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Sahana Subramanyam

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Graduate Student Research Funding | 2023–2024 Academic Year

Investigating Parental Beliefs and Norms in Childcare: A Field Study in India

Gender and Equity

This project investigates why mothers predominantly shoulder childcare duties in India, focusing on children's learning outcomes. Experiment 1 explores parental beliefs about mothers' comparative advantage in childcare and attempts to correct these beliefs through an information intervention to encourage fathers' involvement. Experiment 2 examines how norms and identity associated with motherhood influence parental preferences for childcare by varying the visibility of high-effort investments in children's learning to assess the role of reputation and identity. Through these experiments, Subramanyam will be able to better understand the role of preferences, beliefs and identity in gendered child-care duties and encourage a more equitable division of parental responsibility in early childhood education.


Sahana Subramanyam, Department of Economics

headshot of Sahana Subramanyam

Sahana Subramanyam is a second-year economics PhD student at Stanford. Her research interests are at the intersection of gender, development and behavioral economics. She holds an MSc in Economics from Bocconi University, Italy and a BA in Economics from Azim Premji University, India. She is also an alumnus of the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, where she was a research scholar.

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