Ieva Zumbyte

Ph.D. candidate, Sociology Graduate Program in Development Fellow Population Studies and Training Center Fellow, Hazeltine Fellow 2020-2021

Ieva’s dissertation examines the role of universal public childcare in women’s decisions about employment and entrepreneurship in Chennai, India. The first part of the study uses an original household survey to investigate the relationship between public childcare and women’s work type. In the second part, Ieva will conduct in-depth interviews with self-employed mothers, both users and non-users of public childcare, to understand how women make decisions about childcare and entrepreneurship, and which motivates which. This project contributes to our understanding of how public childcare, a key social welfare institution, affects women’s choice of work, entrepreneurship and economic mobility more broadly.