Weekly links September 18: gender inequality in India, sleep, jobs, farms, and more… David McKenzie September 18, 2026

Weekly links September 18: gender inequality in India, sleep, jobs, farms, and more… David McKenzie September 18, 2026 https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/impactevaluations/weekly-links-september-18--gender-inequality-in-india--sleep--jo Seema Jayachandran and Pranab Bardhan talk on gender inequality and development on Pranab’s substack: On early life health“Two things seem to be going on, and both stem from the specific form that son preference takes in India, and other cultures that practice patrilineality: the eldest son in the family is the special one. That’s why among boys, you see a drop-off in health inputs and outcomes as you go from older to younger brothers. What’s going on with girls is more subtle and it goes back to the quest for a son….”… and discussion also on low female labor force participation “Bangladesh is the “demonstration project” for India. Bringing in female-friendly jobs --- not just employers who have demand for female labor, but workplaces engineered to fit with female seclusion norms -- might, in turn, cause the norms to erode. A lot of current academic work on female employment is in that vein, for example studying work-from-home jobs for women with the conjecture that they might be a stepping stone for those women (or subsequent generations) to eventually have more freedom to work outside the home”