Gender Roles in Women’s Labour Force Participation

This study introduces a theoretical framework of women’s labour force participation (LFP) decision as a manifestation of two opposing forces—the labour market’s ‘push’ in favour of, and social institutions’ ‘pull’ away from participation. The socioculturally diverse southwestern Indian state of Kerala is chosen as the ideal setting to test this framework. Using data from two rounds of the Kerala Migration Survey (KMS)—2013 and 2018—the study finds that higher levels of education reduce the likelihood that women participate in the labour force. This article also addresses the impact of a shock to migration—the Nitaqat system—on women’s LFP and finds evidence that long-standing social norms that prevent women’s LFP can change under economic crises such as the Nitaqat system that caused a large-scale return migration of Muslim emigrants from the Gulf countries. We find that prior to the migration shock, in the Muslim-dominated Malabar region, the strong social norms of the Sunni Muslims permeates across religions, which discourages women's LFP. Due to the return migration of predominantly Muslim men prompted by the Nitaqat system, we find evidence of a more favorable attitude towards women's labor force participation (LFP) in the Malabar region. By studying women’s LFP in Kerala, which has a significant proportion of Hindus, Christians and Muslims, the article finds support for LFP decisions as influenced by categorical identity affiliations.