Fact & Policy

The fast growth in RCTs, field and lab experiments open up several opportunities for assembling evidence on gender inequalities in labour markets based on quantitative individual data to complement existing evidence based on opinion surveys (e.g., World Values Survey) or macro aggregates (e.g., World Economic Forum indexes). Research under this theme includes: (i) Bayesian hierarchical analysis and other Meta analyses of experiments to assess gender differences in personality traits across cultures, (ii) long-run follow-up of “empowerment” interventions to leverage existing data and ask new questions, (iii) replications and assembly of survey data to study the same question across different contexts. Questions include but are not limited to: What do the data say about female labour force participation across and within developing countries? What is the level of unemployment and under employment? What is the share of casual jobs? How does labour supply vary with the level of income? What does history tell us about key factors that helped increase women’s participation in the labour market? What are the primary constraints that female entrepreneurs face, and are these different from the constraints faced by male entrepreneurs? To what extent do socio-emotional skills and preferences, like attitudes to risk, competition, negotiation, sensitiveness to social cues play a role?