From Capital Ideas comes this discussion of Emily Oster's research with Robert Jensen on the status of women in India. (HT JC Bradbury):
Jensen and Oster found large effects of cable on both of these variables. Women who live in villages that introduce cable see large declines in both the number of acceptable beating situations and son preference; villages that do not introduce cable see no change. This change happens between 2001 and 2002 for villages that introduce cable in 2002, and between 2002 and 2003 for villages that introduce cable in 2003. In other words, the timing of the change in attitudes lines up with the timing of the change in cable access.
Indicators involving changes in actual behaviors, as opposed to attitudes, likewise suggest substantial improvement in women’s status. Jensen and Oster measured female autonomy based on responses to questions about participation in household decision making: does the woman make choices about obtaining health care, purchasing goods, do they need to get permission to visit friends and family, etc. Overall autonomy increased significantly after the introduction of cable and, again, this change happened at the same time as the cable introduction. The authors also found a decrease in pregnancy after cable introduction.
Interesting stuff. Here is an NBER Digest about the paper. and here's a link to the abstract of the NBER version of the paper. I have no bone to pick with the research (it's out of my field of interest), but is this really economics? Economics deals with human behavior under scarcity. Clearly the research deals with an aspect of human behavior, but I don't see where scarcity comes into play.