TEACHING FOR A LIVING: INCOME, INFORMALITY, AND WOMEN'S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT IN KOLKATA'S PRIVATE TUITION MARKET

The paper attempts to explore the phenomenon of self-employment among women private tutors in Kolkata by conceptualising private tuition as an informal enterprise nested in the shadow-education economy of the city. The paper analyses primary data on 208 women tutors. The study employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and binary logistic regression to examine factors that influence the income of tutors and the relationship between tutoring income and economic empowerment of women. Results show substantial returns to education and to teaching experience and scale of operation (number of students taught). Marital status is associated with significantly lower income, reflecting unpaid care-related labour-supply constraints. We further see that in a logit model, the probability that a female tutor controls earnings and participates in household financial decisions is positively associated with monthly income and educational attainment. But these gains are precarious: private tutoring is informal, with unstable income, no social protection and fierce competition. It also enhances women’s economic agency. It anchors its findings to Kabeer’s (1999) resources-agency-achievements framework and calls for targeted policy interventions such as certification of skills, integration with digital platforms and basic regulatory safeguards to stabilize earnings and gradually formalize this segment of the informal economy. This study contributes to the literature on gender, informal employment and urban livelihoods in India.