Anisha Sharma
Anisha Sharma is a development economist at Ashoka University, India. Her research interests are in labour economics, the economics of health and education, and public policy, with a particular interest in gender gaps across these dimensions. One strand of her research focuses how people make decisions about human capital investments, and how gendered social norms influence their choices. Another strand of her research relates to the constraints on firms from hiring women, as well as the socioeconomic factors that constrain women’s labour supply. Her work has been supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Innovations for Poverty Action, J-PAL, and Centre for Economic Policy Research, among others. She received a PhD in Economics, an MSc in Economics for Development and an MSc in Financial Economics from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She also hold a BA in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.
She is presently Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Ashoka University in the Delhi NCR region. She was also an invited researcher at J-PAL.
She also taught undergraduate microeconomics and mathematics at Brasenose College, Oxford. As an Overseas Development Institute Fellow, she worked as an economist in South Africa’s National Treasury on developing policies to preserve macro-prudential stability in the banking and financial system, in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.
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Anisha Sharma is a development economist at Ashoka University, India. Her research interests are in labour economics, the economics of health and education, and public policy, with a particular interest in gender gaps across these dimensions. One strand of her research focuses how people make decisions about human capital investments, and how gendered social norms influence their choices. Another strand of her research relates to the constraints on firms from hiring women, as well as the socioeconomic factors that constrain women’s labour supply. Her work has been supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Innovations for Poverty Action, J-PAL, and Centre for Economic Policy Research, among others. She received a PhD in Economics, an MSc in Economics for Development and an MSc in Financial Economics from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She also hold a BA in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.
She is presently Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Ashoka University in the Delhi NCR region. She was also an invited researcher at J-PAL.
She also taught undergraduate microeconomics and mathematics at Brasenose College, Oxford. As an Overseas Development Institute Fellow, she worked as an economist in South Africa’s National Treasury on developing policies to preserve macro-prudential stability in the banking and financial system, in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.
In their own words…
IEA: Can you tell us a little bit about your life story, what sparked your interest in economics, and how you decided to pursue an academic career?
Anisha: As an undergraduate student, I stumbled into economics. I had high grades in high school and entry into an economics programme seemed to require high grades, so I just enrolled in an economics major! After that, I was fortunate enough to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study for two separate Masters degrees at Oxford: one in financial economics and one in development economics. I really enjoyed studying development. Like many of my classmates, I became an ODI fellow immediately after graduating and worked in the Ministry of Finance in South Africa for two years. At the end of the fellowship, I decided to return to Oxford for a PhD in Economics. Since then, I have worked in research on topics in development and labour, both of which I continue to find enormously exciting.
IEA: In recent work, you have studied gender discrimination in India, and the many ways that it affects human capital outcomes for children. Can you briefly summarize your findings? What made you interested in this topic?
Anisha: Son preference is so pervasive in India that it manifests in the widespread practice of sex-selective abortions whereby families selectively abort female foetuses. As people become more educated and desire fewer children, the preference for sex-selective abortions to ensure at least one son becomes even stronger, even if their own gender attitudes become more progressive! I am very interested in the question of how these norms can be shifted. I have three papers that study the policy implications of well-meaning legislation intended to reduce son preference by banning sex-selective abortions, but I find that they only succeed in driving gender discrimination to another margin. I find that households that lack access to sex-selective abortions go on to have unwanted daughters and reduce their investments in the health and education of these children. Alternatively, they have larger families in search of a son, where all additional children born into such families suffer from relatively lower resources. While top-down legislation such as bans on abortion are intended to be gender progressive and are perhaps even necessary given the scale of missing women in India, they lead to adverse consequences for surviving girls and boys.
The good news is that mass media campaigns targeted at increasing the acceptability of daughters do seem to have some marginal impacts in increasing health and educational investments in daughters, offsetting the adverse effects of bans on sex-selective abortions. Families can also be encouraged to have greater aspirations for their daughters. We have a long way to go, and understanding how to change minds through policy is critical.
IEA: In ongoing work, you are focused on different approaches to increasing female labour force participation. Could you describe these research projects?
Anisha: In more recent work, I am exploring similar norms related to female labour force participation in India, which is very low compared to other countries at a similar stage of development. In one project, we analyse one key constraint to rural women being in paid work, which is their inability to migrate even short distances to nearby cities for training and employment. We are testing an intervention where we counsel family members on the economic benefits of migration for work, as well as increase the social acceptability of such decisions. We hope that by shifting the beliefs of a large enough group of rural families, we will be able to encourage some women to move from their homes in villages to cities where jobs are available.
In another project, we are examining whether making workplaces safer and less hostile to women can encourage them to enter and remain in the labour force. We are aiming to test an intervention where we offer firms a training programme on identifying and addressing workplace sexual harassment and other hostile practices that cause women to quit their jobs or discourage them from applying in the first place. We hope to learn what kinds of incentives can encourage firms to improve workplace safety, and whether such interventions can have any impact at all on the willingness of women to remain in paid employment.
IEA: Why is this research relevant today?
Anisha: Gender discrimination continues to be highly relevant in many countries today, especially in South Asia. Integrating women into the social, economic and political fabric of a country is both a moral imperative and can increase productivity by reducing the misallocation of resources.
IEA: Why is it important for economic research to be diverse and inclusive?
Anisha: Diversity in economic research, particularly in development economics, can lead to researchers asking better and more relevant questions. They can get better answers to those questions just because they have a better understanding of the field and the local context. And the research outputs can be better matched to policy efforts, thereby creating more social impact.