Understanding Family Preferences for Married Women’s Seclusion

Policy Context

In India, social norms severely restrict mobility—75% of married women report needing permission to leave home (NFHS, 2015), and the median daily time spent outside is 0.5 hours for women versus 9.5 hours for men (Andrew and Smurra, 2024). This seclusion likely contributes to and is reinforced by India’s low female labor force participation rates. Why does such pervasive seclusion of women exist? Social and cultural expectations may play a role, as might decisions by family members—particularly in extended families, which are the norm in rural India. Women who live with their in-laws experience lower decision-making relative to those who live in a nuclear family (Debnath, 2015), suggesting that restrictions on their mobility and autonomy may not solely reflect their husbands’ preferences but also those of in-laws. This project examines whether husbands and mothers-in-law (MILs), have preferences over married women’s seclusion and social interactions in India.

Study Design

To elicit preferences, researchers piloted a discrete choice experiment with 60 families in rural Haryana in India in April 2025. In each family, they surveyed the husband, wife and MIL. In the experiment, every respondent completed 10 paired-choice tasks describing a hypothetical meeting event for the wife. The options randomly varied (i) location (home vs outside), (ii) companions (research staff only, partner of their choice, women from the same community, or women from diverse communities), (iii) interaction level (no organized interaction vs half the session devoted to socialising), (iv) payment for attending. The research team also collected data on time spent outside the home, friendship and interactions, veiling, and mental health and life satisfaction. Researchers used vignettes to measure social norms around women’s seclusion.

Results and Policy Lessons

This research finds high degrees of seclusion for married women (as measured by time outside the home, number of friends, and time interacting with non-family members). Researchers find some suggestive evidence that MILs are less secluded than their daughter-in-laws. Time outside the home is positively correlated with better mental health for women. At the same time, vignette results show that people expect sanctions for non-compliance with seclusion. In a vignette about a woman visiting a market and a friend while her husband was at work, 36% of respondents said people in the couple’s home village would think poorly of the wife, and 42% said they would disapprove of the husband allowing it. In the preference experiment, contrary to the prior, respondents did not consistently have preferences for meetings at home or meetings with low interaction. Thus in this sample, stated preferences do not clearly show a strong aversion to women’s participation in public or interactive settings. In future work, researchers hope to investigate this more formally by incentivizing women to spend more time outside the home (thus studying actual takeup and not stated preference), and studying whether strategic complementarities explain why the social norm persists.