THE ROLE OF EDUCATIONAL MARITAL PAIRING ON MUSLIM WOMEN'S AGENCY IN INDIA

Gulnaj Basri
Manoj Alagarajan, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

This study examines the impact of educational pairing of spouses on Muslim women's agency in India. As education among Muslim women improves, understanding its influence on their autonomy and agency becomes crucial. The research employs theories of gender and empowerment to hypothesize that educational homogamy and Hypogamy will be associated with higher levels of women’s agency, while hypergamous pairings may restrict it. The analysis considers women’s employment, health, access to digital resources, mass media awareness, asset ownership, attitudes towards gender-based violence, mobility freedom, and decision-making power as indicators of agency. The study uses data from the National Family Health Survey (2019-21) and utilizes overall agency scores, PCA and regression analysis, to test the hypotheses. Preliminary findings reveal that women in highly educated partnerships exhibit greater agency. Specifically, both partners having high education correlates with the highest agency scores, whereas mixed pairings show varied results depending on whether the woman or her spouse has higher education. Despite these improvements, traditional constraints persist, indicating that while education enhances material and informational access, cultural norms continue to influence women's agency. This study contributes to the understanding of how education reshapes gender dynamics within Muslim marriages and offers insights for policy interventions aimed at promoting gender equality.

Keywords: Families, Unions and Households, Gender Dynamics, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, Human Capital, Education, and Work

See extended abstract.