Dissertation: HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE REPRODUCTIVE LIFE COURSE. A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF WOMEN IN KARNATAKA (INDIA) AND THE NETHERLANDS
Author: Sarbani Banerjee
Global campaigns of UNICEF and UNESCO have been focusing on promoting girls education across all countries of the world. According to UNICEF, educating girls offers extraordinary social and economic benefits to the current and future generations. At the same time countries are striving towards fertility decline (mostly achieved through women having less children) and ongoing rapid social and cultural transformations.
The present research takes a step forward by examining what exactly is the impact of higher education on the changing lives of women?
We address this issue by comparing women living in the southern Indian state of Karnataka (with fast fertility decline, having reached almost replacement level of 2.1 children) with women in the Netherlands (with fertility levels below replacement level for already many years). In addition, education and fertility behaviour of older and younger generations of women are studied. This enables us to identify changes in time in both societies.
The study uses secondary data from the National Family Health Survey (1998-1999) for the state of Karnataka and the Netherlands Family Fertility Survey (OG 98). In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted amongst higher educated working women in both Bangalore (The Silicon Valley of India) and Groningen.
The results of the research indicate that younger educated women in Karnataka depict innovative reproductive patterns: they marry at later ages and also have their first child at later ages. This is similar to the pattern followed by young women in the Netherlands but distinctly different from the older cohorts where women marry and get children at young ages. However, the nature of the delay is different in Karnataka and the Netherlands. The personal aspirations for education and work play an important role in both societies, but women in Karnataka tend to give in to stronger social and cultural norms regarding wifehood and motherhood. Amongst the women in Karnataka we observe them delaying motherhood only till ages 25-27 years after which even the high educated women had become mothers. This reveals that the effect of education at later ages loses its stronghold in Karnataka after ages 27 reflecting the context specificity of cultural norms of motherhood. However, amongst the Dutch women motherhood is postponed and the high educated women postpone it much further than the less educated ones. The reproductive life course of both women in India and the Netherlands is becoming more of a negotiating career as women balance work and motherhood. Women themselves state that with their increase in education levels, it becomes important to be financially independent and that there is a need to be autonomous in all spheres of life.
