The Employment Equity Act No. 55 of 1998 was introduced by the South African government to address the legacy of apartheid and ensure equitable representation of black people and women in the South African labour market. Although the impacts of the...
Kanika Mahajan, a researcher engaged in UNU-WIDER's project on 'The changing nature of work and inequality', is the August 2021 featured economist of...
We examine the patterns and correlates of the productivity gap between male-owned and female-owned firms for informal enterprises in India. Female-owned firms are on average 45 per cent less productive than male-owned firms, with the clearest...
This paper analyses the impact of trade liberalization on local labour markets in Ethiopia, with a focus on the gender dimension of employment. By exploiting rich micro-level data on Ethiopian workers, we evaluate the effect of the Ethiopian trade...
Gender gaps in labour supply, income, and wages are still large despite the remarkable convergence of roles of men and women in labour markets over...
Female labour force participation rates have stagnated in sub-Saharan Africa since the turn of the millennium. This paper aims to explain this aggregate pattern by decomposing it into the labour supply behaviour of different birth cohorts and age...
At the global level, gender gaps in labour force participation have narrowed and over half a billion women have joined the workforce in the last 30...
This paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the gendered dimensions of employment and mental health among urban informal-sector workers in India. First, we find that men’s employment declined by 84 percentage points post-pandemic relative...
We suggest a simple and flexible criterion to assess inter-generational mobility. It accommodates different types of outcomes (continuous outcomes such as potential earnings, or discrete ones such as education groups) and captures dynastic...
Historically, the issue of intergenerational evolution of income, wealth, and socioeconomic status has been the subject of considerable research in the analysis of inequality. Such intergenerational linkages are anticipated to come from two sources...
Using a survey of enterprises in Myanmar, we examine demand for formal credit and the extent to which firms are self-constrained by not applying for credit or if they apply and are constrained by bank’s rejections. We have information about firm...
Cameroon’s informal labour market largely harbours female workers, engaged mainly in low-productivity and low-paying jobs. We investigate the sticky floor and glass ceiling phenomena in the informal labour market as a whole and across its segments.We...
The wage of an individual is observed only when he/she is employed. However, getting employment requires two decisions. First, an individual has to decide to participate in the labour market, and second, an employer must decide to hire that...
This paper uses the latest Tanzania labour force survey—the Integrated Labour Force Survey—and a censored bivariate probit model to analyse gender differences in labour force participation and gender bias in formal wage employment in urban Tanzania...
We investigate the causes of the gender disparity in labour market participation in Ethiopia using iterative quantitative and qualitative longitudinal analysis through the whole childhood of the individual into early adulthood, from age 8 up to age...
Although Tanzania has made notable progress in enhancing access to financial services, the gender gap in financial inclusion persists. This paper examines gender disparities in financial inclusion in Tanzania using descriptive and regression analyses...
How does informal economic activity respond to increased financial inclusion? Does it become more entrepreneurial? Does access to new financing options change the gender configuration of informal economic activity and, if so, in what ways and what...
What is the effect of gender priming on solidarity behaviour? We explore a two-player solidarity game where players can insure each other against the risk of losses. In the utility function, priming is represented as the ‘change in weight’ given to...
Using household data from the latest wave of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, this paper utilizes machine learning techniques to examine the effect of gender wage differences within households on women’s empowerment and welfare in Ghana. The...
This paper analyses whether living in a locality with high crime against women affects the probability of early marriage—that is, marriage before the legal age of marriage of girls. We hypothesize that parents who perceive themselves to live in a...
What is the effect of gender priming on solidarity behavior? We explore a two-player solidarity game where players can insure each other against risk of losses. We test this experimentally in a developing country setting, the Philippines. We consider...
Using household data from the latest wave of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, this paper utilizes machine learning techniques – IV LASSO – that allows for the treatment of unconfoundedness in the selection of observables and unobservables to...
Using data from a new survey of small and medium-sized enterprises in Myanmar, we analyse enterprise demand for formal credit and the extent to which they are constrained in the formal credit market. We account for firms self-selecting out of the...
There are three main channels of women’s empowerment: legal or policy reforms, outside economic opportunities, and collective action. Legal (or policy) reforms are generally based on statutory laws that enact rules to be followed or prohibit certain...
This paper has three primary objectives. First, it provides a broad overview of the available South African data used to examine gender in the labour market, with specific reference to the South African Revenue Services (SARS) tax data which has...
Women are undoubtedly doing better today than they were even 40-50 years ago. The gender gap has shrunk in many areas, including educational...
This article studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gendered dimensions of employment and mental health among urban informal-sector workers in Delhi, India.First, the study finds that men’s employment declined by 84 percentage points...
This paper analyses the effectiveness of tax-benefit systems in reducing poverty and inequality across 13 countries in the Global South. Using national survey data and tax-benefit microsimulation models from the SOUTHMOD project, we provide a cross...
Time-use statistics are sensitive to measurement error, especially errors that might be introduced based on whether the informant is reporting on herself or reporting on others in the household. In this paper, we use the nationally representative...
Chapter in book: Oxford Handbook of the Economy of Cameroon Cameroon’s informal labor market largely harbours female workers, engaged mainly in low-productivity and low-paying jobs. We investigate the sticky-floor - a wider earnings-gap at the top...
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