Gender Discrimination in Wages and Employment in India: The Care Penalty

Anupama Uppal () and Amandeep Kaur ()
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Anupama Uppal: Department of Economics, Punjabi University
Amandeep Kaur: Jay Pee Institute of Information Technology

Chapter 14 in Women and Work in India: Challenges, Opportunities and Perspectives for Policy, 2026, pp 333-352 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Globally, women with a child of pre-school age are less likely to be employed or they avail an employment opportunity that balances the work and family responsibility, even though it is not the best alternative available to them, mainly because the employers do not offer paid parental leave or flexible work schedules. Mothers or women with greater care burden tend to receive lower wages than those with lower care burden—a phenomenon popularly known as the ‘motherhood wage penalty’. In this Chapter using the PLFS data an attempt has been made to find out if women workers in India are discriminated against on the basis of their care burden. Further, by exploring the factors that mitigate or amplify this penalty, this Chapter tries to fill a critical gap in policy research on women’s employment and gender discrimination in labour market in India.

Keywords: Motherhood wage penalty; Gender discrimination in employment and earning; Care burden and women’s labour market participation; Gender based earning gap; FLFPR and FWPR; Child care responsibilities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-981-95-6103-2_14

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-6103-2_14

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