India ranks 140th among 156 Nations in the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Gender Gap Index and is only ahead of Pakistan and Afghanistan in South Asia with some of the world’s lowest labor force participation rates. In their latest research, Yale economists  find that providing women with greater digital control over their wages via access to bank accounts, basic knowledge of operations, and direct deposit of earnings all encouraged women to increase their labor force participation rates and hours worked while also changing their beliefs and thereby influencing prevailing gender norms regarding working women.

This new research by Rohini Pande of the Economic Growth Center, Charity Troyer Moore of the MacMillan Center, and coauthors shows that giving women in India’s Madhya Pradesh state greater digital control over their wages led to a surprising range of benefits. A link to the paper and a detailed summary of its findings is available on the Economic Growth Center’s website.

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Read the full story on the Yale News website.