Gendered effects of work and participation in collective forest management

This paper reports the results of a statistical investigation of the relationship between labor time expended in rural livelihoods, social structure, and community forest management. The object is to understand the impact of labor constraints to collective action. There are three main results. First, increasing time burden of work has a negative impact on collective forest management. Second, the gendered nature of work imposes a high burden on women and hence impedes their ability to participate in collective management even if incentives exist. In addition, lower access to social infrastructure further increases work burdens and decreases ability to participate. Finally, high levels of wealth lead to lower individual participation but this not because of high opportunity of time worked.time use; collective action; gender; forests; South Asia; India

Rural Livelihoods, Forest Access and Time Use: A Study of Forest Communities in Northwest India

This paper investigates the effects of the size of private land holdings and access to forest commons on the labour allocation to livelihood activities. The statistical analysis indicates that land and forests are complementary assets in the rural production process. Differential access to private land and common forests together explain variability in time allocation to rural livelihoods in the forested regions of northwest India. Development and conservation policies that might cause displacements or disruptions to such livelihoods must therefore consider the impact of policy making on private wealth as well as access to the natural commons.time use; rural livelihoods; forest commons; protected areas; South Asia; India

Brothers-in-Arms: Religious Extremism and Economic Growth in India

In the last three decades, the political project of Hindutva (or Hinduness, a particular form of Hindu nationalism) has experienced a massive revival. This paper discusses the integral role of economic growth and neoliberal policies in the rise of religious Hindu extremism in India

Reproductive Work and Female Labor Force Participation in Rural India

The current debate over female labor force participation in India has failed to sufficiently account for the reproductive work of women. Using NSS data on reproductive labor, we investigate the possibility that a “reproductive squeeze” raises the opportunity costs of labor force participation for women. A variety of multinomial logit regressions reveal a robust positive relationship between the shares of non-discretionary food and non-food expenditure and the likelihood of performing reproductive labor, relative to being in the labor force. We also find that an indicator of greater social provisioning by the state is positively correlated with rural women’s labor force participation, all else constant

Gendered effects of work and participation in collective forest management

This paper reports the results of a statistical investigation of the relationship between labor time expended in rural livelihoods, social structure, and community forest management. The object is to understand the impact of labor constraints to collective action. There are three main results. First, increasing time burden of work has a negative impact on collective forest management. Second, the gendered nature of work imposes a high burden on women and hence impedes their ability to participate in collective management even if incentives exist. In addition, lower access to social infrastructure further increases work burdens and decreases ability to participate. Finally, high levels of wealth lead to lower individual participation but this not because of high opportunity of time worked

Rural Livelihoods, Forest Access and Time Use: A Study of Forest Communities in Northwest India

This paper investigates the effects of the size of private land holdings and access to forest commons on the labour allocation to livelihood activities. The statistical analysis indicates that land and forests are complementary assets in the rural production process. Differential access to private land and common forests together explain variability in time allocation to rural livelihoods in the forested regions of northwest India. Development and conservation policies that might cause displacements or disruptions to such livelihoods must therefore consider the impact of policy making on private wealth as well as access to the natural commons

Gendered effects of work and participation in collective forest management

This paper reports the results of a statistical investigation of the relationship between labor time expended in rural livelihoods, social structure, and community forest management. The object is to understand the impact of labor constraints to collective action. There are three main results. First, increasing time burden of work has a negative impact on collective forest management. Second, the gendered nature of work imposes a high burden on women and hence impedes their ability to participate in collective management even if incentives exist. In addition, lower access to social infrastructure further increases work burdens and decreases ability to participate. Finally, high levels of wealth lead to lower individual participation but this not because of high opportunity of time worked

Rural Livelihoods, Forest Access and Time Use: A Study of Forest Communities in Northwest India

This paper investigates the effects of the size of private land holdings and access to forest commons on the labour allocation to livelihood activities. The statistical analysis indicates that land and forests are complementary assets in the rural production process. Differential access to private land and common forests together explain variability in time allocation to rural livelihoods in the forested regions of northwest India. Development and conservation policies that might cause displacements or disruptions to such livelihoods must therefore consider the impact of policy making on private wealth as well as access to the natural commons

Discussion #1

Charalampos Kostantinidis and John Henry answer questions from attendees of worksho

Work and Social Reproduction in Rural India: Lessons from Time-Use Data

Even as the literature on work in the Global South acknowledges the importance of forms of non-waged work, it has not sufficiently incorporated consideration of the labor of social reproduction. We propose understanding work through four conceptual dyads: waged productive labor, non-waged productive labor, waged reproductive labor, and non-waged reproductive labor. Through an in-depth description of three specific cases from a Time Use Survey we conducted in rural Punjab, India, we argue not only that all four dyads are required to encompass the world of work, but that this more expansive conceptualization can help us produce richer analyses of the intersections of class, caste and gender