Plenary session
Dismantling barriers to women's employment in developing countries

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This talk will discuss barriers to women’s participation in the labor force in low-income countries.

First, services that free up women’s time to work outside the home, including child care services, are often less available in low-income countries. Second, gender-biased cultural norms further inhibit women from working outside the home in some countries.

The talk will also discuss why dismantling these barriers is important and some policy approaches to doing so.

Collaborators

Seema Jayachandran | Keynote

Seema Jayachandran is a Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on economic issues in developing countries, including environmental conservation, gender equality, labor markets, health and education, and political economy. She is a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award, and the Ecological Society of America's Sustainability Science Award.

She currently serves as co-editor for the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and associate editor for the Quarterly Journal of Economics. In addition, she is a board member and chair of the gender sector for the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and is co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Development Economics program. She is also a contributing columnist for the New York Times. Prior to joining Northwestern, she was a faculty member at Stanford University.