On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women's Financial Control Impacts Labor Supply and Gender Norms
American Economic Review
vol. 111,
no. 7, July 2021
(pp. 2342-75)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
Can increasing control over earnings incentivize a woman to work, and thereby influence norms around gender roles? We randomly varied whether rural Indian women received bank accounts, training in account use, and direct deposit of public sector wages into their own (versus husbands') accounts. Relative to the accounts only group, women who also received direct deposit and training worked more in public and private sector jobs. The private sector result suggests gender norms initially constrained female employment. Three years later, direct deposit and training broadly liberalized women's own work-related norms, and shifted perceptions of community norms.Citation
Field, Erica, Rohini Pande, Natalia Rigol, Simone Schaner, and Charity Troyer Moore. 2021. "On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women's Financial Control Impacts Labor Supply and Gender Norms." American Economic Review, 111 (7): 2342-75. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20200705Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- G51 Household Finance: Household Saving, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
- G53 Household Finance: Financial Literacy
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
- O12 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
- O16 Economic Development: Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
- Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification