Hybrid job training improves participation for women in Nepal, study finds
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 24-Jul-2025 15:11 ET (24-Jul-2025 19:11 GMT/UTC)
Globally, women’s workforce participation is about 25% lower than men’s, often due to barriers such as domestic responsibilities and cultural norms. Vocational training can increase employment opportunities, but women may not be able to attend training programs that require them to be away from home. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in collaboration with an international research team, explored whether hybrid distance learning can improve accessibility to job training for rural women in Nepal.
International collaborative research led by Aakash Project* researchers at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) show an unequivocal contribution of crop residue burning (CRB) to air pollution in the rural/semi-urban regions of Punjab and Haryana, and a relatively lower contribution than previously thought to the Delhi national capital region (NCR). We have installed 30 units of compact and useful PM2.5** in situ instrument with gas sensors (CUPI-Gs) and have continuously recorded air pollutants in 2022 and 2023. New analytical methods have been developed to assess and predict the formation and transport of air pollutants due to emissions from CRB.