Exploring the Linkage between Education and Financial Autonomy of the Women Working in Urban Informal Sector in India

Autonomy of women in terms of taking decisions in their financial matters is crucial in accelerating empowerment and reducing gender biases. Accessibility to education can enhance and improve women’s ability to question, obtain knowledge and utilize right information. It further can enhance their intra household bargaining power, and their decision making ability to optimally utilize resources for their betterment and substantially take rational decisions. However, this may not always be true. Using data from a primary survey of working women in the urban informal sector in three States of India: Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi-NCR, this paper argues that accessibility to education can sometimes reduce women’s autonomy to use her income and take independent financial decisions. This paper finds an inverse relationship of the degree of financial autonomy with the level of education a woman has, for the women working in the informal sector