Gender norms and women's work: Reflecting on current evidence and policy opportunities

As COVID-19 triggers unprecedented economic disruptions, women are bearing the brunt of the hardship.

Women face even greater challenges to labor force participation than usual due to the pandemic. Thanks to generous support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J-PAL’s new Gender and Economic Agency Initiative (GEA) launches to support innovative research on strategies to promote women’s work and enhance women’s economic agency.

Women’s jobs are at risk: 527 million employed women globally work in sectors hit hardest by the pandemic like food service, retail, and entertainment. Informal workers—58 percent of employed women—are particularly vulnerable, as they often faced low wages, poor conditions, and limited protections before the pandemic.

With closure of schools and daycares, women are also burdened with additional unpaid care and domestic responsibilities. This hinders their ability to engage in the labor force. Already before the pandemic, women performed three times more unpaid work than men.

GEA’s work is even more critical as the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the already-marginalized position that women often face in the labor force. Women around the world participate in the labor force at much lower rates than men: 47 percent of women are in the labor force compared to 74 percent of men. If a woman enters the labor force, she earns on average 77 cents to every dollar a man earns. She’s also more likely to be unemployed or work in the informal sector.

Responses to this crisis must consider its disproportionate impact on women and the unique barriers they face. Rigorous evidence can help policymakers ensure that pandemic response and recovery support women’s work and economic agency.

Launching the Gender and Economic Agency Initiative

Increasing women’s labor force participation is key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG5 and 8), however, policymakers and the private sector lack evidence on what works, where, and why. Consequently, women continue to suffer inequalities in the labor market that hinder their economic agency. GEA helps to address this gap through rigorous research.

Led by Lori Beaman (Northwestern) and Seema Jayachandran (Northwestern; Chair, J-PAL Gender Sector), GEA is funding randomized evaluations on women’s work and economic agency in East Africa and South Asia over the next three years. This policy-relevant research can help inform policies and programs on women’s labor force participation in GEA’s five priority countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, India, Uganda, and Tanzania.

Drawing upon our literature review on women’s agency, we’ve identified three themes for potential research:

1. Creating work opportunities that are attractive to and supportive of women;
2. Preparing women with the necessary skills to secure work and advance in their careers, including in self-employment; and
3. Addressing restrictive gender norms and attitudes related to women’s work.

To learn more about potential topics of interest to GEA, please refer to our overview paper.

Research is only one part of GEA’s approach to supporting evidence-informed policies in East Africa and South Asia. We are also synthesizing evidence to share with policymakers and inform their strategies on women’s work and economic agency, building on the findings of a recent literature review on ways to increase women’s agency. Recognizing a growing need, we’re also working to identify and test better measurements of women’s agency that can be used in future research.

Each of GEA’s five priority countries has unique policy opportunities and challenges related to women’s work. For instance, a higher percentage of women work in the East African countries (64-79 percent) than in India (23 percent), suggesting women face different constraints to employment. For more information on the policy landscape in each country, please refer to the appendix of the overview paper.

In addition to the five priority countries, there is limited additional funding available for research in other countries in East Africa and South Asia.

Evaluating potential responses to the COVID-19 crisis

To better understand the impact of the pandemic on women’s economic agency and identify effective responses, GEA launched a special round of funding on COVID-19.

Women and men may experience job loss and recovery differently due to the types of occupations in which they work. Jobs primarily held by women, like healthcare or teaching, may also create additional health risks. Finally, women’s care responsibilities may hinder their ability to search for a job and work. Building upon ongoing studies, researchers are testing whether a job search assistance platform in Pakistan is especially valuable in helping women quickly return to the job search and employment.

Another study is looking at encouraging paid sick leave among female garment workers in Bangladesh. During a pandemic, paid sick leave is more important than ever to help prevent the spread of the virus. It may be especially vital to retain women in the labor force as they are generally responsible for taking care of sick family members. Yet, employees often fear backlash for taking leave. Researchers are partnering with a manufacturing firm to send text messages to workers stating its commitment to employees’ health and the use of sick leave when needed. The evaluation will examine the impacts of the messages on workers’ health and job satisfaction.

What’s next?

Through strong partnerships with researchers and policymakers, GEA aims to build inclusive work opportunities for women in East Africa and South Asia. Stay tuned over the next few months as we share publications and host events on our future work!

If you’re interested in partnering with us to shape policies on women’s work, please contact Mikaela Rabb.

As the world enters its third year with Covid-19, gender inequalities that existed before the pandemic continue to impact women around the world. Globally, the pandemic led to a 4.2 percent drop in women’s employment, which represents over 54 million jobs lost. This has only exacerbated the gender gap in the labor force, especially for women working in the informal economy or in female-dominated sectors. Understanding the forces that have driven this and what can be done is critical to mitigating Covid-19-related consequences for women’s work.

Since its creation in 2020, the Gender and Economic Agency (GEA) Initiative has been seeking to address gender inequalities related to women's labor force participation through research and evidence sharing in East Africa and South Asia. With generous support from the Target Foundation, in GEA's third and most recent funding competition we were able to fund additional projects in South Asia and expand the initiative's geographic reach into Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). By expanding GEA’s geographic scope, J-PAL is increasing the generation of evidence on gender equity enhancing programs throughout the world.

Enhancing women’s economic agency

In Latin America, a region with one of the widest employment gaps in the world, women’s labor force participation was historically low prior to the pandemic. Although the gap had been slowly narrowing in recent decades, pandemic conditions set back gender equality at work and created new challenges to women’s advancement. Many barriers prevent women from entering the workforce in this region including gender norms, domestic duties, and low education levels.  

South Asia, one of the fastest growing regions in the world, faces similar issues. As of 2020, only 24 percent of women were employed or actively seeking employment, compared to 71 percent of men. According to the 2022 edition of the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, it will take 197 years to close the global gender gap. 

Increasing our understanding through rigorous evidence of programs and policies to address this challenge in different contexts is vital to increasing women’s economic agency.  The lack of evidence on the effectiveness of programs hinders policymakers’ ability to bring about solutions. GEA seeks to help fill this gap by funding innovative research on strategies to promote women’s work and enhance women’s economic agency. 

Supporting research in South Asia and expanding into Latin America and the Caribbean

Given that Mexico, Colombia, and Central America were new regions for GEA, the initiative and J-PAL LAC teams worked together to map local programs and policymakers, identify researchers interested in the region, and most importantly, share relevant evidence for addressing gender economic agency challenges. The GEA and J-PAL LAC teams organized multiple outreach and evidence-sharing activities, including a virtual launch of the Spanish-language translation of A Practical Guide for Measuring Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment, which provides insights from the experiences of J-PAL affiliated researchers and offers practical tips for how to measure women's and girls’ empowerment. Through these efforts, the GEA team spread the word about the availability of GEA’s research funds and helped bring together researchers and policymakers interested in contributing to evidence-informed policymaking. 

At the same time, GEA has continued to fund studies in other regions of the world. During the initiative’s third funding competition, GEA awarded funds to five studies based in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Colombia, and Mexico. Below, we highlight the studies in South Asia and Latin America that were awarded funding.

In India, unequal gender norms within male-dominated agencies like law enforcement can affect women’s employment opportunities. Researchers leading the randomized evaluation, Does Women's Leadership Matter in Law Enforcement: Evidence From Haryana (India), seek to understand how placing women in supervisor positions at police stations impacts outcomes for junior female police officers. Women’s economic empowerment can have widespread economic impacts by boosting growth and diversification. Additionally, organizations with more women in leadership tend to have higher productivity. 

Youth unemployment is also a major concern in low- and middle-income countries around the world, especially for girls’ economic participation, which can be hindered by social and cultural barriers. In a new GEA-funded evaluation in Bangladesh, researchers leading the Youth Employment and Gender: Evaluating the Skills to Succeed Program in Bangladesh evaluation are investigating the gendered effects of job skills training on at-risk youth. Programs, like the one in this study, that seek to increase the skills level of women and girls are vital for empowering women and creating more inclusive economic growth. 

Having a better grasp of what prevents women from participating in the labor market is vital for increasing women’s employment. In the evaluation, Gender Norms, Couples' Labor Supply Decisions, and Flexibility in Working Conditions in Colombia, researchers are seeking to understand how personal factors, such as family and social norms, and external factors, such as the flexibility of work contracts, differently impact women’s likelihood of seeking employment.

Moreover, lack of opportunities for women’s advancement can dampen women’s career aspirations and negatively affect the well-being and productivity of the workforce overall. In Colombia, half of working women are employed in the service industry, but the majority occupy low-wage frontline positions rather than managerial positions. Researchers leading the randomized evaluation, Overcoming the Gender Bias in Training: An Empirical Approach in the Latin American Quick-Service Restaurant Industry (Colombia), are seeking to understand how managerial training programs that don’t emphasize male-centric approaches impact firm-level outcomes, such as sales and productivity. A better understanding of how to remove barriers that prevent women from being promoted in the workplace could have large effects on women’s economic empowerment and the economy as a whole. 

Lastly, in a similar setting, previous research found that women who participated in skills training with an imagery-based curriculum had better psychological and economic outcomes compared to those who participated in a more traditional program. The researchers leading the evaluation, Learning to See a World of Opportunities: Unpacking Gender Effect (Colombia), are aiming to better understand why women learn better from the imagery-based curriculum. Gaining a deeper insight could inform the design and help increase the effectiveness of future business skill training programs aimed at women. 

Sustained research in these regions will provide a deeper understanding of the unique challenges that women face in these different contexts. The many proposals GEA received from various countries in these regions demonstrates the unmet demand for research in these areas. GEA will continue to support evidence generation on women’s economic agency in these regions, while also trying to increase its geographic scope. 

Future regional focus: Southeast Asia

Another area of focus for generating policy-relevant evidence on women’s economic empowerment is Southeast Asia. Like in Latin America, women in Southeast Asia tend to have higher labor force participation rates. According to the World Bank, in 2021 59 percent of women in the region were employed or seeking employment compared to 75 percent of men. Although more women enter the labor market than in other regions globally, gender imbalances that affect their economic opportunities still exist. Additionally, women in Southeast Asia are more likely to do unpaid care work or hold jobs that make them more economically vulnerable. For example, women in Cambodia and Laos do four times more unpaid work in the household than men. Therefore, it is imperative that policymakers and researchers gain a better understanding of ways to better economically empower women in this region. 

As part of these efforts, GEA is accepting off-cycle funding requests from projects based in SEA. The GEA team plans to conduct targeted outreach to researchers from SEA, with the aim to award these funds by Fall 2022. By targeting funding to evaluations based in Southeast Asia, GEA is continuing to advance its goal of better understanding gender inequalities faced by women in the region and supporting the development of more effective policies and programs.

Policymakers and the private sector increasingly recognize the importance of improving women’s labor market and economic outcomes, and are eager to implement policies that support women’s economic agency. However, a lack of evidence on effective interventions, as well as where and why they work, makes it challenging to implement policies that meaningfully improve the lives of women.

In response, J-PAL’s Gender and Economic Agency Initiative (GEA), launched in 2020, is pushing forward innovative research on strategies to promote women’s work and enhance women’s economic agency.

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to negatively impact women’s labor force participation and economic agency around the world. Recent surveys have found that, across the globe, women-owned micro- and small businesses have closed at higher rates than those owned by men. School closures and increased care duties caused by the pandemic have been challenging for women entrepreneurs and workers, as women disproportionately share the burden of these responsibilities. Meanwhile, surveys from South Asia and Latin America show that the sectors that most commonly employ women have experienced the largest reductions in employment.

Testing new interventions to support working women and address restrictive gender norms

Covid-19-induced setbacks to women’s economic agency has amplified gender inequities that pre-date the pandemic. It has also increased the urgency to better understand these inequities and to identify effective strategies to address them and to support working women.

While we have some insights from researchers and policymakers on how to support women workers during the pandemic, many open questions remain. As part of our efforts to fill that evidence gap, we are pleased to share an update on GEA’s growing portfolio of cutting-edge research projects. 

With the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Target Foundation, GEA has completed its second full funding round, supporting nineteen research teams to produce evidence that addresses critical knowledge gaps on what works to support women’s economic agency.

The projects are located throughout South Asia and East Africa and fall under three priority research topics: improving workplace arrangements and labor policies to promote formal and informal employment for women; enhancing women’s labor potential and work readiness; and addressing restrictive gender norms and attitudes related to women’s work. The projects funded in the Summer 2021 round build upon the set of exciting projects funded by GEA earlier this year. Click on the sub-categories below to explore the projects within each area.

Involving local researchers

We believe that research is strengthened when it is informed by deep contextual knowledge and diverse perspectives, which is why J-PAL is committed to increasing diversity in our research network and strengthening inclusion in our research and partnerships. GEA has made concerted efforts to strengthen the body of research through partnership with the Indian Scholars Program (ISP), expanding funding opportunities to Indian scholars for research in India, and through supporting research collaborations between local researchers and policymakers.

ISP was launched in 2021 by J-PAL South Asia. Similar to J-PAL’s African Scholars Program, ISP provides research funding, training, and networking opportunities for researchers and academics in India, with the goal of supporting them to drive India's development policy research agenda.

GEA earmarked grant money in the Summer 2021 funding cycle for high-quality research proposals from the ISP, and we were able to fund two exciting projects by Indian Scholars, which examine the impacts of gender norms and explore how child care impacts women’s labor force participation. ISP scholars with funded projects will receive support from the J-PAL South Asia office for the duration of their studies through mentorship, webinars, and training opportunities. 

What’s next for GEA

GEA-funded research will help policymakers identify evidence-informed strategies to increase women’s economic empowerment. We look forward to sharing and synthesizing research findings from our portfolio, as well as expanding the portfolio in upcoming funding cycles. GEA is hosting our next request for proposals this winter, with an eye towards funding projects in two of our new priority areas, Southeast Asia and Central America. More details on the funding opportunities, deadlines, and eligibility can be found on our website.

If you are interested in partnering with us to shape research and policies on women’s work, please contact [email protected].