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Journal Article
Women’s Work – Routes to Social and Economic EmpowermentPart of Journal Special Issue Women’s Work
This project looks at what we know about the nature of women’s work in developing countries. The project will consider policy paths for the creation of productive jobs for women that are properly remunerated and thus create a route to women’s economic and social empowerment.
Recent progress in narrowing gender gaps in education, health, and political representation has not been matched by similar improvements in labour market outcomes for women, or more broadly, women’s economic empowerment. Global data shows that there has been no increase in female labour force participation and no decrease in the gap between men and women. Women typically occupy the worst-paid jobs with the least protection, and attitudes toward gender often hinder access to better opportunities. (See policy brief and blog for more information)
Women’s work differs from men’s as women are more likely to be unpaid for their work in family enterprises, and women are primarily responsible for household and caring tasks. Such combined responsibilities to contribute to their family enterprises, earn income in typically low-paid jobs, and care for the household can negatively affect women’s physical and mental wellbeing.
For women to be economically and socially empowered, it is necessary to increase both the quantity and quality of jobs for women, and address gender barriers in accessing job opportunities and segregation in labour markets. Further, the achievement of gender equality in labour market outcomes critically depends on the adoption of policies that address the ‘double burden’ that low-income women in particular face —earning income for the family as well as caring for other household members.
Key questions
- What explains uneven female labour force participation across the Global South? Why have we seen low rates of female labour participation in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, as compared to other regions in the developing world?
- What types and patterns of growth are most conducive to employment creation for women? How do the twin forces of globalization and labour-saving technical change affect job creation and destruction for women as compared to men?
- How do gender discriminatory social norms affect women’s economic opportunities and their work experiences? How does economic, political and social change lead to shifts in behaviour and in gender norms, and how can economic empowerment programmes support processes of change for more egalitarian gender norms?
- What types of public policies are more likely to enable women to obtain productive and remunerative jobs? How can gender-sensitive social policies be devised for low-income settings that address the ‘double burden’ of women’s work?
Watch this space
All papers, data, opinion pieces and opportunities to engage relating to this project will be available on this webpage. The project will be launched by the means of an inception workshop held at the University of Gӧttingen on 22 February 2019, which will set out the research agenda and modalities of the project going forward.
UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
The project centrally addresses SDG5 (Gender Equality) and SDG8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).
Follow the conversation at #womenswork
Team
Internal focal points: Kunal Sen and Maria Lo Bue
External focal points: Ashwini Deshpande and Janneke Pieters
Project support: Kati Hirvonen
Communications: Timothy Shipp
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Journal Article
Local crime and early marriageThis study 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. Using a nationally-representative longitudinal dataset and...
Journal Article
The rise in women's labour force participation in MexicoThis study estimates the relative importance of alternative supply and demand mechanisms in explaining the rise of female labor-force participation (FLFP) over the last 55 years in Mexico. The growth of FLFP in Mexico between 1960 and 2015 followed...
Policy Brief
How to create decent work for womenDespite advancements for gender equality in some spheres, labour market outcomes for women continue to be worse than for men. Gender gaps in pay, labour force participation rates, and measures of job quality are stubbornly persistent and continue to...
Journal Article
Female education and marriage in PakistanPart of Journal Special Issue Women’s Work
Journal Article
Heterogeneous impact of internet availability on female labor market outcomes in an emerging economyPart of Journal Special Issue Women’s Work
Journal Special Issue
Women’s WorkIn recent decades, trends in female labour force participation rates have been very heterogeneous across developing countries, despite widespread economic growth, fertility decline, and narrowing gender gaps in education.However, globally, gender...
Working Paper
Empowering youth: the impact of comprehensive sex education on teenage pregnancy in EcuadorThis paper analyses the impact of comprehensive sex education on teenage pregnancy rates in Ecuador, specifically examining its implementation in schools.The inclusion of sex education as a mandatory cross-cutting theme in the updated and...
Working Paper
Gendered implications of the waves of COVID-19 and economic upgrading trajectories in digital value chainsWomen play a critical yet under-researched role in global digital agri-food value chains, especially in smallholder production, which affects how they are able to economically upgrade (improve crop yields and product quality, and increase product...
Journal Article
A macro analysis of gender segregation and job quality in Latin AmericaPart of Journal Special Issue Women’s Work
Journal Article
Gender and vulnerable employment in the developing worldThis study investigates gender inequality in vulnerable employment: forms of employment typically featuring high precariousness, inadequate earnings, and lack of decent working conditions. Using a large collection of harmonized household surveys from...
Working Paper
Parental risk preferences, maternal bargaining power, and the educational progressions of childrenWe analyse the effect of parental risk preferences and a novel measure of maternal bargaining power over educational expenses—elicited via lab-in-the-field experiments in rural Côte d’Ivoire—on the educational progression of boys and girls. Data from...
Journal Article
Maternity benefits mandate and women’s choice of work in VietnamPart of Journal Special Issue Women’s Work
Working Paper
The COVID-19 pandemic and poor women’s agencyStudies on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have demonstrated that poor women have been the worst sufferers in terms of pay cuts and job losses. Women are the hardest hit also at the household level. They have to bear the brunt of constrained...
Research Brief
Are women’s labour force participation rates improving in sub-Saharan Africa?Several sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have achieved substantial economic growth in the past 30 years. Likewise, access to education has considerably expanded, as reflected in rising enrolment rates for both men and women. Female labour force...
Journal Article
Female labor force participation in sub-Saharan AfricaFemale labor force participation rates have been stagnating despite rising female education in sub-Saharan Africa since the turn of the millennium. Using representative and repeated census data from a heterogeneous sample of 13 sub-Saharan African...
Journal Article
Does connectivity reduce gender gaps in off-farm employment?Gender gaps in labor force participation in developing countries persist despite income growth or structural change. We assess this persistence across economic geographies within countries, focusing on youth employment in off-farm wage jobs. We...
Working Paper
Dynamic impacts of lockdown on domestic violenceWe leverage staggered implementation of lockdown across Chile’s 346 municipalities, identifying dynamic impacts on domestic violence. Using administrative data, we find lockdown imposition increases indicators of distress related to domestic violence...
Working Paper
Maternal employment and children’s outcomesIs maternal employment beneficial or harmful for child development? Maternal employment generates income, which is needed to provide core inputs for children’s health and education. However, maternal employment comes at the cost of time spent with...
Working Paper
The gender productivity gapWe 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...
Working Paper
The gender employment gap: the effects of extended maternity leave policy in Viet NamThis study seeks to determine the effect on the gender employment gap and women’s employment of the extension of maternity leave from four months to six months in Viet Nam’s 2012 Labor Code.To identify this effect, labour market outcomes of groups of...
Working Paper
Gender and vulnerable employment in the developing worldThis paper investigates gender inequality in vulnerable employment: forms of employment typically featuring high precariousness, inadequate earnings, and lack of decent working conditions. Using a large collection of harmonized household surveys from...
Working Paper
Childbirth and women’s labour market transitions in India (revised)The impact of childbirth on women’s employment has been discussed extensively in the context of developed countries. Constraints on mothers’ labour market participation and consequent fall in earnings are characterized as the ‘motherhood penalty’...
Journal Article
Do gender wage differences within households influence women's empowerment and welfare?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...
Working Paper
Maternity benefits mandate and women’s choice of work in Viet NamDespite a sizeable literature on the labour market effects of maternity leave regulations on women in developed countries, how these policies affect women’s work in developing countries with a large informal sector remains poorly understood. This...
Working Paper
Norms that matterBased on primary data from India, this paper analyses the reasons underlying women’s low labour force participation. In developing countries, women engaged in unpaid economic work in family enterprises are often not counted as workers. Women are...
Working Paper
Female education and marriage in PakistanThis project aims to explore the effect of wealth shocks on education and marriage for young women in Pakistan. Financial shocks are used to estimate the probability of dropping out of education and into marriage.Using the Pakistan Rural Household...
Policy Brief
The economic gains of reducing the employment gender gap in MoroccoMiddle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, including Morocco, currently record the lowest rates of female labour force participation (FLFP) in the world. These rates — between 20-30% in 2019 — appear substantially low in comparison to Western...
Working Paper
What explains the gender gap in top incomes in developing countries?Based on tax records data from Ecuador, we analyse gender differences in top income groups from 2008 to 2017. Ecuador represents an interesting case as it shares many trends with other countries in the region in terms of women’s status in the labour...
Working Paper
Young women’s transitions from education to the labour market in EthiopiaWe 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...
Working Paper
Female managers and firm performanceThis paper investigates whether firm performance differs significantly when comparing firms with female and male top managers in the Caribbean region. We use survey data with detailed information on gender for firms in 13 Caribbean countries. Our...
Working Paper
A macro–micro analysis of gender segregation and job quality in Latin AmericaLatin America has seen vast improvements in gender educational and health equality. Favourable supply-side conditions, however, have not translated into greater gender economic equality, a process that also depends on structural economic change and...
Working Paper
The economic gains of closing the employment gender gapThe present paper sheds new light on the growth implications of gender inequalities in the Moroccan labour market. We confront two different approaches. The first one is based on firm data to estimate gender complementarity in production and uses...
Working Paper
Material barriers, cultural boundariesData on female labour force participation in Bangladesh suggest that, despite the increase in female-intensive employment opportunities through microfinance, export garment manufacturing, and community-based services, the majority of working women...
Working Paper
Female labour force participation in sub-Saharan AfricaFemale 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...
Working Paper
Trade liberalization, employment, and gender in EthiopiaThis 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...
Working Paper
Heterogeneous impact of internet availability on female labour market outcomes in an emerging economyGreater female labour market participation has important positive implications not only for women’s empowerment and the well-being of their families but also for the economy they live in. In this paper, we examine the various effects of internet...
Working Paper
Ban on female migrant workersThis study examines the skills-differentiated impact of a restrictive female labour migration policy in Sri Lanka using monthly departure data from 2012 to 2018 in a difference-in-difference model. The policy has resulted in decreasing departures...
Working Paper
Do gender wage differences within households influence women’s empowerment and welfare?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...
Working Paper
Local crime and early marriageThis 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...
Working Paper
Labour turnover and workers' well-being in the Ethiopian manufacturing industryManufacturing industry expansion is a central part of Ethiopia’s growth and transformation agenda due to its potential for accelerated economic development and large-scale job creation, in particular for women. However, the industry is experiencing...
Working Paper
Motherhood and flexible jobsWe study the causal effect of motherhood on labour market outcomes in Latin America by adopting an event study approach around the birth of the first child based on panel data from national household surveys for Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay.Our...
Working Paper
Access to microfinance and female labour force participationAlthough microfinance started as a movement to improve women’s economic well-being through increased female entrepreneurship in particular, its impact on women’s attitudes toward and participation in the labour market is not fully understood. We fill...
Working Paper
Socioeconomic and cultural drivers of women’s formal work in rural GhanaWe study socioeconomic indicators of female labour force participation in off-farm formal employment in a subsistence agriculture setting in northern Ghana, where a new commercial farm provides a positive demand shock for low-skilled labour. We use a...
Working Paper
The rise in women’s labour force participation in MexicoWe estimate the relative importance of alternative labour supply and demand mechanisms in explaining the rise of female labour force participation over the last 55 years in Mexico. The growth of female labour force participation in Mexico between...
Working Paper
Gender wage gaps in GhanaThe 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...
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Theme: 2019-23, Transforming societies