Jobs of the Future and Gender Norms in India

Project Overview

This project explores whether a digital persuasion approach can shift entrenched gender and masculinity norms in India. Partnering with Karya – an organization that provides digital employment to economically disadvantaged communities across India – this study randomly assigns workers to read, transcribe, and annotate content designed either to subtly challenge traditional gender norms or remain gender neutral. By leveraging insights from social psychology, including motivated reasoning and subliminal priming, I investigate if implicit cues, rather than explicit messages, can more effectively unravel rigid patriarchal norms among adults. This randomized field experiment uniquely applies persuasion through AI-generated content, aiming to reveal mechanisms by which routine tasks can influence deeply held attitudes without resistance. Given India’s entrenched gender disparities in economic, social, and political spheres, this study offers evidence leveraging a scalable, light-touch approach toward reshaping gender norms.

Background

For this project, I am collaborating with an organization that provides supplementary employment through digital labor to economically marginalized populations across India. The jobs entail voice-recording texts, transcribing audio and image-labelling content into a mobile-based app. Resulting data are further used by the collaborating firm to train large language models in Indian languages.

Status

A pilot of the intervention with a sample of 90 married men in Jharkhand, India was completed in March, 2025. The full-scale experiment is slated to launch in June, 2025.

Acknowledgement

This project has been enabled by generous support from: The Cultural Bridge Fund at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, Institute for Humane Studies, the Harvard Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality, and Social Policy, and the Center for International Development.