Working women penalised at marriage market: Study

Abstract

Women who work are less likely to get matches on matrimonial websites than those who do not, a new study has found. Diva Dhar, a doctoral candidate at University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government, conducted an experiment to test her hypothesis that working women are penalised in the marriage market and found that, in fact, women who have never worked receive 15-22% more interest compared to those who wish to continue working. Basically, for every 100 men who respond to a woman who has never worked, only 78-85 will respond to a working woman.
Dhar said that as someone who researches women's labour force participation in India, she was interested to see the way gender roles, specifically when it comes to marriage, impact working women. "I'm at that age where a number of my friends have given up work after marriage or at least downsized their careers. I wanted to see if that anecdotal feeling that women are penalised for working pans out through an experiment," she said.
So, she made 20 fabricated profiles on a leading matrimonial website. The profiles were identical when it came to age, lifestyle preferences and diet - everything except whether they work, wish to work in future and how much they earn. She made these profiles for different caste groups. "Then, I selected sample suitors that met certain eligibility criteria and they received invites from these profiles," she added. [Read More]