While research suggests that the transition of women’s work from home to market is a key driver of firm productivity and growth, private sector employment of women remains incredibly low in many developing countries. Therefore, understanding the barriers to employing a mixed-gender workforce is critical for creating a dynamic and efficient private sector. This research not only aims to use a series of four experiments to test labour demand and labour supply-side explanations as to why firms gender-segregate, but also tests several firm-level policy interventions that could ease these frictions. Using the experimental results, the study will calibrate a structural model that estimates the impact of these preferences on firm productivity and growth.
The proposed study will proceed in five steps: there will be four field experiments gathering data to then build structural model. The first experiment will study the impact of gender composition on labour supply by testing whether married women prefer working in all-women workplaces. The pilot study confirmed this hypothesis and found that safety concerns and issues relating to impropriety or jealousy are most often cited as reasons for these preferences, leading to experiments two and three. The second experiment studies safety concerns by testing whether a low-cost investment in workplace safety measures can increase the take-up of jobs, and the third experiment studies “purity” norms by testing whether norms around impropriety or husband jealousy contribute to differences in take-up between women-only and mixed-gender jobs. The final field experiment aims to measure the impact of co-worker gender composition on female worker productivity. Each experimental arm for the first three experiments will contain 400 women, and the fourth experiment will employ 100 women. Together, these experiments will provide important policy relevant results, as well as necessary cross-sectional data to estimate a structural model estimating the impact of gender employment preferences on firm productivity and growth.
The project's findings have policy implications for India but also for other Asian and African LMICs; these are countries where women’s employment remains lower than men’s. The results will inform policies to minimize the negative impacts of market frictions in women labour supply due to gender norms relating to impropriety or spousal jealousy. The research will also provide insights to inform policies against instances of sexual harassment, physical violence and assault in the workplace which all serve as substantial deterrents for men in allowing women to pursue work outside of the home. Moreover, countries implementing policies addressing these issues may benefit from increased firm productivity and growth by motivating the transition of women’s work from home to market.
