Using 1971 census data, this paper looks at variations in the level of female participation in the urban labor force in four states of India: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh. Contrary to a general notion, women belonging to both high and low strata of the caste hierarchy are subject to the same region-specific set of societal attitudes regarding their participation in the labor force. In the South there is greater acceptance of female participation in the public domain than in the North. Cultural and historical processes appear to account in subtle ways for this regional variation.
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Saraswati Raju (1982) studied this question.
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