Role of Social Workers in Supporting Girl Child Labour and their Families

It is motivated by an apparent paradox boys seem to participate more both in the labour market and in school than girls. This pattern breaks down once we take the household work done by girls into account. In this paper, we find that there is symmetry between the factors that make women’s contribution to the household economy less ‘visible’ than men’s and the factors that reduce girl’s involvement in outside work. Both are related to the kind of socio-cultural environment in which households operate in India. Analyzing the School, Work and household chores options for girls, we find that the kinship system prevalent in different regions as well as amongst different religions and castes is a significant determinant of these choices. In addition, we find that increases in household income do not decrease the probability of girls doing household chores, reinforcing our conclusion that noneconomic factors are important.