Did British Rule Leave Indian Women Better Off in the Long Run? 

The question posed in the title of this essay has generated substantial academic research and public debate. Into this discussion comes a thought-provoking new paper by Bharti Nandwani and Punarjit Roychowdhury, which investigates the long-term relationship between British colonial rule and women’s empowerment in India. 

The research is motivated by a striking paradox: despite India’s rapid economic growth in recent decades, women continue to face significant socioeconomic disadvantages. As of 2021-22, only around 29% participated in the labour force, roughly half lacked financial autonomy and 26% reported experiencing domestic violence. The authors ask whether India’s colonial history, stretching back to the 18th and 19th centuries, helps explain these contemporary outcomes.

Colonial Legacy
Colonial rule in India unfolded in two distinct phases. The East India Company governed from 1757 to 1856, followed by direct British Crown administration until independence in 1947. Crucially, not all of India came under direct British rule. Many “princely states” retained legal, political, and administrative autonomy under indirect British oversight. This created meaningful variation across the country. Some districts experienced direct colonial institutions and legal reforms, while others continued under traditional systems of governance. The authors exploit this variation to examine the long term legacy of colonialism for gender outcomes.

A simple comparison between British administered districts and princely states would, however, be misleading because the British selectively annexed more agriculturally productive regions, which already tended to exhibit different gender norms. To address this so-called endogeneity, the authors use the Doctrine of Lapse as an econometric instrument. Introduced by Governor-General Lord Dalhousie between 1848 and 1856, the policy allowed the British to annex a princely state if its ruler died without a natural heir. 

Since the death of a ruler without an heir during this period was largely circumstantial rather than systematically related to gender norms or other confounding factors, it provides a possible exogenous instrument for British annexation. The policy was abandoned in 1858, lending further credibility to the identification strategy employed by the authors.

The research draws on multiple data sources. Contemporary measures of women’s outcomes come from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015-16, covering over 71,000 ever-married women, and the National Sample Survey (NSS) 2011-12, covering over 126,000 women. Historical district-level data on colonial status is combined with geographic controls to account for India’s climatic and topographic diversity.

Lasting Effects
The econometric results consistently show that women in formerly British-ruled districts perform better across almost every measure of empowerment. They are approximately 5 percentage points more likely to be employed and 5.5 percentage points more likely to hold paid work. They face fewer restrictions on mobility, being 6 to 8 percentage points more likely to travel alone to markets, health facilities, or locations outside their village. 

They are also 10 percentage points more likely to operate their own bank account, 18 percentage points more likely to hold a MGNREGA job card, and substantially more likely to participate in household decision-making. Perhaps, most significantly, they are 7 percentage points less likely to have experienced intimate partner violence during the previous twelve months.

The advantages extend beyond conventional measures of empowerment. Women in these districts are more educated, marry later, have fewer children, and hold more progressive attitudes towards gender. Their husbands also exhibit more egalitarian views, being significantly less likely to justify domestic violence or claim exclusive authority over household decisions.

Although data limitations prevent a definitive analysis of the underlying mechanisms, the authors rule out several possible explanations, including missionary activity, railway diffusion, and women's political participation, none of which differ meaningfully between British and princely state districts. The most credible explanations appear to be the progressive legal reforms introduced by the British — banning practices such as widow burning, child marriage, and female infanticide — alongside the West-inspired 19th century social reformation movements concentrated in Bengal and Maharashtra. These movements promoted women’s emancipation and gradually reshaped social norms.

The results also hold up under a range of statistical tests and alternative estimation methods. None of this diminishes the exploitative nature of British colonial rule. But the study argues that some colonial institutions and legal changes had unintended long term consequences that outlasted the Raj. 

In particular, reforms that expanded women’s legal rights appear to have reshaped social norms in ways that continue to influence women’s economic and social outcomes today. That conclusion has important implications for current debates on gender policy in India.