Gender and Development: In conversation with Sunaina Kumar

[@harshitshukla9564]

Wonderful conversation

[@ick-625]

The key reason for low inclusion of women in India and general struggles with employment is that India didn't build infrastructure and provided a lucrative environment for manufacturing jobs in 80s, 90s and 2000s like China and some of the south east asian countries did. Many of them had these social norms as well, unlike us they didn't keep singing the same song of cultural norms as root cause of all problems. Culture changes, more effectively with carrots than with sticks, but there have to be policy changes to make it happen and it is going to take a generation or two to see a significant change. The challenges with house work have significantly reduced now at least urban areas with automation + cheap access to house help. Another challenge which is perhaps newly introduced is women's time spent off work post child birth, which was shared by family members except for breastfeeding, is now necessarily be spent either by parents themselves, which more often means mother while the child is breastfeeding or creates expense to outsource that job which grandparents would have done happily were they living together or at least closer to where the couple is residing