UC Berkeley

In South Asia, adolescent girls and young women often find themselves subordinate to men socially, culturally, and economically. Evidence suggests restrictive gender norms are most rigidly enforced for adolescent girls, which impacts their life trajectory and has intergenerational effects by influencing the health and development of these girls’ future children. This dissertation conducted three studies in two South Asian countries, India and Nepal, to examine how gender inequality and restrictive gender norms undermine the health and empowerment of married adolescent girls and young women using prospective, longitudinal cohort datasets. Paper 1 examined the association between community-level collective gender norms, physical intimate partner violence, and sexual intimate partner violence. Findings indicated that physical and sexual intimate partner violence was high. Contrary to the hypothesis, the odds of women experiencing physical violence often increase 26% per unit increase in community-level equitable gender scores on a 6-point scale. We did not observe a significant association between collective gender norms and sexual IPV. Paper 2 examined the association between marriage, childbearing, and empowerment of adolescent girls and young women using panel data of unmarried and married respondents. Empowerment was operationalized using indicators assessing adolescent girls’ and young women’s participation in decision-making, freedom of movement, and access to economic resources. Findings indicated marriage, particularly marrying into households and co-residence with in-laws was negatively associated with the freedom of movement of married adolescent girls and young women. Motherhood was positively associated with two dimensions of empowerment, including freedom of movement and access to economic resources. Paper 3 examined the gendered norm of women eating last in the household and their depressive symptom severity. Findings suggested that eating last was associated with greater depressive symptom severity holding all covariates constant. Efforts to improve women’s empowerment and transform restrictive gender norms should consider the challenges faced by newly married adolescent girls and young women. Future research should test interventions with newly married women to break the repeated intergenerational transmission of restrictive gender norms in South Asian countries.