Gender Equity within Fertility Change: Is India an Exception?

Fertility change is often posited to exhibit a positive correlation with gender equality. As the fertility rate decreases, the burden of frequent childbearing diminishes, thereby facilitating the greater involvement of women in economic activities. Scholars argue that economic development—encompassing factors such as fertility transitions, economic growth, and broader modernization processes—naturally promotes gender equality without the need for additional interventions (Dollar and Gatti, 1999). However, this argument, predominantly tested in the context of highly developed countries, has been insufficiently explored in developing nations like India. One perspective suggests that the enhanced status of women drives the fertility transition, thereby rendering increased gender equality an inevitable consequence of fertility change (Anderson and Kohler, 2015). In contrast, another viewpoint asserts that fertility transitions induced by family planning interventions do not directly foster gender equality, necessitating explicit policy measures to achieve true equality (Malhotra, 2012). This paper seeks to address this debate by examining the fertility patterns observed in India, which do not conform to traditional fertility change models. Such an analysis can offer valuable insights into the relationship between fertility and gender equality, particularly in low-income countries undergoing fertility transitions driven by family planning initiatives.