Cinderella No More: Night Shift Bans and Women's Employment in India

Sarvnipun Kaur, Anshika Arora and Prakarsh Singh

No 1791, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Night-shift bans prevent women from working nights on equal terms with men. Though most countries repealed such bans, India retains gender-based restrictions. After 2017, several states permitted women in service-establishments to work nightshifts under administrative requirements. Exploiting this staggered rollout, we find reforms reshaped female employment composition without affecting its level. Women in treated-states were 10.1% more likely to be employed in services and 5.3% less likely in non-services. This effect is stronger in safer districts, robust to placebos and contemporaneous manufacturing reforms. Lifting this constraint may expand employment, but administrative-costs can offset these gains. We find the former dominates.

Keywords: Gender; Labor law; Sectoral employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J21 J78 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1791

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