I'm on the #EconJobMarket! Millions of women dropped out of the labor force in rural India starting in the mid-2000s. Why? My #JMP shows that gendered commuting frictions + urban-biased growth is an important part of the answer. 🔗 https://t.co/sUebVghU8u #EconTwitter 🧵👇 1/6

📢The next talk in our Seminar Series on the #IndianEconomy is coming up! ⏰Nov. 12 8:30–9:30 AM PST / 10:00–11:00 PM IST 👨‍🏫Sarthak Joshi (@sarthak_joshi) will present with Devaki Ghose (@WorldBank) serving as discussant. ➡️ Register here for Zoom link: https://t.co/gjUJOB50Qc

Looking to hire a RA for a project. Join the team for an exciting project on how to tackle demand side constraints for female employment in india @_ADeshpande

The programme of the "Firms, Labour Market, and Development" 2025 Workshop is now ready. Looking forward to it!

🚨PhD alert! In light of everything happening in the world, the Econ Department at @ImperialBiz is conducting a second lightning round of admissions for fall 2025! Applications due April 30, offers in mid-May. Please spread the word! More details:

AYEW is back with Season 10!🎊🎉 Join us TOMORROW (12 March) for the Gender Economics Workshop at 11:00am GMT to listen to @sarthak_joshi (@warwickecon), @lyu_yi_fan (@handels_sse) and @akanksha19950 (@columbia_econ) Sign up for Zoom details: https://t.co/9uqg3n69rP

📜Previous work has attributed the decline to rising HH incomes in a patriarchal society. But norms are slow-moving; policy action risks backlash (see my other work:  https://t.co/UkLerJZz4G). ✅Making commuting safe and comfortable for women can be an effective policy target.

3️⃣I calibrate a spatial general equilibrium model to perform policy counterfactuals. 👉Relaxing gendered commuting frictions would have mitigated the observed⬇️in female labor force participation b/w 2001-2011 by 30%. 👉⬇️spatial misallocation would ⬆️ total output by 0.4-1%.

❓Driving mechanism = women face higher commuting frictions than men. 👉Men started commuting across the rural-urban boundary but women did not. 👉In line with the fact that women rely more on public modes of transport, CZs with good bus networks display smaller gender gaps.

2️⃣I use a trade shock — China's WTO entry in 2001 — to generate a `first stage'. 👉Rising import competition reallocated non-farm sector jobs from the rural periphery to the urban core over time. 👉Significant gender employment gaps appear in areas that lost job access.

1️⃣I construct commuting zones (CZs) for India as rural-urban catchment areas by combining village-level job counts (thank you, SHRUG!) with estimated travel times along the national road network. 👉Each CZ is characterized by an urban core with an increasingly rural hinterland.

🚨New WP Alert!🚨 When programs empower women, some men retaliate. Why? Which policies can mitigate this? We investigate male backlash in response to female empowerment in rural India (with @ccullen_1, Vecci, & @jtalbotjones). 🔗 https://t.co/UkLerJZz4G #EconTwitter 🧵👇 1/6

👉 Which Policies Can Mitigate Backlash? 4️⃣Reframing the same program as a “Family and Community Program” instead of a “Women’s Empowerment Program” boosted support. See the draft for a lot more! 🔗 https://t.co/UkLerJZz4G Comments welcome! 6/6

🔁In round 2, men were placed at the receiving end. - 18% paid money to hide their household's involvement in empowerment programs. - Men who hid were more likely to have penalized empowered women in round 1. 3️⃣Social image concerns are likely a key driver of male backlash 5/6

👉 What Drives Backlash? Using separate treatment arms, we study backlash under different conditions, including: - men's loss of relative status - men's loss of control over resources. 2️⃣Backlash occurs regardless of how empowerment is achieved. 4/6

👉 Measuring Backlash Ethically - Our study paired 1,007 men in Bihar with an anonymous female partner. - In a one-shot game, men decide whether to financially penalise their partner at a cost. 1️⃣ Empowered women are penalised 2X of an otherwise identical control (17% vs 8%).

👉 Backlash is widespread yet understudied 🔍 We reviewed 20 years of studies on female empowerment programs in top economics journals. - Only 26% collected data on potential male backlash. - When measured, it was identified in some form in 40% of programs (!)🚨 2/6

🚨New WP Alert!🚨 When programs empower women, some men retaliate. Why? Which policies can mitigate this? We investigate male backlash in response to female empowerment in rural India (with @ccullen_1, Vecci, & @jtalbotjones). 🔗 https://t.co/UkLerJZz4G #EconTwitter 🧵👇 1/6

How do spatially skewed economic shocks deepen gender employment gaps? New research by @sarthak_joshi who is on the market this year reveals that rising Chinese imports reshaped labor demand in India, disproportionately restricting women’s access to urban non-farm jobs...

Angelica's job market paper explores how preferences for shorter working hours drive women into informal employment due to the limited availability of part-time jobs in the formal sector. https://t.co/0DxKa8mIYK #EconJobMarket