Is Language a bridge or barrier? Linguistic distance and the health of women and children
India is a linguistically diverse country with a large flow of internal migrants. This article demonstrates that the greater the “linguistic distance” between a woman’s native language and the d...
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Advaith Jayakumar
Anisha Sharma
10 November, 2025
- Articles
Markets, marriage, and norms: Understanding female labour force participation in India
Despite recent gains in India’s female labour force participation rate due to rural self-employment, women’s work in the country remains constrained by factors on both the demand and supply side. ...
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Farzana Afridi
03 November, 2025
- Perspectives
How dowry shapes migration decisions in modern India
While migration is a critical driver of economic development, it may disrupt arrangements wherein parents rely on sons for old-age support. Leveraging new survey data, this article shows that at the t...
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Natalie Bau
Gaurav Khanna
Alessandra Voena
23 October, 2025
- Articles
Marriage and motherhood: Rethinking women’s employment in rural contexts
While “child penalties” for women in the labour market are well-documented in high- and middle-income countries, how the events of marriage and childbirth play out for women in largely informal ec...
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Rosa Abraham
Rahul Lahoti
Hema Swaminathan
05 December, 2025
- Articles
Why India’s fintech boom needs to address gender diversity at the top
Indian fintech has expanded rapidly over the past decade, with further growth and job creation expected in the coming years. While there is an increasing number of women-led startups in the sector, gr...
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Chaitanya Ravi
Juhi Sidharth
Shivangi Singhal
03 December, 2025
- Notes from the Field
क्या भाषा एक सेतु है या अवरोध? भाषाई दूरी तथा महिलाओं और ब
भारत भाषाई विविधता वाला एक देश है जहाँ देश के अंदर बहुत सारे लोग एक स्थान से द...
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Advaith Jayakumar
Anisha Sharma
27 November, 2025
- Articles
Is Language a bridge or barrier? Linguistic distance and the health of women and children
India is a linguistically diverse country with a large flow of internal migrants. This article demonstrates that the greater the “linguistic distance” between a woman’s native language and the d...
-
Advaith Jayakumar
Anisha Sharma
10 November, 2025
- Articles
Markets, marriage, and norms: Understanding female labour force participation in India
Despite recent gains in India’s female labour force participation rate due to rural self-employment, women’s work in the country remains constrained by factors on both the demand and supply side. ...
-
Farzana Afridi
03 November, 2025
- Perspectives
How dowry shapes migration decisions in modern India
While migration is a critical driver of economic development, it may disrupt arrangements wherein parents rely on sons for old-age support. Leveraging new survey data, this article shows that at the t...
-
Natalie Bau
Gaurav Khanna
Alessandra Voena
23 October, 2025
- Articles
First to wake, last to eat: How India’s quest for gender parity begins on an unequal footing
Women are predominantly responsible for domestic work, the burden of which is typically heavier in the morning. Analysing data from India’s 2019 Time-Use Survey, this article shows that women tend ...
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Udayan Rathore
13 October, 2025
- Articles
Do judges favour defendants like themselves? Evidence from Indian courts
Around the world, research has shown that people in positions of power tend to favour those who share their social identity. To examine whether the same is true in Indian courts, this article analyses...
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Elliot Ash
Samuel Asher
Aditi Bhowmick
Sandeep Bhupatiraju
Christoph Goessmann
Daniel Li Chen
Paul Novosad
29 September, 2025
- Articles
Protecting girls at school: How sanitation infrastructure can reduce sexual violence
Over 30% of reported rape cases in India involve victims under 18, with girls particularly at risk. One key factor that exposes females to harm is the lack of adequate sanitation facilities. This arti...
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Pei Gao
Aditi Kothari
Yu-Hsiang Lei
29 July, 2025
- Articles
How MNREGA reduced women’s labour force participation
By guaranteeing 100 workdays annually per household in rural India, MNREGA seeks to enhance economic security and alleviate poverty. This article shows that while the programme has successfully achiev...
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Jorge Luis García
18 July, 2025
- Articles
Raising the value of women’s time for a transition to clean fuels
A majority of women in rural India continue to use traditional fuels, adding to the time that they devote to domestic work. In this post, Farzana Afridi discusses findings from a survey in Madhya Prad...
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Farzana Afridi
04 June, 2025
- Articles
Girls in tech: Evaluating IIT’s Supernumerary Seats Scheme
Introduced in 2018, the Supernumerary Seats Scheme seeks to improve gender ratios among undergraduate engineering students at IITs, which have historically been male dominated. This article shows that...
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Nandana Sengupta
Swati Sharma
21 May, 2025
- Articles
Twitter feed
Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Social Identity Posts
Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials in India: An update
Building on past research, Saswata Ghosh and Pallabi Das estimate the state- and district-level fertility differentials between Hindus and Muslims using data from the latest round of the NFHS. They sh...
Pallabi Das
Saswata Ghosh
18 April, 2023
- Articles
A division of labourers: Caste identity and efficiency in India
Castes in India are closely associated with certain occupations and determine the jobs done by millions. This study uses a new dataset to show that a large proportion of workers still work in their ca...
Guilhem Cassan
Daniel Keniston
Tatjana Kleineberg
18 November, 2022
- Articles
Measuring caste inequality across Indian states
Although recent research on inequality shows that upper castes have the highest levels of material well-being, there is a wide variation in caste inequality across India. Measuring three forms of cast...
Poulomi Chakrabarti
13 September, 2021
- Articles




27 November, 2025






