Urban women are believed to enjoy greater social, economic and political opportunities and freedoms compared to their rural counterparts. At the same time, studies have shown that barriers to women’s empowerment remain prevalent in urban areas. Given India’s rapid urbanization and persistent gender disparities, this article analyses the impact of urbanization on women’s outcomes and finds mixed results.
Compared to other major Asian countries, India’s urban growth rate was fairly slow until the end of the decade but has now started to accelerate rapidly. According to the United Nations Bureau of India, it is estimated that more than 400 million people will live in India’s urban areas by 2030. According to the World Urbanization Prospects report (2018), between 2018 and 2050, India’s urban areas are expected to grow by 416 million people. The report predicts that by 2050, 53% of India’s population will live in urban areas (current figure is 34%).
With gender inequality rife in India and women remaining marginalized in society, the importance of understanding how urbanization affects women cannot be overemphasized. With this in mind, a recent study (Dhamija et al. 2023) examines the short-term impact of urbanization on women’s empowerment.
In theory, urbanization can have both positive and negative effects on women. Urban women, unlike their rural counterparts, are believed to enjoy greater social, economic, and political opportunities and freedoms. In an editorial, Tacori and Satterthwaite (2013) point out that urban women “have more opportunities for paid employment outside the family, better access to services, lower fertility rates, and some relaxation of rigid societal values and norms that define women as subordinate to their husbands, fathers, and men in general.” Nevertheless, these women are likely to continue to experience forms of gender discrimination. As UN-Habitat’s State of Women in Cities 2012-13 report points out, urban environments have “severe gender disparities.” [exist] “Labor and employment, ‘decent work’, wages, land tenure, access to and accumulation of assets, personal safety and security, and representation in the formal structures of urban governance.” This suggests that barriers to women’s empowerment remain widespread in urban environments.
Women’s empowerment is a multidimensional and multi-scale process experienced at both the individual and household levels. As pointed out by Kabeer et al. (2011) and Golla et al. (2011), women’s empowerment needs to be understood to go beyond women’s economic status of work, income, education, and assets to encompass other social and political dimensions. More specifically, it requires women to have the skills and resources to compete in the marketplace, fair and equal access to economic institutions, and the ability to make and act on decisions and control resources and benefits in terms of exercising power and agency. In our study, we use several economic outcomes to capture women’s empowerment. These include indicators of women’s labor market participation, mobility, agency within the household, access to information, economic independence, and exposure to and attitudes towards intimate partner violence (IPV). We obtained data on these indicators from two recent repeated cross-sectional rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), in 2015–16 and 2019–21, which is a widely used national survey in India and part of the global Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program. The two rounds of the NFHS provided access to data on over 1.2 million Indian women.
We measure urbanization using district-level satellite data on night lighting. Based on the idea that light intensity per unit area is a valid indicator of the degree of urbanization, night lighting has been argued to be a valid indicator of urbanization and urban settlements (Storeygard 2016, Abay and Amare 2018, Amare et al. 2020, Chen et al. 2022, Abay et al. 2023). Therefore, night lighting intensity in an area is likely to indicate the level of urbanization (higher values of night lighting intensity indicate higher levels of urbanization). Figure 1 shows the distribution of night lighting at the district level across the two surveys.
Figure 1. Map of nighttime lighting at district level (logarithmic)
Source: Authors’ compilation using district coordinates from the Survey of India and night-time light from the SHRUG (Socio-Economic High Resolution Rural-Urban Geography) dataset for India-1
We find that urbanization leads to increased female mobility (in the sense that urban women have fewer restrictions on their mobility) and economic independence (measured by access to a bank account). However, urbanization has no effect on women’s labour market participation, access to information, or women’s gender ideology (such as their acceptance of IPV as a woman for various reasons). Furthermore, urbanization reduces women’s agency within the household and increases their exposure to IPV. We also find that urbanization has a positive impact on men’s labour market outcomes.
Women living in urban areas may have fewer mobility constraints due to the convenience and efficiency of commuting to work. Moreover, urban men are more likely to be employed than their rural counterparts, and the added challenges of urban life may compel men to allow women to go out and engage in outdoor activities that they cannot manage alone. Fewer mobility constraints may also explain urban women’s easier access to bank accounts compared to rural women. Moreover, greater availability of bank branches in cities may further facilitate women’s access to financial services.
The null and negativ e effects of urbanization on areas other than mobility and economic independence may be due to several factors. Urbanization may disrupt women’s social networks, which are essential for information transmission and job search. Moreover, the types of employment opportunities available in urban areas may not be suitable for women, making it more difficult for them to secure employment. Moreover, increased mobility in urban areas, while necessary, may provoke male backlash, leading to higher rates of IPV and less agency within the household among urban women.
We documented some interesting heterogeneity. For instance, we found that the impact of urbanization on the likelihood of participating in paid employment was higher for women belonging to poor households, women from disadvantaged castes, and women living in North India and economically backward states (such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, or BIMARU states). Urbanization in India is associated with the creation of low-skilled informal sector jobs, mainly for women, and women from relatively lower social classes are more likely to take such jobs than their wealthier counterparts. Given that BIMARU states are relatively less developed and economically backward, a very large proportion of women living in these states are likely to be women from lower social classes, in addition to women from more disadvantaged castes. Thus, urbanization may have a positive impact on women’s likelihood of participating in the labor market. However, we did not find any positive change in gender attitudes due to urbanization in these groups, and urbanization may have made these groups of women more likely to participate in paid labor. If anything, poor women and women from economically backward states have worse attitudes towards IPV than other women.
Overall, these results suggest that Indian women have benefited little from urbanization and that the impacts of urbanization are gendered. This could be because Indian urban planning has not been gender-sensitive and/or urbanization has failed to change patriarchal gender norms.
Existing research has documented that gender inequality is extremely high in India, leading to women being marginalized in society. Our findings indicate that the rapid urbanization that India is currently witnessing may widen this gender gap and further marginalize Indian women. Policymakers need to recognize this possibility and consider designing and implementing interventions that could address it. This could include reorienting policies and programs that aim to promote urbanization (e.g., Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), Smart Cities Mission (SCM), Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U), etc.) to take into account the specific needs and challenges faced by women.
Additionally, efforts are needed to ensure equal access to employment opportunities for urban women, interventions to change cultural norms that may limit women’s participation in urban life, and programs to promote community engagement and participation, including particularly women’s involvement in planning and decision-making processes related to urban development.Furthermore, ongoing research and data collection will help refine and adapt policies based on the changing needs of urban women.
Notes:
For more information about SHRUG, see Asher et al. (2020), which describes its construction and its advantages over existing datasets for studying economic development.
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