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Publications (53)
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This 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 strengthened educational curriculum of 2010 provides a...
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– Insights from Kenyan agricultural platforms
Women 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 diversification). Research suggests that women’s...
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– Lab-in-the-field evidence from rural Côte d’Ivoire
We 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 135 couples and their children show that the...
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– A case of domestic workers in Delhi
Studies 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 household budgets and have also encountered increasing...
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– Evidence from multiple policy shifts in Chile
We 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, while decreasing domestic violence reports to...
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– Evidence from Indonesia
Is 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 children, which is also a critical input into...
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– Evidence from the Indian informal sector
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 productivity gaps observed at the lower end of the...
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This 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 women and men are compared. We use the national...
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– Evidence from global microdata
This 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 developing countries, we measure long-term trends...
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Despite 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 study examines how extending the maternity leave...
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– Exploring the distribution of women’s work between income generation, expenditure-saving, and unpaid domestic responsibilities in India
Based 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 involved in expenditure-saving activities, i.e...
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– The role of financial shocks and marital customs
This 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 Panel survey for the years 2000–10, the effects of...
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– Evidence from Ecuador
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 market. While we observe a significant increase in...
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– A gendered life-course perspective
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 25. Multilevel survival analysis shows that girls...
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– Evidence from the Caribbean countries
This 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 methodology is based on Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition...
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Latin 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 global macroeconomic conditions. In this paper, we...
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– Evidence from Morocco
The 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 this information for simulations based on a simple...
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– A mixed-methods analysis of gender and labour market segmentation in Bangladesh
Data 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 are concentrated in home-based activities. There...
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– A cohort analysis
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 groups. Using representative and repeated census data...
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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 reforms on the changes and composition of employment...
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– Evidence from Indonesia
Greater 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 availability on women’s labour market outcomes in...
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– Skills-differentiated evidence from Sri Lanka
This 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 among lower-skilled groups—female domestic, unskilled...
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– Evidence from Ghana
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 structural parameters of the post-double selection LASSO...
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– Evidence from India
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 high-crime locality would marry their daughters off...
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Manufacturing 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 extremely high labour turnover rates, which is...
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– Evidence from Latin American countries
We 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 main contributions are: (i) providing new and...
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Although 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 this gap by combining data on branch locations of...
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We 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 set of quantitative and qualitative data...
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– Supply vs demand factors
We 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 1960 and 2015 followed an S-shape, with a...
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– A comparison across different selection models
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 individual. Since female labour market participation often...
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– Evidence from 12 low- and middle-income countries
Gender gaps in labour 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 combine household survey data from 12 low- and middle...
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Whether cash transfers have unintended behavioural effects on the recipient household’s labour supply is of considerable policy interest. We examine the ‘intent to treat effect’ of the Indira Gandhi National Old-Age Pension Scheme on prime-age women’s labour supply decisions in India, where female...
Displaying 32 of 53 results