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A number of studies have analyzed the determinants of financial inclusion in India, but few if any have focused specifically on the factors that shape women's access to finance. This paper draws on the trove of women‐specific data collected in the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS‐4), conducted in 2015–16 in India, to examine the factors that influence women's access to finance. The results indicate that while the forces that shape women's access to finance function at multiple levels, micro‐level factors appear to be powerful drivers of inclusion. The analysis reveals that household‐level economic indicators like wealth, gender of household head and their rural‐urban location are crucial, but so are individual‐level characteristics which explain approximately 83% of the variation in the multilevel regressions. Informal gender norms that govern women's mobility and economic activity crucially influence the ability of women to access loans and open bank accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers to examine the decomposition of the consumption function of the male and female households in India. The decomposition of consumption function is explained by the socio‐economic and demographic variables. The dataset on the 61st round (2004–2005) and 68th round (2011–2012) of NSSO has been used for the analysis. The ordinary least squares (OLS) method is used to explain the important determinants of household consumption expenditure. Also, the Blinder–Oaxaca (B‐O) decomposition technique is used to estimate and to explain the difference of the per capita consumption expenditure of male and female households. The results find that age, household size, education, wages, occupation, and rural dummy are key determinants of the consumption function of male and female households. The results also found that the impact of education and occupation particularly in the service sector is relatively higher for female households than male households. Moreover, the results from the B‐O decomposition method are found that there is a positive gap of per capita consumption expenditure between male–female households in 2004–2005 and these differences are coming from differences of endowment effect between male and female households. But, the results from the year 2011–2012 data have shown that there is a negative mean difference in consumption expenditure of male and female households and this difference is coming from the differences of coefficient effect between male and female households. Finally, the results concluded that the per capita consumption expenditure gap is explained due to changes in education, occupation, and earnings of households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to decentre/decolonize our understanding of capitalist development in the Global South call for more complex and differentiated categories of work that acknowledge the significance of both non‐waged and reproductive labour. These categories would allow us to more clearly 'see' the varying intersections of gender, class and caste within this world of work. Even as the literature on work in the Global South acknowledges the importance of forms of non‐waged work, there is still more work to be done to sufficiently incorporate the labour of social reproduction. In this paper, which emerges from an effort to apply a feminist social reproduction lens in the field, we propose understanding work through four conceptual dyads: waged productive labour, non‐waged productive labour, waged reproductive labour and non‐waged reproductive labour. Through an in‐depth description of three specific cases from a time‐use survey we conducted in rural Punjab, India, we argue not only that all four dyads are required to encompass the world of work but also that this more expansive conceptualization can help us produce richer analyses of the intersections of class, caste and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on agrarian change in India has largely employed class categories based upon data on land, assets and occupational status, which collapse women's class relations into those of (mostly male) households heads. In this paper, we interrogate this understanding of class building on the work of Carmen Diana Deere. Employing the first ever national time use survey conducted in India in 2019, we interrogate class as a labour process that intersects with caste and gender. Our analysis of the data using a Marxist‐feminist framework suggests the following. First, there exist intra‐household gendered differences in class locations. This calls to question theoretical frameworks that assign a cohesive class location to all household members that underlie data collection in India and elsewhere. Second, individuals participate in multiple labour processes depending on their caste and gender. Hence, they may be subsumed to capital in varied and sometimes contradictory ways. Finally, we find that both men and women engage in reproductive labour in addition to other forms of labour, which varies by caste categories. This finding further underscores and supports previous research on the importance of an expanded conception of work that includes reproductive labour. In sum, we argue for a more complex understanding of class in India, one that incorporates its caste and gender dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An overwhelming body of evidence supports a negative relationship between women's empowerment and fertility. In this paper, we evaluate whether this relationship holds in a setting with a high degree of son preference and limited access to abortion services by focusing on rural India. We exploit the reforms to the Hindu Succession Act that improved female empowerment by mandating equal inheritance rights for women to assess the reform's impact on women's fertility. Using NFHS‐3 data and a difference‐in‐differences estimation, our results show that women who benefitted from the reform had more children than their counterparts. We attribute this increase in fertility to women's ability to use the stopping rule to achieve son preference. Finally, women impacted by the reform had a higher proportion of sons for a given family size, indicating stronger inherent son preference among treated women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on gendered politics of the field has delved into the practices of accompaniment and its implications on research and knowledge production, particularly through the case of researchers' children and partners. In comparison, the tendency to seek assistance from parents is neglected within the scholarship. Drawing on the PhD fieldwork experiences of two researchers in their "native" country, specifically a Sri Lankan researcher conducting fieldwork in Sri Lanka and a North Indian scholar researching in South India, the paper reveals parents' contribution to the research process, in terms of enhancing researcher credibility, facilitating contact‐making and access, and providing emotional and practical care. The discussion illuminates two aspects of parents' involvement in fieldwork: (1) how the unique nature of parent–child relationships shapes the research process at multiple stages, and (2) how the gendered notions of knowledge production result in parents' contributions being typically unacknowledged. The paper emphasises that a researcher's positionality as a daughter shapes her ability to navigate gendered field sites in her "native" country and is implicated in the wider research process. This paper will illuminate why researchers take their parents to field sites and how this strategy helps them to negotiate gendered challenges in the field. Despite the benefits of parental accompaniment, parents' roles are frequently underplayed. This invisibility of certain actors' contributions to the research process reveals the gendered politics of knowledge construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, large parts of India and the global South have experienced a rapid transformation from mud to cement houses, which has been promoted by governments and cement companies for its positive impacts on household socioeconomic status and gender inequalities. But we know little else about how different communities are participating in house transformation. In this paper, I study the embodied and affective dimensions of house transformation in Himachal Pradesh, India. I argue that house transformation is also the transformation of traditional gender and caste identities into new middle‐class identities which benefits some social groups, like upper‐caste women and Dalit men, but not others like Dalit women along intersectional lines. My work extends literature in infrastructure studies and urban political ecology by highlighting how the materiality of infrastructures interacts with everyday dimensions of difference to reproduce the marginalisation of historically oppressed groups along intersectional lines of class, caste, and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspirations have gained significant attention within educational anthropology and yet the effects (and affects) of the imperative to aspire that undergird educational projects have been underexamined. This paper argues that aspirations within the context of material depravity often produce immaterial precarity, which I index as affective states of anticipation drawing on ethnographic research with non‐elite young women who were alumni of a girls' empowerment intervention in New Delhi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the impact of North‐eastern Region Community Resource Management Project for Upland Areas (NERCORMP) and draws inferences on mechanism of change, context of an intervention and implementation design. Utilising data from three waves of surveys, we find that while there is evidence of significant changes in financial inclusion, productivity and social security, there are some issues in replication and sustenance aspects. Since the impact of intervention is observed across various domains such as socio‐economic situation and natural resource management, thus, we believe that this paper presents an important case study in understanding the intervention efficacy, relevance and sustenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with debates around microcredit, once a development success story, but now much critiqued. Arguing that microcredit can only be understood within the wider context of debt, we draw on ethnographic material from two villages in Tamil Nadu, to examine how microcredit through self‐help groups sits within a broader context of indebtedness among the rural labouring classes. We describe patterns and sources of borrowing among the poor, the ways in which debts are managed, negotiated and settled within households and the ways in which the management of debt is mediated by gender, caste, class and aspiration. The paper calls for a more nuanced understanding of debt: some debts are seen as 'good' and others as 'bad'. We explore the ways in which microcredit, channelled through self‐help groups, is—against much contemporary criticism—perceived by women borrowers in our study villages as a source of 'good debt' and praised as an enabling factor in their everyday household management as well as in aspirations for mobility and development. We also argue that microcredit can have positive impacts by enabling social investments that enhance status and reduce dependency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sexuality, Gender & Policy Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Based on an empirical exercise carried out in five villages of Odisha in eastern India, the paper looks into ageing of the farm population and the experiences and responses of farmers of various age groups to farming. The findings of the study indicate that agriculture is greying, farmers are getting older and the youth, particularly of higher and cultivating castes, are averse to farming. The unwillingness of these youths to join farming is mainly attributed to loss of social status, declining profitability in agriculture and discouragement of immediate 'mentors', the middle‐aged farmers, caused by the perpetual decline of farm income and loss of social recognition. The hitherto nonfarming youths, belonging to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and service‐rendering castes, especially the female youths, are joining farming to fill this gap, mostly as leased‐in cultivators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using cross‐section data on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the paper examines the importance of gender on discouraged borrowers in India. We distinguish the role of women across various capacities, such as owner, manager and owner‐manager. Controlling for potential endogeneity, the findings indicate that firms with women managers and those where women perform dual roles are more likely to be discouraged from borrowing. Furthermore, we show that interest rates and procedural complexities to be the key reasons that inhibit borrowing. Robustness tests lend credence to these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sudden health shocks may be devastating if their consequences are transferred to human capital formation of children, especially in families that are unable to access affordable healthcare. As such, access to health insurance may play a role in determining schooling decisions. I examine the impact of India's national health insurance scheme (RSBY) on gender differences in school enrolments in this paper. Employing difference‐in‐differences and triple differences approaches, I find that RSBY reduces the gender gap in school enrolments. Therefore, while RSBY was implemented with the aim of reducing financial burden for the poor, I find evidence that it has unintended positive consequences for girls in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identity narratives enhance the understanding of women's leadership, but there exist very few in‐depth analyses of negative identity tensions that influence agency. In this study, we examine the negative identity tensions of well‐to‐do women from small towns in India, who hold two leadership positions: organizational and social movement. We borrow from the discourse on well‐to‐do women's participation in social movements in India to draw on the notions of identity, perceptions of feminism, and patriarchal challenge. Our data are derived from 49 in‐depth interviews with women leaders. Findings from qualitative analysis and creation of a composite narrative show that negative identity tensions arising from two leadership positions are gendered in nature. Furthermore, agency is (i) contingent on one's reflection on challenges, (ii) rooted in an underlying principle, and (iii) practiced through the mechanisms of "managing femininity," a concept that is widely discussed in the Western paradigms of postfeminism and neoliberalism. This paper contributes to the feminist dialog on the global South in the context of gender, class, and geographical location intersection by revealing certain non‐Western ways of managing femininity. However, in the process, the hegemony of Indian men remains intact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some informal institutions increase in prevalence while other informal institutions decline? We study why dowry deaths have increased with economic development in some Indian states but have decreased in others. We argue that when economic development is low, traditional institutions rather than state institutions govern behaviour. But as economic development increases to a high level, modern formal institutions replace traditional informal institutions. Women are increasingly exploited and murdered over dowry as incomes increase from a low level, but fewer deaths occur as incomes increase from a high level. We test this argument using a dataset of dowry deaths in years 2001–2011 for 32 Indian states and territories. Our paper contributes to understanding how exploitation through informal institutions rises and falls with economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using detailed monthly household panel data from rural India, I analyze sectoral wage gaps for men and women. I show that the wage gap across the non‐farm and farm sectors is much higher for women than for men. Relative to men, women also work less time in non‐farm wage employment than in farm wage employment. Taken together, these findings suggest that constraints are preventing women from reallocating their time to more remunerative wage employment opportunities. Women are less likely to work outside of their own village in the non‐farm sector, yet the wage gap is driven by higher caste and married women. These results are consistent with a lack of local non‐farm employment opportunities interacting with barriers to labor mobility for women but not men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) principle of "leaving no one behind" focuses global attention on the poorest and most vulnerable people. As different sectors grapple to engage meaningfully with this principle, we posit that greater consideration of social problems in fishing‐dependent communities, such as alcoholism and domestic violence, presents an opportunity for fishery governors to contribute to the SDGs mandate. We further argue that governing marine resources in ignorance of these problems can risk harming some of the most vulnerable people in fisheries. Using subjective well‐being data from women living in two small‐scale fishing communities in India and Sri Lanka, we demonstrate the prevalence and impact of alcoholism and domestic violence in fishing households. We further highlight how policies which restrict access to marine resources can undermine important coping strategies, in particular, the ability of women to act as independent income earners, exacerbating harm to already vulnerable women. A scoping review of the literature reveals that alcoholism and domestic violence are reported in certain fisheries around the world, and we theorize how this may relate to the nature of fishing life and growing stresses regarding the future of fishing. Tackling the burdens of alcoholism and domestic violence in fisheries, where it is an issue, is an opportunity to improve well‐being for men, women and their families. The paper concludes with tangible actions which marine resource governors could adopt to contribute to the "leave no one behind" ethos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of programmes have recently been initiated to popularise the use of sanitary pads among poor women in developing countries. In this light, we review the prevailing menstrual practices in different contexts across India, as well as the initiatives undertaken to improve sanitary care. We also report findings from a study amongst women in slums of Hyderabad. We find high usage of sanitary pads (56 to 64 percent), suggesting that development initiatives have percolated down to the urban poor. Furthermore, we find that although a large number of cloth users (57 percent) are willing to change practice, an overwhelming number of them (94 percent) elicit a preference for re-usable cloth pads. This suggests a disengagement with public policy discourses on menstrual care that have so far focused singularly on promotion of sanitary pads. We draw upon these results to comment on better sanitary care for women slum dwellers in a rapidly urbanising context. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable evidence of the patriarchal nature of the police and underreporting of gender‐based violence in India, there is a dearth of literature on how gender advocacy campaigns in India tackle these issues. This study addresses this gap by exploring how the police is represented in gender advocacy in India. The material comprises of eight campaign videos from two ideologically opposing organizations: Amnesty International, an international human rights organization and Ministry for Women and Child Development, a government body. Social representations theory and narrative analysis are applied in the analysis to answer how the role of the police is narratively constructed. Results suggest two contrasting representations held by each organization in line with their organizational identities. While Amnesty constructed the police as villains obstructing women's access to justice, the Ministry represented the police as heroes defending women's safety. The analysis contributes a novel way of locating anchors and objectifications by a focus on narrative actions and goals. Additionally, the discussion of the findings broadens conceptions of hegemonic and polemic representations, arguing for a more power‐centric approach that conceives of hegemony in terms of access to media channels and material resources. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Motivation: The adoption of school‐based management (SBM) reforms has led to the formation of local‐level school committees in many low‐ and middle‐income countries. These committees are usually created with the stated aim of giving parents or local community members a greater say in school management. Various studies have, however, highlighted difficulties with parental and female participation, casting doubt on the extent to which greater community representation improves school management. Purpose: The article examines empirically whether greater parental and female representation in Indian school management committees (SMCs) is associated with school improvement as measured by increases in the school‐level provision of basic infrastructure and services. Methods and approach: Fixed‐effects regression models are estimated using school‐level panel data. Findings I find that increased parental representation is not associated with improvements in school infrastructure/service provision. Rather, what contributes strongly to improved outcomes is increased representation of elected local authority members. Overall, schools with female‐majority SMCs also perform better. Policy implications: While the requirement for Indian SMCs to include representation from local government appears to be an effective feature of their composition, there is a need for capacity‐building efforts to ensure that parent members also contribute effectively to school management. SMCs should also be encouraged to meet the female representation quota, as the analysis suggests a positive association between female representation and school outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This interpretive study derives a conceptual framework explaining how Indian women experience a loss of self through the transformational event of marriage. The self‐discrepancy of losing one's self motivates these women to renegotiate their sense of self through consumption. Data were collected through 76 in‐depth interviews analyzed by a constant comparative method and grounded theory. Our research question is to what degree and in what ways do women in India experience a loss of self upon marriage and, if they do, through what consumer practices (if any) do they attempt to compensate for this feeling of loss? Analysis revealed three common stages in Indian women's married life (1) marriage as a life transitional event inducing liminality (2) loss of Self: dissonance (3) compensatory consumption as a response to dissonance. Our research contributes to life cycle theory by focusing on liminal transitions. We find that self is a possession that women can lose after marriage in India. Based on these findings we argue that understandings of identity and life cycle must be amended to consider self‐discrepancy and coping processes. We develop a model of consumption that results from a perceived loss of self. This is all part of a process of self‐identity reconstruction. We also expand psychological ownership theory to include ownership of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information provision for social welfare via cheap technological media is now a widely available tool used by policymakers. Often, however, an ample supply of information does not translate into high consumption of information due to various frictions in demand, possibly stemming from the pecuniary and non‐pecuniary cost of engagement, along with institutional factors. We test this hypothesis in the Indian context using a unique data set comprising 2 million call records of enrolled users of ARMMAN, a Mumbai‐based nongovernmental organization that sends timely informational calls to mobile phones of less‐privileged pregnant women. The strict lockdown induced by COVID‐19 in India was an unexpected shock on engagement with m‐Health technology, in terms of both reductions in market wages and increased time availability at home. Using a difference‐in‐differences design on unique calls tracked at the user‐time level with fine‐grained time‐stamps on calls, we find that during the lockdown period, the call durations increased by 1.53 percentage points. However, technology engagement behavior exhibited demographic heterogeneity increasing relatively after the lockdown for women who had to borrow the phones vis‐à‐vis phone owners, for those enrolled in direct outreach programs vis‐à‐vis self‐registered women, and for those who belonged to the low‐income group vis‐à‐vis high‐income group. These findings are robust with coarsened exact matching and with a placebo test for a 2017–2018 sample. Our results have policy implications around demand‐side frictions for technology engagement in developing economies and maternal health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of microcredit programmes to empower women remains highly contested, with studies alternatively championing their worth or denouncing their ineffectiveness. This article examines why there are such differences of opinion as to the value of microcredit programming for women's empowerment. Through using a qualitative analysis of interviews and focus group discussions with self‐help group participants in West Bengal, this article shows that current microcredit programming varies widely. Results from this study show that there were different empowerment outcomes for women based on which approach to microcredit was implemented. Results further indicate that regardless of the model of programming employed, microcredit is no substitution for welfare or for the creation of employment. This article therefore concludes that microcredit programming exists along a continuum, from 'smart economics' approaches to more holistic gender focused programming approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the globe, women and racial minorities are underrepresented in leadership. We examined the development of 5–10‐year‐old children's leadership cognition in India, the world's largest democracy. This cultural context offered the opportunity to study the development of attitudes about gender and to extend examinations of children's conceptions of race to include colorism (the privileging of lighter skin). In Experiment 1, children completed a novel Election Task in which they saw a fictional class with 20 students varying in gender (boys, girls) and race/skin tone (darker‐skinned South Asian [Dark‐SA], lighter‐skinned South Asian [Light‐SA], Black, White). Children predicted who would be elected as President, Treasurer, Welcomer, and Notetaker. Children most often chose Light‐SA and White students as President. When choosing Presidents, younger children showed an own‐gender bias, but by age 9, both boys and girls primarily chose boy Presidents. Importantly, children's choices differed for the other class positions. Next, we asked children to draw a "leader." No boys drew a girl, and girls' drawings were mixed (52% drew girls). In Experiment 2, we replicated the drawing task findings and compared children's drawings of a leader to their drawings of a helper and a scientist. Children most often drew boys and men as leaders and scientists, but not as helpers, suggesting specificity of children's pro‐male bias to male‐stereotyped positions. Children's conceptions of leadership reflected a male bias and an association between lighter skin and status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic violence is one of the most pernicious gendered ailments of human society. Researchers have confirmed the inevitable consequences of domestic violence (physical, sexual, and emotional) in increased vulnerability to psychopathologies in addition to physical morbidity. Domestic violence cases are vast in India, and the numbers are further aggravated at an alarming rate during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The present study aimed at exploring the cases of domestic violence among Indian women during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Newspapers reporting the incidents of domestic violence during the last 5 years were analysed to explore the issues related to the surge in domestic violence incidents during the COVID‐19 lockdown period. A major increase in domestic violence cases was observed during the COVID‐19 period as compared to the previous years. Also, the cases were higher during the initial phases of the pandemic but gradually decreased as time progressed.The impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on women was unprecedented and worse than before. Home containment as a measure to protect the health and well‐being of the general public has resulted in increased sufferings for women in terms of both sufferings from diseases and increased domestic violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do states realize social reforms for marginalized groups in settings of entrenched inequality? This article argues that reform implementation is a conflict‐ridden process driven by the institutional activism of street‐level bureaucrats. Through an ethnographic case study of Mahila Samakhya, a novel government program for women's empowerment in Uttar Pradesh, India, I find that local fieldworkers committed to reform promoted girls' education by mobilizing marginalized citizens and mediating local conflicts. Organizational processes of gender‐based training and deliberation enabled fieldworkers to challenge village patriarchy and exclusion and forge programmatic ties with lower caste women. By altering rules to address the practical needs of households, fieldworkers effectively integrated disadvantaged girls into the education system. Institutional activism also engendered conflicts over rules within the bureaucracy, prompting senior officials to advocate for marginalized groups. The findings suggest that institutional commitment to activism is critical for agencies working on the front lines of reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: We conducted this study to examine the mid upper‐arm circumference (MUAC) of full‐term infants from birth to 6 months; construct gender‐specific MUAC graphs; and assess the role of MUAC as a surrogate marker for low birthweight and wasting in infants younger than 6 months. Methods: This is a prospective longitudinal study of 268 (133 female and 135 male) new‐borns in a tertiary care centre in Navi Mumbai, India. We measured weight, length, head circumference and MUAC. We drew the MUAC curves for the first 6 months using the mean MUAC and standard deviation (SD) values and assessed the diagnostic test properties of MUAC at birth as a marker of low birthweight. Results: The mean (SD) birthweight of the male and female new‐borns was 2756.2 g (368.1) and 2803.8 g (326.2), respectively (P = 0.25). The mean (SD) MUAC at birth was 8.7 (0.3) cm in males and 8.8 (0.2) cm in females, respectively (P = 0.14). The plotted mean MUAC curve in infants who were classified with wasting was between the −1SD and −2SD in both genders. The sensitivity and NPV for detecting low birthweight were 100% at cut‐off of 8.6 cm in females and 8.7 cm in males, respectively (area under the curve: 0.92 (females) and 0.96 (males)). Conclusion: MUAC may be a good proxy for low birthweight at birth and the curves from our study show that it may also help in the diagnosis of wasting in infants below 6 months of age in the community, particularly in resource‐constrained settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary poverty measures as well as most existing multidimensional poverty indices (MPI) assume equal distribution within the household and thus are likely to yield a biased assessment of individual poverty, and poverty by age or gender. We show that the direction of the bias of such household‐based assessments in measuring poverty or inequality among individuals depends on how these measures use individual data to determine the poverty status of households. We use data from the 2012 Indian Human Development Survey and compare a standard household‐based MPI to an individual‐level MPI. The poverty rate among women is 14 percent points higher than that of men in our individual MPI measure but almost the same when using the household‐based measure. 22 percent of males and 27 percent of females are misclassified as poor or non‐poor using the household‐based measure. We also show that intra‐household inequality is 30 percent of total inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of American Anthropologist is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The main objective of this study is to identify the socioeconomic, meteorological, and geographical factors associated with the severity of COVID‐19 pandemic in India. The severity is measured by the cumulative severity ratio (CSR)—the ratio of the cumulative COVID‐related deaths to the deaths in a pre‐pandemic year—its first difference and COVID infection cases. We have found significant interstate heterogeneity in the pandemic development and have contrasted the trends of the COVID‐19 severities between Maharashtra, which had the largest number of COVID deaths and cases, and the other states. Drawing upon random‐effects models and Tobit models for the weekly and monthly panel data sets of 32 states/union territories, we have found that the factors associated with the COVID severity include income, gender, multi‐morbidity, urbanization, lockdown and unlock phases, weather including temperature and rainfall, and the retail price of wheat. Brief observations from a policy perspective are made toward the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers vascularity as a multi‐dimensional imaginary for the interspecies entanglements constituting Ayurvedic leech therapy. Whether, when, where, and how a leech decides to bite, suck, and release comprise pivotal junctures in leech therapy as practiced in southern Kerala, India. In the course of leech–human intra‐actions, leeches translate matter, providing sensory mediation, relief, and amusement. Enmeshed in social and ecological relations inflected by gender, religion, class, and caste, this analysis of Ayurvedic leech therapy reframes questions of agencies starting with and from the viewpoint of the vascular capacities of leeches in their interactions with humans. This image of vascularity provides an analytic for the emergent agencies of humans and leeches constituted by sensory intra‐actions at branching points in this multispecies clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic violence affects women globally. Domestic violence in India is embedded in structures of patriarchy, cultural norms, and a conservative social structure (Biswas, 2017). Community narratives help to create meaning and impact human behavior and can be tools of empowerment (Rappaport, 1995). They can also provide an important means of detecting changes in norms. Community engagement efforts that focus on empowering communities can play an important role in creating empowering narratives. Organizational settings like grassroots agencies can play a salient role in providing opportunities for community engagement leading to the creation of new community narratives and personal stories. This study sought to examine the work of a grassroots agency in India engaged in community action aimed at social change in the response to domestic violence, with a special focus on understanding shifting community narratives related to the response to domestic violence. Based on data from semi‐structured interviews, archival data, and participant‐observations, and using a modified‐grounded theory approach, our results identified five major themes reflecting counter narratives on domestic violence. These included (a) awareness and discourse on gender related issues, (b) framing domestic violence as a social issue, (c) supporting the empowerment of women, (d) supporting disclosure of violence, and (e) supporting intervening in cases of violence. Implications of our findings for social change work in the response to domestic violence are discussed. Highlights: Community narratives can provide an important means of detecting changes in norms.Social movements can target and change community narratives to redefine problems.Community engagement that empowers communities can create empowering narratives.This study highlights various counter narratives in the response to domestic violence.Implications for social change work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores if the value priorities and their impact on future managers' attitudes towards environmental responsibilities vary with gender. While relevant prior studies mostly focus on gender‐based variations of individuals' personal values in developed economies, we concentrate on both personal values and pro‐environmental attitudes in an emerging economy. This study is built on MBA students (a proxy for future managers) in India since India is characterized as a male‐dominated society and a producer of larger number of MBA graduates. Overall, our results show that personal values and attitude towards environmental responsibilities do not vary significantly with gender. Only two values (among the 21 values) and one value type (out of 10 values) get significantly higher ranking from females compared with males. Further, although 'universalism' and 'benevolence' are found to have a statistically significant impact on respondents' attitude towards environmental responsibility, the latter is invariant to the respondents' gender. Our findings may indicate India's transformation from a male‐dominated society towards a more gender‐balanced society. These findings can be used to operationalize a pro‐environmental recruitment policy and to formulate strategies to improve female participation in MBA cohorts of business schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies sometimes exempt particular categories of regulatees for reasons of equity and political feasibility. Will the non‐exempt oppose the policy because they shoulder all of the policy costs? We outline an analytic framework for "stress testing" public support among the non‐exempt when they are provided negative information about exemptions and reduced policy effectiveness. Empirically, we study public support for the odd‐even road space rationing policy in India. Using a survey experiment with 2,182 car owners in Bangalore, we find considerable baseline support for this policy. While support among the non‐exempt erodes when they are told about exemptions, there is no additional erosion when they are told that exemptions reduce policy effectiveness. This suggests that the perception of fairness, not policy efficacy, drives the erosion of support among the non‐exempt. Yet the policy survives the stress test because the majority of respondents continue to support it, in spite of support erosion among the non‐exempt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parsis (Indian Zoroastrians), like many religious groups, manage their ritual spaces and funds with charitable trusts. High numbers of intermarriage have caused much debate over who counts as a Parsi within the community, and more attention is being paid to women and their rights of access. After a local trust in Valsad, Gujarat, barred intermarried women from entering Zoroastrian sacred spaces, Goolrukh Gupta, an intermarried Parsi woman, sued her trust in the high court. It ruled that Gupta was no longer a Parsi but a Hindu, like her husband, even though she had married under the Special Marriage Act of 1954, which enables civil marriage. Offering fresh insight into debates on the politics of recognition and the potentialities and pitfalls for women who appeal to the law to secure their communal rights, I argue that the mechanism of the trust allows the analysis of the two distinct but not separable notions of property and propriety. I analyze how the communal trust in India propertizes married women's legal and religious personhood. This article reveals how Indian women's composition as communal subjects as well as some aspirations of Indian secularism come undone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the effect of various information processing strategies specifically related to attribute nonattendance in stated choice experiments. Our approach includes two forms of stated choice task nonattendance, each derived from separately framed questions asked immediately following the completion of each choice task. We also evaluate a measure of inferred serial nonattendance based on the posterior distributions of random coefficient estimates. We find that choice task nonattendance question framing statistically impacts marginal utility coefficients and, to a lesser degree, willingness-to-pay estimates. While direct questions addressing attribute attendance or nonattendance affect these estimates, inferred indicators of serial nonattendance suggest that many attributes are not likely ignored as often as respondents may indicate. Further research is needed to assess inferred versus stated approaches to modeling respondent information processing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education of girls in India lags behind that of boys and several communities in India fare worse than others. Because of their secondary status in the society, Indian girls tend to suffer from low self-esteem. Thus, it is necessary to study the reasons why girls are being discouraged from attending and completing school as well as what are the expectations mothers have from them when compared to their male siblings. Data was collected using structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with the participants. Of 15 mothers, 12 completed the questionnaires; of these, five mothers were interviewed, and their data was used to present the findings of a comparative study on the maternal expectations on academic achievements in primary school children residing in Urban Bangalore, South. This study also throws light on some of the peripheral issues that emerge while considering maternal expectations on academic outcomes. The study examines how maternal expectations might differ in the case of boys versus girls within an Indian context, particularly within an urban setting in Bangalore, Karnataka. No differences were seen in the expectations mothers had of their sons compared to their daughters, but several other issues emerged. The results of this study may not be used conclusively as this is just a small-scale research project and hence no generalisation can be made to address such prevalent cultural issues in India, particularly in Urban South Bangalore, Karnataka, South India. The results of this study illustrate the need for more literature within the Indian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding contemporary sexuality and gender politics in India compels an examination of the imbrications between cities, the idea of modernity, the production of non-normative identity-based social categories, and critiques of neoliberalism. Recent developments in Indian sexuality and gender politics with respect to non-normative subjects must be understood through the critical lens that scholarship on neoliberalism offers. At the same time, an uncritical use of the theoretical apparatus of neoliberalism in the Indian context risks overdetermining the discursive space of normative urban gay elites. The conflation of gay identity with elitism, and transgender identity (when it is conflated with hijra-ness) with poverty, has characterized much of Indian public discourse on non-normative sexualities and genders. Emphasizing the vagaries of the daily lives of non-normative subjects, read through their geographical valences, is one way to disrupt this binary, while demonstrating the unique role of the urban imaginary in the discursive production of sexuality and gender-based activism in India. This is important in the current moment, as 'LGBTQ' rights are taken up as a foreign policy issue by governments around the world, and the newly elected Indian government promises to build 100 'world class cities' during its tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]