Does living in a joint family affect married women's employment?
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Direct answer
Joint-family living can affect women’s employment in opposite directions. Other adults may share childcare and housework, making paid work easier, or senior relatives and larger household duties may restrict job choice, mobility or time. Research from Northern Punjab found that family structure matters for female labour supply, but its regional sample is not a national causal estimate. The outcome depends on who controls decisions, whether care is actually shared, job location, transport and the presence of young children—not simply the number of relatives in the home.
Sources used
Female labour supply in a joint family system in Pakistan
Pakistan Development Review
Research from Northern Punjab on how joint-family structure can affect women’s labour supply; not a national estimate.View sourceFemale Labor Force Participation in Pakistan
World Bank
Research context on women’s work, marriage and structural barriers to labour-force participation.View sourceWomen’s co-residence with mothers-in-law and maternal healthcare
Social Science & Medicine, PubMed Central
Cross-country DHS analysis; 41.2% of Pakistani couples in its analytic sample lived with the husband’s mother.View source