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Gender in Developing Countries

Paper Session

Friday, Jan. 3, 2025 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)

Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Golden Gate 4
Hosted By: American Economic Association & Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession
  • Chair: Rema Hanna, Harvard University

Bringing Work Home: Flexible Arrangements as Gateway Jobs for Women in West Bengal

Anahita Karandikar
,
Vancouver School of Economics
Lisa Ho
,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Suhani Jalota
,
Stanford University

Abstract

Several hundred million women who want a job are out of the labor force, often because available opportunities are incompatible with traditional norms of household roles. In a field experiment with 1,670 households in West Bengal, we offer short-term data entry jobs with flexible work arrangements that meet households where they are in terms of expectations on women’s domestic responsibilities. We find three sets of results. First, job flexibility more than triples take up, from 15% for an office job to 48% for a job that women can do from home while multitasking with childcare. Second, working from home reduces worker productivity due to interruptions that interfere with flow effects. Third, flexible jobs act as a gateway to outside-the-home jobs for women initially out of the labor force: women who first had an opportunity to work from home are more likely to accept outside-the-home work several months later. This gateway effect may be due to changes in attitudes about appropriate behavior for men and women. Job flexibility is more important to the labor supply of women from more traditional households, and work experience in turn shifts the gender attitudes of these women and their children to become less traditional. Thus, flexible work arrangements can both attract women to the labor force and provide a gateway to outside-the-home jobs.

Breaking Job Search Barriers for Women: Experimental Evidence from Vocational Training Students in India

Catalina Herrera-Almanza
,
University of Illinois
S. Anukriti
,
World Bank
Sophie Ochmann
,
World Bank

Abstract

Digital platforms can potentially improve youth employment by overcoming informational barriers to job search at a relatively low cost. We conducted a clustered RCT with 4,400 female vocational trainees in India—a setting with extremely low female labor force participation—to evaluate whether access to a phone-based job platform can improve their labor market engagement. We collaborated with the app’s developers to customize its content for female jobseekers from smaller towns. Along with job postings, the app provided information about employers (e.g., salary structures, female friendliness, employee reviews) relevant to vocational trainees. Treated women were provided installation and usage support. After six months, our intervention made treated women more realistic about their job prospects, with treated women expecting a longer job search duration. Although the employment rate remained the same, conditional on employment, treated women had better quality jobs in various dimensions.

Minimum Wage, Informality, and Gender Gaps: Evidence from Morocco

Louise Paul-Delvaux
,
Harvard University

Abstract

This paper examines how minimum wage policies affect gender gaps in employment and wages in a setting characterized by a large informal sector and wide initial gender disparities. Focusing on the Moroccan manufacturing sector, I leverage matched formal employer-employee data to analyze the impacts of a 24% real increase in the national minimum wage between 2009 and 2015. During that period, the raw gender pay gap in the formal sector narrows from 28% to 22%. Using difference-in-differences designs, I find that this decline is driven by direct wage increases for workers previously below the new minimum wage and to spillover effects for workers higher up in the wage distribution. Both direct and spillover effects are larger for women. Female workers who remain in formal employment are also more likely to transition to larger, higher-paying firms. However, I also document a displacement effect: women directly affected by the minimum wage increases are 22% more likely to exit formal employment, while men and women in higher wage brackets remain unaffected. Most displaced women transition to the informal sector, where wages are substantially lower. Firm closures, which disproportionately affect firms employing more women, account for 40% of this displacement effect. Examining heterogeneity across local labor markets, I further show that the displacement effect is larger when women have a reduced set of formal sector outside options. Despite this increased job vulnerability for low-wage women, bounding exercises suggest that, on net, the minimum wage increases still contribute to a reduction in the gender pay gap.

Discussant(s)
Fatima Aqeel
,
City of Boston
Martina Uccioli
,
University of Nottingham
Francesca Truffa
,
University of Michigan
JEL Classifications
  • J1 - Demographic Economics
  • J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor