Breaking the Night Barrier: Night-Shift Reforms and Women’s Work in India

Female labor force participation (FLFP) in India has remained stubbornly low, defying the expectation that women’s employment would rise alongside economic growth. While supply-side constraints such as gendered norms and care responsibilities are well documented, the role of demand-side institutional barriers has received less empirical attention. We study whether removal of one such barrier - legal prohibitions on employing women in night shifts - improved female employment outcomes. We exploit exogenous variation in the timing of state-wise reforms in service sector labour laws in India between 2016 and 2024 to employ a staggered difference-in-differences design. We find that women in treated states increased time allocated to night hours, while overall hours worked declined, possibly toward more flexible or better-compensated shifts. We also find evidence of increased formalization among women in more organized firms and higher socioeconomic groups, consistent with bargaining responses to improved legal rights. The effects of lifting gendered legal barriers appear strongest where employers are willing to hire, infrastructure supports mobility, and women have bargaining power, while in more precarious settings, gains are limited. In India’s heterogeneous and often informal services sector, such reforms can shift employment patterns, but their reach and quality may depend on complementary institutional and infrastructural support.