Seminar Series: Gender Inequality In India

About the Talk

Although gender inequalities in India in a variety of domains are well recognized, research on different dimensions of gender inequalities is still in infancy. This seminar will focus on familial, institutional and symbolic aspects of gender inequality.  Using data from India Human Development Survey, a survey of 41,554 households organized by researchers from University of Maryland and National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, this seminar will address two questions: (1) How is intra-household power distributed between different members of the household? (2) How are gender scripts implemented in decisions regarding age at marriage in India?

About the Speakers

Sonalde Desai is Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland.  She is a demographer whose work deals primarily with social inequalities in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. She studies inequalities in education, employment and maternal and child health outcomes by locating them within the political economy of the region. While much of her research focuses on South Asia, she has also engaged in comparative studies across Asia, Latin America and Sub Saharan Africa. She has published articles in a wide range of sociological and demographic journals including American Sociological Review, Demography, Population and Development Review and Feminist Studies.  Dr. Desai earned her Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University in 1987.

Website: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/People/faculty/sdesai.htm

Reeve Vanneman is Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of Maryland.  He is a stratification sociologist whose recent research focuses on changing gender inequalities in the United States and India. With Dave Cotter and Joan Hermsen, Dr. Vanneman is trying to understand why the U.S. gender revolution of the 1970s and 1980s seems to have come to a halt in the 1990s. With Sonalde Desai and colleagues in Delhi at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, he has helped field a 40,000 household survey across all Indian states. This panel survey analyzes the relationships of poverty, gender stratification, and social capital on health and education outcomes. A publicly available data file should become available sometime in 2007.  Dr. Vanneman earned his Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University in 1975.

Website: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/People/faculty/rvanneman.htm