This article examines datafication of the reproductive body in India through use of femtech mobile phone applications (henceforth, apps). Femtech apps quantify reproductive processes such as periods, conception, pregnancy and hormonal... more
This article examines datafication of the reproductive body in India through use of femtech mobile phone applications (henceforth, apps). Femtech apps quantify reproductive processes such as periods, conception, pregnancy and hormonal health and promise their users greater 'self-awareness' and 'control' through 'self-management'. Most studies on femtech refer to users in the Global North, while there are few studies on femtech adoption in the developing countries. This article, based on qualitative and quantitative data, and informed by a feminist technoscience framework, illustrates how femtech's promise of empowerment through datafication of reproduction is fraught with contradictions and tensions, and has exclusionary and risky consequences for Indian users. It examines the gendered technological landscape's bearing on concrete practices of design and innovation, and shows how femtech reinforces gendered social
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In this paper, we explore how women who are unable to conform to age-specific conventions of marriage and childbearing construct their adult identities in sociocultural contexts that valorize fertility and mandate compulsory marriage and... more
In this paper, we explore how women who are unable to conform to age-specific conventions of marriage and childbearing construct their adult identities in sociocultural contexts that valorize fertility and mandate compulsory marriage and motherhood. Through a detailed ethnography of women's experiences with menstrual anomalies and reproductive aging, this study examines Odia women's negotiations with their seemingly "incomplete bodies" and "disrupted identities" in the backdrop of experiencing infertility or anticipating it.
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Missing women leaders in STEM in India
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Reflection on missing female leadership in STEM in India
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Research Interests: Economics, Philosophy of Agency, Marriage, Sex ratio, Girl, and 5 moreWrit, Uttar Pradesh, Sex Ratios, Female Agency, and Khaps
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ActionAid works with poor and excluded people in 24 states in India and over 40 countries worldwide to end poverty and injustice. Together we claim legal, constitutional and moral rights to food and livelihood, shelter, education,... more
ActionAid works with poor and excluded people in 24 states in India and over 40 countries worldwide to end poverty and injustice. Together we claim legal, constitutional and moral rights to food and livelihood, shelter, education, healthcare, dignity and a voice in decisions that affect their ...
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Research Interests:
Much of the literature on sex ratio imbalances in India has focused on the North-South divide or exclusively on the Northwestern states of India. In this paper, we draw on ethnographic research on the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir,... more
Much of the literature on sex ratio imbalances in India has focused on the North-South divide or exclusively on the Northwestern states of India. In this paper, we draw on ethnographic research on the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, where the child sex ratio (0-6 years) plummeted in the 2011 census. We study two villages in the Hindu dominated district of Jammu and two in largely Buddhist Leh (in Ladakh) to understand how the gender preference for children is shaped in this culturally heterogeneous state. Our findings reiterate the importance of context in understanding sex ratio patterns and gender preferences for children, especially in the wake of declining fertility, which in some regions has led to intensified discrimination against girl children. We examine features such as the organization of kinship and marriage structures that entail diverse forms of post-marital residence, old-age support, workforce participation, household division of labor and political participation in the four villages. By engaging in detailed comparison, we propose that when underlying reasons for the devaluation of women in general, and daughters in particular, are absent (as in case of the Leh villages), the availability of sex-selective technologies does not have an adverse effect on demographic outcomes.
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In this paper, we explore how women who are unable to conform to age-specific conventions of marriage and childbearing construct their adult identities in sociocultural contexts that valorize fertility and mandate compulsory marriage and... more
In this paper, we explore how women who are unable to conform to age-specific conventions of marriage and childbearing construct their adult identities in sociocultural contexts that valorize fertility and mandate compulsory marriage and motherhood. Through a detailed ethnography of women's experiences with menstrual anomalies and reproductive aging, this study examines Odia women's negotiations with their seemingly "incomplete bodies" and "disrupted identities" in the backdrop of experiencing infertility or anticipating it.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
China and India together account for over one-third of the world's population and both countries have considerably fewer women than men.. With long histories of skewed sex ratios and gender discrimination, these two countries have... more
China and India together account for over one-third of the world's population and both countries have considerably fewer women than men.. With long histories of skewed sex ratios and gender discrimination, these two countries have experienced a sharp decline in the birth of girls since the late 20th century. The unfolding and intimate relationship between gendered social structures, son preference, fertility decline, and new sex determination technologies has had serious demographic and social consequences, resulting in millions of "missing" girls, surplus males, bride shortages, and possibly, rising levels of gender violence. Even as women's socioeconomic indicators such as life expectancy, literacy, education, and fertility have improved, families continue to show a preference for sons raising questions between the tenuous relationship between development and gender equality. The advantages of raising sons over daughters, supported by traditional kinship, family, and marriage systems, appear to have got further entrenched in the era of neoliberal economies. Family planning policies of both nations, advocating small families, and the advent of pre-natal sex selection technologies further set the stage for the prevention of birth of daughters. Governments in both countries have since banned sex determination and launched policies and schemes to redress the gender imbalance and improve the value of the girl child. While these policies have not been highly successful, other social forces such as urbanization and rising educational levels are beginning to transform the way girls are perceived. A kernel of hope seems to be emerging at the beginning of the 21st century, as some improvement is visible in the sex ratio at birth in some of the worst affected regions in the two countries.
Research Interests:
This article seeks to understand the modern-day value of children to middle class Indian parents. It examines parental strategies aimed at raising successful children by providing them with the best education possible. These strategies,... more
This article seeks to understand the modern-day value of children to middle class Indian parents. It examines parental strategies aimed at raising successful children by providing them with the best education possible. These strategies, involving 'concerted cultivation' and gendered 'educational labour', are analysed in relation to schooling and preparation for a highly competitive national entrance exam, for admission to an elite engineering college in the country. Describing and analysing the classed and gendered nature of these strategies, the article explores the shifting nature of returns that middle class parents expect from their grown children. As the article shows, gendered burdens and class location of parents are crucial in shaping the value of children. Mothers across class contribute disproportionately to children's educational training and highly educated mothers are withdrawn from the labour market to immerse themselves in educational labour. Ironically, educated mothers' own educational inputs remain invisible even to themselves, resulting from an acceptance of culturally constructed norms around the gendered division of labour. Family strategies are oriented towards aspirations of upward social mobility, a return that parents seek to derive from educationally and professionally successful children.
Research Interests:
Universities all over India appear to be in a race to institute what they think is the appropriate form of attire for their students. While jeans appear provocative to some, for others, it is short skirts and bare arms. These discourses... more
Universities all over India appear to be in a race to institute what they think is the appropriate form of attire for their students. While jeans appear provocative to some, for others, it is short skirts and bare arms. These discourses are widely covered in the media and often form a topic of discussion and debate among students, teachers and parents. However, what exactly is it that prompts college authorities and groups of different political and religious persuasions, arguing often-opposing viewpoints, to legislate so stringently on clothing?
Scholars of gender studies have identified that anxieties over women’s clothes are often indicative of contradictions between tradition and modernity, the global and the local, the private and the public, what is ‘respectable and decent’, and what is not. These are familiar arguments, which pit those in authority against young people, who, it appears, are eager to embrace Western fashion, but are held back by those in authority. This is a fallacious view that looks at all young people with the same lens, without enough discussion of their own anxieties and aspirations, their regional contexts and different preferences.
This ethnographic piece attempts to explore the milieu of politicised college dressing from the points of view of young women in an engineering college in South India. It follows their interpretations of dress codes, their own sense of what is appropriate, and attempts to unpack their choices based related to their anxieties of public spaces and aspirations to enter the global software industry.
Scholars of gender studies have identified that anxieties over women’s clothes are often indicative of contradictions between tradition and modernity, the global and the local, the private and the public, what is ‘respectable and decent’, and what is not. These are familiar arguments, which pit those in authority against young people, who, it appears, are eager to embrace Western fashion, but are held back by those in authority. This is a fallacious view that looks at all young people with the same lens, without enough discussion of their own anxieties and aspirations, their regional contexts and different preferences.
This ethnographic piece attempts to explore the milieu of politicised college dressing from the points of view of young women in an engineering college in South India. It follows their interpretations of dress codes, their own sense of what is appropriate, and attempts to unpack their choices based related to their anxieties of public spaces and aspirations to enter the global software industry.
This paper maps the impact of gender imbalance on intergenerational relations in north India. It uses the idea of multiple biological clocks to understand the impact that gender imbalance and male marriage squeeze have on two categories... more
This paper maps the impact of gender imbalance on intergenerational relations in north India. It uses the idea of multiple biological clocks to understand the impact that gender imbalance and male marriage squeeze have on two categories of persons: “overage”
unmarried sons and their aging parents, and the inter-generational contract between them within the family-household. De-linking the idea of the biological clock from the female body, this paper demonstrates that social understandings of bodily progression are equally significant for men, who, in the Indian context, need to marry by a certain age,
and their elderly parents who need to be cared for. In north India, where family-household unit is the most important welfare and security institution for the elderly, disruptions to household formation due to bride shortage caused by sex ratio imbalance, is subjecting families to severe stress. Families with unmarried sons struggle with anxieties centred on the inability to arrange marriages for aging sons, questions of
allocation of household labor, the continuation of family line, and lack of care for the elderly. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in north India, this paper explores the tensions and negotiations between elderly parents and unmarried sons concerning the fulfillment (or lack of it) of the inter-generational contract against the backdrop of gender imbalance.
It concludes by discussing the various strategies available to families in crisis that involve shame-faced adoption of domestic and care tasks by unmarried sons or bringing cross-region brides who then provide productive, reproductive, and care labour.
unmarried sons and their aging parents, and the inter-generational contract between them within the family-household. De-linking the idea of the biological clock from the female body, this paper demonstrates that social understandings of bodily progression are equally significant for men, who, in the Indian context, need to marry by a certain age,
and their elderly parents who need to be cared for. In north India, where family-household unit is the most important welfare and security institution for the elderly, disruptions to household formation due to bride shortage caused by sex ratio imbalance, is subjecting families to severe stress. Families with unmarried sons struggle with anxieties centred on the inability to arrange marriages for aging sons, questions of
allocation of household labor, the continuation of family line, and lack of care for the elderly. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in north India, this paper explores the tensions and negotiations between elderly parents and unmarried sons concerning the fulfillment (or lack of it) of the inter-generational contract against the backdrop of gender imbalance.
It concludes by discussing the various strategies available to families in crisis that involve shame-faced adoption of domestic and care tasks by unmarried sons or bringing cross-region brides who then provide productive, reproductive, and care labour.
Research Interests:
Given the declining juvenile sex ratio, a further shortfall in marriageable women in the low sex ratio areas of India is a foregone conclusion. What are the ‘social’ implications of this shortage for both men and women? This paper... more
Given the declining juvenile sex ratio, a further shortfall in marriageable
women in the low sex ratio areas of India is a foregone conclusion. What are the ‘social’ implications of this shortage for both men and women? This paper documents and analyses an unusual response to the shortage of marriageable girls in the North. The need for women, for productive and reproductive purposes, is being addressed through
unconventional marriages that are uniting rural, illiterate Indians across boundaries of region, language, religion and even caste.
women in the low sex ratio areas of India is a foregone conclusion. What are the ‘social’ implications of this shortage for both men and women? This paper documents and analyses an unusual response to the shortage of marriageable girls in the North. The need for women, for productive and reproductive purposes, is being addressed through
unconventional marriages that are uniting rural, illiterate Indians across boundaries of region, language, religion and even caste.
Research Interests:
In this piece, we explore the impact of COVID-19 on the gendered division of household labour among educated, middle-class families in some South Asian countries.
Research Interests:
This article seeks to understand the modern-day value of children to middle class Indian parents. It examines parental strategies aimed at raising successful children by providing them with the best education possible. These strategies,... more
This article seeks to understand the modern-day value of children to middle class Indian parents. It examines parental strategies aimed at raising successful children by providing them with the best education possible. These strategies, involving ‘concerted cultivation’ and gendered ‘educational labour’, are analysed in relation to schooling and
preparation for a highly competitive national entrance exam, for admission to an elite engineering college in the country. Describing and analysing the classed and gendered nature of these strategies, the article explores the shifting nature of returns that middle class parents expect from their grown children. As the article shows, gendered burdens and class location of parents are crucial in shaping the value of children. Mothers across class contribute disproportionately to children’s educational training and highly educated mothers are withdrawn from the labour market to immerse themselves in educational
labour. Ironically, educated mothers’ own educational inputs remain invisible even to themselves, resulting from an acceptance of culturally constructed norms around the gendered division of labour. Family strategies are oriented towards aspirations of upward social mobility, a return that parents seek to derive from educationally and professionally successful children.
preparation for a highly competitive national entrance exam, for admission to an elite engineering college in the country. Describing and analysing the classed and gendered nature of these strategies, the article explores the shifting nature of returns that middle class parents expect from their grown children. As the article shows, gendered burdens and class location of parents are crucial in shaping the value of children. Mothers across class contribute disproportionately to children’s educational training and highly educated mothers are withdrawn from the labour market to immerse themselves in educational
labour. Ironically, educated mothers’ own educational inputs remain invisible even to themselves, resulting from an acceptance of culturally constructed norms around the gendered division of labour. Family strategies are oriented towards aspirations of upward social mobility, a return that parents seek to derive from educationally and professionally successful children.
Research Interests:
Editorial for Special Issue on 'Reproduction, Demography and Cultural Anxieties in India and China'
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After China, India has the most skewed sex ratio at birth. These two Asian countries account for about 90 to 95% of the estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million missing female births annually, worldwide, due to gender-biased (prenatal) sex selection.... more
After China, India has the most skewed sex ratio at birth. These two Asian countries account for about 90 to 95% of the estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million missing female births annually, worldwide, due to gender-biased (prenatal) sex selection. To understand this extreme discrimination against girls, this article examines the gendered biopolitics embedded in population policies, new sex selection technologies, and in the social reproduction of patriarchal society. The ethical consequences of advanced reproductive technologies, which remove the moral turpitude around gender-based sex selection by reformulating it into a "modern", "scientific" endeavour, facilitating the rise of "miss-ing girls", make this an issue of gender justice, as noted by the World Population Report 2020. This article argues that unpacking gendered biopolitics within the household is crucial to understanding the reproduction of son preference and daughter aversion since it is here that reproduction and parenthood are subjected to biopolitical governance. We discuss how "biosocial" strategies of the household aimed at producing the "desired" and "right" family of more sons at the cost of daughters are operationalized through women's bodies with a view to family mobility. While women and girls continue to bear the burden and costs of social reproduction that lie at the heart of the patriarchal capitalist system of accumulation, a perusal of more recent studies suggests the beginning of an equalizing trend of parental investments, especially in the health and education of daughters who are "allowed" to be born. We suggest that familial enhancement of girls' human capital can help as a means of developing girls' capabilities and agency, enhancing their power in the biopolitics of the family and increasing their "bio-value" in parents' eyes.
Research Interests:
After China, India has the most skewed sex ratio at birth. These two Asian countries account for about 90 to 95% of the estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million missing female births annually, worldwide, due to gender-biased (prenatal) sex selection.... more
After China, India has the most skewed sex ratio at birth. These two Asian countries account for about 90 to 95% of the estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million missing female births annually, worldwide, due to gender-biased (prenatal) sex selection. To understand this extreme discrimination against girls, this article examines the gendered biopolitics embedded in population policies, new sex selection technologies, and in the social reproduction of patriarchal society. The ethical consequences of advanced reproductive technologies, which remove the moral turpitude around gender-based sex selection by reformulating it into a “modern”, “scientific” endeavour, facilitating the rise of “missing girls”, make this an issue of gender justice, as noted by the World Population Report 2020. This article argues that unpacking gendered biopolitics within the household is crucial to understanding the reproduction of son preference and daughter aversion since it is here that reproduction and parenthood are subjected to biopolitical governance. We discuss how “biosocial” strategies of the household aimed at producing the “desired” and “right” family of more sons at the cost of daughters are operationalized through women’s bodies with a view to family mobility. While women and girls continue to bear the burden and costs of social reproduction that lie at the heart of the patriarchal capitalist system of accumulation, a perusal of more recent studies suggests the beginning of an equalizing trend of parental investments, especially in the health and education of daughters who are “allowed” to be born. We suggest that familial enhancement of girls’ human capital can help as a means of developing girls’ capabilities and agency, enhancing their power in the biopolitics of the family and increasing their “bio-value” in parents’ eyes.
Research Interests:
This article is an exploration
into the self-representation of
online Muslim youth and their
engagement with contemporary
politics. It is based on an analysis
of responses to tweets on the
recent Bihar assembly election.
into the self-representation of
online Muslim youth and their
engagement with contemporary
politics. It is based on an analysis
of responses to tweets on the
recent Bihar assembly election.
Research Interests:
China and India together account for over one-third of the world’s population and both countries have considerably fewer women than men.. With long histories of skewed sex ratios and gender discrimination, these two countries have... more
China and India together account for over one-third of the world’s population and both countries have considerably fewer women than men.. With long histories of skewed sex ratios and gender discrimination, these two countries have experienced a sharp decline in the birth of girls since the late 20th century. The unfolding and intimate relationship between gendered social structures, son preference, fertility decline, and new sex determination technologies has had serious demographic and social consequences, resulting in millions of “missing” girls, surplus males, bride shortages, and possibly, rising levels of gender violence. Even as women’s socio-economic indicators such as life expectancy, literacy, education, and fertility have improved, families continue to show a preference for sons raising questions between the tenuous relationship between development and gender equality. The advantages of raising sons over daughters, supported by traditional kinship, family, and marriage systems, appear to have got further entrenched in the era of neoliberal economies. Family planning policies of both nations, advocating small families, and the advent of pre-natal sex selection technologies further set the stage for the prevention of birth of daughters. Governments in both countries have since banned sex determination and launched policies and schemes to redress the gender imbalance and improve the value of the girl child. While these policies have not been highly successful, other social forces such as urbanization and rising educational levels are beginning to transform the way girls are perceived. A kernel of hope seems to be emerging at the beginning of the 21st century, as some improvement is visible in the sex ratio at birth in some of the worst affected regions in the two countries.
Research Interests:
No More Missing Girls and Women
Addressing the scourge of son preference and gender biases sex selection
Addressing the scourge of son preference and gender biases sex selection
An interview with the French Institute in India on how girls' unprecedented entry into education might change how parents view daughters and if this might eventually address the problem of gender biased sex selection of girls.
Research Interests:
As the most populous countries in the world, India and China have come to mark our collective conscience in significant ways. Recent research suggests that reproduction continues to be a national obsession in both countries. The stance... more
As the most populous countries in the world, India and China have come to mark our collective conscience in significant ways. Recent research suggests that reproduction continues to be a national obsession in both countries. The stance has however shifted considerably from fears of overpopulation and high fertility rates, to policies encouraging childbearing and addressing infertility through assisted reproduction. As a superpower, China is interested in facilitating birth amongst a chosen few; while India continues with its ambivalent posture on the domestic use of in-vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies, prohibiting the transnational traffic of ‘unsuitable foreigners’ and ‘nonheteronormative families’ to avail of the same. Most importantly, by aggressively participating in regulating the use of these technologies, the Indian and Chinese states are also keenly redefining the intimate lives of their citizenry. This is seen most pointedly in the recent change in the shifts in the one-child policy of the Chinese state, and the newly drafted Indian Surrogacy Bill.
In the late 20th century, both countries woke up to the need to manage the fallout of their population policies. These policies, combined with new sex determination technologies and widely prevalent culture of son-preference have exacerbated gender inequality in the form of skewed sex ratios. The resulting bride shortages have led to a marriage crisis and stoked local as well as global social anxieties. In China, there are fears of environmental and industrial pollution leading to a diminution in sperm quality; in India ethnically varying fertility transitions are deployed to further religious and political agendas; globally there is the spectre of ‘surplus’ men and ‘scarce’ women in rising Asia. Additionally, with crucial generational shifts posing a threat to the earlier stability of marriage and child-centeredness, reproduction and reproductive processes are provoking yet newer moral and cultural anxieties. Resulting familial, kinship and policy shifts are paramount in the ways in which China and India are approaching reproductive technologies and demographic transformation. Here, cultural peculiarities are beginning to provide new forms of engagement with the decades-long state, research, and policy obsessions with population. There is little doubt that we need newer and more nuanced research paradigms than the ones informed by earlier understandings of population rhetoric. We need to understand the emerging familial configurations of third-party donor families facilitated through IVF, commercial surrogacy and bride-shortage related marriage migration and inter-generational care deficit among the many other social phenomena that are resulting from newer demographic trends.
In the late 20th century, both countries woke up to the need to manage the fallout of their population policies. These policies, combined with new sex determination technologies and widely prevalent culture of son-preference have exacerbated gender inequality in the form of skewed sex ratios. The resulting bride shortages have led to a marriage crisis and stoked local as well as global social anxieties. In China, there are fears of environmental and industrial pollution leading to a diminution in sperm quality; in India ethnically varying fertility transitions are deployed to further religious and political agendas; globally there is the spectre of ‘surplus’ men and ‘scarce’ women in rising Asia. Additionally, with crucial generational shifts posing a threat to the earlier stability of marriage and child-centeredness, reproduction and reproductive processes are provoking yet newer moral and cultural anxieties. Resulting familial, kinship and policy shifts are paramount in the ways in which China and India are approaching reproductive technologies and demographic transformation. Here, cultural peculiarities are beginning to provide new forms of engagement with the decades-long state, research, and policy obsessions with population. There is little doubt that we need newer and more nuanced research paradigms than the ones informed by earlier understandings of population rhetoric. We need to understand the emerging familial configurations of third-party donor families facilitated through IVF, commercial surrogacy and bride-shortage related marriage migration and inter-generational care deficit among the many other social phenomena that are resulting from newer demographic trends.
Research Interests:
A contemporary exploration of two spatially contiguous villages of Jammu reveals persisting intra-household gender discrimination. While in both the villages, sons continue to be preferred over daughters, it is the local political economy... more
A contemporary exploration of two spatially contiguous villages of Jammu reveals persisting intra-household gender discrimination. While in both the villages, sons continue to be preferred over daughters, it is the local political economy and culture that dictates whether a preference for sons would mean the elimination of daughters before birth, their relative deprivation post birth, marrying them off early as a mobility strategy, or simply differential allocation of resources within the household.
Research Interests:
Western-based champions of the plight of Indian women claim to speak for them with little regard to the actual reality and without taking serious academic research into account.
Research Interests:
Declining sex ratios due to decades of discrimination against women in certain parts of India have left many men unmarried. An interview about cross-regional marriage migration with Ravinder Kaur.
This paper is part of a technical paper series covering interconnections between sex ratio and marriage squeeze; class and education; and crime rates
Research Interests:
This paper is part of a technical paper series covering interconnections between sex ratio and marriage squeeze; class and education; and crime rates.
Research Interests:
This paper is part of a technical paper series covering interconnections between sex ratio and marriage squeeze; class and education; and crime rates.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This chapter compares and contrasts the use of mobile and internet technologies among two sets of Indian migrants in Cambodia. One set consists of rural and less educated single male migrants from eastern India, while the other comprises... more
This chapter compares and contrasts the use of mobile and internet technologies among two sets of Indian migrants in Cambodia. One set consists of rural and less educated single male migrants from eastern India, while the other comprises highly educated professionals generally migrating with family from across the country. Education, income levels and the cost of technologies at the destination country shape migrants' access to technologies, with the professionals using more sophisticated technologies and the rural migrants depending more on simpler and commercially available public facilities. We use the trope of " doing family " to explore the transformations in the nature of communication between migrants and various left-behind family members. More frequent and timely communication allows migrants to produce intense affective bonds that regenerate the " family feeling " required to reproduce the family as a transnational corporation of kin. Especially for the rural migrants, ICTs enable faster and more frequent fi nancial remittances, underlining their character as a " currency of care " ; additionally, they help strengthen homeland culture and occasionally subvert gender and age hierarchies. Among the professionals, globalised, multilocal families are able to keep in constant touch, mitigating in part the pain of separation.
Research Interests:
A study of the micro-level experiences of families in five districts, one each in five states, some of them with the lowest child sex ratios in the country, seeks to explain the complex causes behind the declining ratios by looking at... more
A study of the micro-level experiences of families in five districts, one each in five states, some of them with the lowest child sex ratios in the country, seeks to explain the complex causes behind the declining ratios by looking at gender and family strategies, shaped by social processes in the urban and rural areas.
Research Interests:
Improvement in India's sex ratio at birth is linked to shifts in its class structure.
Research Interests:
Insights based on gender indicators in the latest NFHS data (2020-21) on the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
For a poor and populous state, it is making reasonable strides on gender indicators.
For a poor and populous state, it is making reasonable strides on gender indicators.
Research Interests:
This short piece presents some thoughts on cross-region marriages between the northern state of Haryana and the southern state of Kerala. Haryanvi men enter such marriages due to a local shortage of brides while Malayali women were deemed... more
This short piece presents some thoughts on cross-region marriages between the northern state of Haryana and the southern state of Kerala. Haryanvi men enter such marriages due to a local shortage of brides while Malayali women were deemed "overage" and left out of the marriage market. Lack of matching horoscopes and demand for gold by Kerala grooms were other reasons why these women ended up marrying far away into a culturally alien region.
On why educated Indian women are missing from the labour force.
Efforts at ensuring that children do well are a big reason why educated married women stay home.
Efforts at ensuring that children do well are a big reason why educated married women stay home.
About the changing nature of work and how counting jobs created or lost is a dead end debate.
Research Interests:
Social implications of declining gender inequality in the developing world and the role of education as the new wealth of nations.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-the-new-global-wealth-of-educated-women-spurs-backlash
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-the-new-global-wealth-of-educated-women-spurs-backlash
Research Interests:
The gender balance in Asia is significantly shaped by the male-biased sex ratios of two of its most populous countries, China and India. The rapid fertility declines in the two countries, resulting from China's one-child policy and... more
The gender balance in Asia is significantly shaped by the male-biased sex ratios of two of its most populous countries, China and India. The rapid fertility declines in the two countries, resulting from China's one-child policy and India's two-child norm, combined with the advent of sex determination technologies, has contributed to the birth of fewer girls. As a result of these factors, both countries now have an excess of males and a shortage of females.
There is increasing concern over the likely adverse consequences of such highly masculine populations. Most work on adverse sex ratios has dealt with the identification, patterns and causes of skewed sex ratios; Too Many Men, Too Few Women is the first book to focus specifically on the social consequences of the skewed sex ratio in both India and China. Well-known sociologists, economists and demographers come together to explore the social consequences of a skewed sex ratio from varied perspectives: the position of women in communities with fewer women; the likely increase in incidents of crime and violence; the impact on cultural practices such as dowry and bride price, as well as on domestic violence; and possible policy and reform measures that governments can undertake to correct the gender imbalance.
Based on new empirical work and ethnographical accounts, this book takes a critical look at demographic approaches and policies in both India and China. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of sociology, as well as researchers, policymakers, and funding agencies involved in population studies and problems related to male-biased sex ratios.
There is increasing concern over the likely adverse consequences of such highly masculine populations. Most work on adverse sex ratios has dealt with the identification, patterns and causes of skewed sex ratios; Too Many Men, Too Few Women is the first book to focus specifically on the social consequences of the skewed sex ratio in both India and China. Well-known sociologists, economists and demographers come together to explore the social consequences of a skewed sex ratio from varied perspectives: the position of women in communities with fewer women; the likely increase in incidents of crime and violence; the impact on cultural practices such as dowry and bride price, as well as on domestic violence; and possible policy and reform measures that governments can undertake to correct the gender imbalance.
Based on new empirical work and ethnographical accounts, this book takes a critical look at demographic approaches and policies in both India and China. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of sociology, as well as researchers, policymakers, and funding agencies involved in population studies and problems related to male-biased sex ratios.
Research Interests:
Review of my edited book on sex ratio imbalances in India and China
Perspectives on Marriage
Research Interests:
This panel welcomes all contributions by social scientists describing the shifts in gender bias across South Asia, with a particular focus on fertility, family, marriage, education and work. The deadline for submission is 30 November 2017... more
This panel welcomes all contributions by social scientists describing the shifts in gender bias across South Asia, with a particular focus on fertility, family, marriage, education and work. The deadline for submission is 30 November 2017 (see below) Son preference and gender bias in South Asia: shifts and continuities Son preference was often seen as well entrenched in customary practices and clearly delineated across regional divides within South Asia. As such, it projected a rather stable geography and sociology of gender bias. However, it is our clear understanding that recent dynamics of gender bias have been shifting, sometimes in contradictory directions. This panel aims in particular at mapping how recent strands of social and political change, and economic progress are redefining gender and family systems, education and work trajectories, impacting the twin phenomena of son preference and daughter aversion. Educational expansion, policy reforms, increased access to employment, or fertility decline have probably reduced the pressure of patriarchal norms on women. Yet, we have witnessed at the same time both a resurgence of forms of male preference and the emergence of new arenas of bias towards women due to political and religious mobilization, adoption of middle-class values, commodification and violence in cities. Simultaneously, a growing proportion of the young urban male population has been left out from social and economic progress and clings to traditional gender values in order to assert their position in the face of the rise of women in the public space. Submissions to this panel should aim at showing the contrary winds over men's and women's status in rapidly changing South Asia. Tentative contributors include anthropologists, economists, and sociologists working on these issues from both a micro-and macro-perspective. Abstracts should reflect new findings or interpretation based on recent ethnographic or quantitative data. Contact Prospective contributors are welcome to communicate with the panel organizers: Ravinder Kaur (ravinder.iitd@gmail.com) and Christophe Z Guilmoto (Guilmoto@ird.fr)
Research Interests:
PBS show on sex selection in India
Skewed sex ratios and bride imports in India PBS show