By: Ishana Sureka & Janhvi Gupta; Edited by: Lavanya Goswami
Introduction
Female labour force participation (FLFP) is a recurring point of research and discussion in the academic sphere due to its impact on women’s welfare outcomes, as well as, its contribution to the economic development of a country (Altuzarra et al 2019). Though FLFP is affected by various economic channels ranging from health, fertility, education and wealth, this paper looks at the impact arranged marriages can have on women’s labour market outcomes.
The idea of an “arranged marriage” is a sociocultural concept, and thus can be interpreted differently by individuals. For the sake of uniformity, we define “arranged marriage” as a marital alliance where the woman does not have a say in choosing her husband and where the primary decision-making power regarding her spousal selection lies with her family members or relatives.
Women’s limited decision-making power in the marriage market can act as a signal for a repressive and controlling social system, which further constrains her autonomy within her married household. This reduced household autonomy subsequently affects women’s ability to make decisions regarding their own employment post-marriage. Thus, arranged marriages can act as an indicator of the woman’s decision-making power in the marriage market which can have possible spillover effects on her autonomy regarding her decision in the labour market. Hence, we hypothesize that ‘Arranged marriages reduce women’s labour force participation’.
Argument
Arranged marriage is a cultural practice primarily prevalent in Asia and Africa where the parents and relatives of an individual choose spouses for them (Allendorf and Pandian 2016). Despite the recent shift in the marriage trend towards what is colloquially known as “love marriage”, where people choose their spouses themselves, arranged marriages are still predominant in the Indian subcontinent and can be seen as the outcome of the bargaining power between parents and children (Mathur 2007). Parents and children have different preferences for spousal characteristics, where arranged matches primarily reflect the parental preferences that cater to their expectations and priorities.
Due to arranged marriages being further strongly tied to a patrilineal and patrilocal family system where not only is lineage, inheritance, and family wealth being passed down through the male line, but the daughter of the household is also made to move to her husband’s house post marriage, the expectations and priorities with which parents look for their children’s matches tend to inherently disadvantage the woman.
Arranged marriages further not only perpetuate power imbalances between families but also within the marital relationship itself. The woman's lack of involvement in spouse selection can lead to communication barriers and differences in opinion between the couple. However, due to societal norms and the woman's limited agency within the household, the man's decisions often take precedence, further marginalizing the woman's agency and bargaining power.
Empirical Evidence
To provide backing to our claims, we use data from IHDS-II (2011-12) a nationally representative and multi-topic survey of 42,152 households covering 1,420 villages and 1,042 urban neighborhoods in India, to see trends in our sample regarding arranged marriages and women working for pay/wage.
We use data on the duration for which the woman knew her husband before marriage, and whether she had a say in choosing him as her husband as proxies for arranged marriage.
A paper by Allendorf and Pandian (2016) highlights a positive and strong correlation between the two proxies mentioned above, indicating that the duration of the woman knowing her husband before marriage is a good predictor/measure of whether she has a say in choosing him as her husband, and thus is a fair proxy for an arranged marriage. The paper also states that if the respondent had no choice in choosing her husband, they most probably are not well acquainted with their spouse and meet them either on the wedding day or a handful of times before getting married. In contrast, when there's a choice, there is time provided to establish a relationship before getting married.
Trends in Data
We see that 65.41% of women met their husbands on the day of the wedding itself, 14.65% knew them for less than a month, 8.79% for less than one year but more than one month, 5.34% for more than a year and 5.82% since childhood.
On the other hand, 26.75% of the women said “yes” to having a say in choosing their husband, whereas 73.25% had no say in choosing their partner, and the decision was made solely by relatives or other family members. This variable acts as an indicator of the woman’s bargaining power with her parents which subsequently impacts her autonomy over her decision to work in her married household as well.
Further, 74.24% of the respondents were not working for pay/wages, whereas 25.76% were meaningfully employed.
Establishing Correlation
We further run a simple OLS regression to check the strength of the correlation between the woman having an arranged marriage and her working for pay/wage. As mentioned above, we use data on the duration of the woman knowing her husband before marriage and whether she had a say in choosing him as a proxy for an arranged marriage and correlate that data with the trend of her working for pay or not.
We also account for a range of factors in our regression such as educational indicators (education of female, mother attended school, father attended school, spousal education, mother-in-law attended school, father-in-law attended school), fertility indicators (no. of children), wealth indicator (household income), demographic indicators (age, age at marriage, caste, religion, urban/ rural), as well as, household-level fixed effects of accounting for the unobservables across households affecting the woman’s labour market outcome to minimise the bias in our results.
Results
Proxy 1: How long the respondent knew her husband before marriage
We see that the probability of the woman currently working increases from 5.51 percentage points (ppt) before to 6.03ppt now if she knew her husband for “more than one month” compared to just “on the wedding/gauna day”. These numbers change from 4.09ppt to 6.33ppt, 0.33ppt to 3.49ppt and 11ppt to 8.97ppt for women who knew their husbands for “more than a month but less than a year”, “more than a year” and “since childhood” respectively.
Thus, the probability of the woman working is positively related to the amount of time she knew her husband before marriage. The amount of time the respondent knew her husband, is an indicator of whether she had an arranged marriage or not. As stated before, in the case of an arranged marriage, the woman’s chances of meeting her spouse on the day of the wedding are higher, in comparison to when she has had a say in choosing her husband, where there is usually more time given/ taken to establish a bond with the partner. This in turn determines the woman’s autonomy within the marriage and her ability to make decisions regarding her labour market participation.
Proxy 2: Respondent’s say in choosing her husband
Here we see that the woman’s probability of currently working for pay/wages significantly increases to 7.30ppt if she has any say in choosing her husband relative to if she had none. This reinstates that an increased bargaining power in the marriage market for women (i.e. choice in choosing a spouse), results in a positive spillover effect on the decisions made in the labour market by women (i.e. increased probability of working for pay).
Rural vs Urban
To further ensure the validity of our results, we run the same regressions on the sub-samples of the rural and urban populations. Comparing the results from the two samples, we see that in both cases i.e. if the woman has known her husband for longer before marriage, as well as if she has had a say in choosing her partner, the probability of her working for pay/wages is significantly higher for the rural subsample in comparison to the urban subsample. This is because women in the rural areas in general tend to work more due to being employed in the agricultural sector and to be able to contribute to the household income due to lower standards of living. In contrast, women in the urban sector tend to have lower FLFP due to prevailing patriarchal norms and gender disparity which invalidate the need for the woman to go out and work for pay if the husband can provide sufficiently for the family. (At the national level, 30.03% of rural women and 15.44% of urban women are engaged in economic activities (Bhanu and Biswas 2022))
Limitations
Here we need to be cognizant of the fact that because the decision of opting for a certain kind of marriage and working in the labour market can be made simultaneously, our results might be skewed. For example, a woman wanting to work post-marriage might not enter an arranged alliance herself.
There can further be reverse causality where women who are working prior to their marriage may have higher financial autonomy and can thus make their spousal selection decisions independently.
We also observe a significant selection bias in our sample, since women who independently choose their own partners are inherently different from women who don’t, thus their labour market outcomes will also differ. However, by accounting for various factors, as well as checking the validity of our results over the rural and urban subsamples, we attempt to limit this bias and make our findings significant and valid.
Conclusion
Our research corroborates our initial hypothesis, providing empirical backing to the effect arranged marriage can have on FLFP. We see that the probability of the woman working for pay/wages is positively related to the amount of time she knew her husband before marriage and her autonomy in choosing her spouse. Comparing the rural and urban subsamples, we further see that this impact is greater for rural populations which is due to the increased agrarian employment of women in rural areas, along with the reduced FLFP of women in the urban areas due to prevailing restrictive gender norms.
This emphasizes how women’s marriage market and labour market decisions and outcomes are interrelated and marriages where women do not have a say in choosing their husbands (arranged marriages) hamper their labour market outcomes and in turn, widen the intra-household disparity between the man and woman. Marriages where women have a say in choosing their spouse will result in a more equitable distribution of power between the couple. This will also result in a more equal share of domestic labour between the husband and wife, reducing the woman’s time constraints and allowing her to work in the labour market.
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