Impact of Indian Demonetization on Working and Non-Working Married Women: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

The sudden announcement of demonetization in India caused an immediate financial crisis that cascaded throughout the whole country and consequently caused suffering in the lives of many people, one such group being married women. Therefore, the present study aimed to explore and understand how married women were impacted by the demonetization policy. A total of 20 working and non-working women were selected from New Delhi and a qualitative research design based on interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was employed. The present study identified three themes (i.e., problems due to demonetization, coping with demonetization, and diverse experiences associated with hidden money) and ten subthemes in which it was evident that both working and non-working women were impacted by the demonetization policy. Participants were able to develop different coping strategies to deal with the crisis. Surprisingly, contrary to our expectations, none of the participants received any negative treatment from their husbands after knowing their hidden savings.