Gender wage gap in the agricultural labor market of India: An empirical analysis

Abstract

Abstract. The gender wage gap in the agricultural labor market is observed in all the states of India. This paper will try to identify possible policies which can reduce this gender wise wage discrimination in agricultural labor market. We consider the period between 2010-11 to 2015-16 and 18 major states of India. The possible factors which can create an impact on gender wage gap are the expansion of MGNREGP, Self Help Group, primary education among rural women, expenditure on the social sector as a percentage of Net state domestic products and the cropping intensity. It initially assumes that Cropping Intensity of a state in a specific time is very much dependent on the net irrigated area of that state in that time. Our endogeneity test supports our claim. So, Instrumental variable method is applied in our Fixed Effect panel regression. The result shows that expansion of primary education among women, the number of self-help groups in the state and enhancement of cropping intensity through improving irrigation facility can play a significant role to reduce the male and female wage discrimination in the agricultural labor market in India. But participation of women in MGNREGP and social sector expenditure as a percentage of NSDP fails to create any impact on the gender wage gap.

Keywords. Agricultural labor market, Gender wage gap, Panel data, Instrumental variable.

JEL. C23, C26, J16, J43.