Gendered Social Norms & Laws: Shaping Gender Equality

Authors: Alev Gurbuz Cuneo, Ana Maria Tribin

Abstract: Economic outcomes for women are shaped by a combination of social norms, laws, and policies that interact to influence behavior and access to economic opportunities in their economies. While laws are essential for gender equality, their effectiveness is often moderated by societal attitudes. The relationship between gendered social norms and laws in a society is deeply interconnected and often endogenous. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between gender norms and laws using available global data. For the legal aspect, we benefit from the Women, Business and the Law (WBL) panel dataset that measures the legal frameworks across 190 economies providing protections or benefits for women. For the gendered social norms, we use data from multiple sources, including the World Values Survey (WVS), Gallup World Poll, and Facebook’s Global Gender Gap Insights Survey, to assess societal attitudes toward gender roles and how these norms interact with legal frameworks. The analysis attempts to examine how gender norms and legal reforms interact, providing insights into how social norms may either reinforce or undermine the rights provided by legal protections to improve gender equality in economies. The findings suggest that legal reforms aimed at enhancing gender equality are significantly linked with the prevalence of public opinion about women’s roles in various spheres of life, including work, politics, and the home. The significant correlations are in the expected direction/sign, and the magnitude and strength vary among different areas of gender norms around (i) women’s working, (ii) household dynamics, (iii) women’s rights across different legal areas that impact women’s participation in labor force, as captured in the WBL. Results are robust to inclusion of different control variables in the regressions.

Do women govern differently? Evidence from Mexican local politics

Authors: Laura Alicia Aquino Arriaga, John Hassett

Abstract: Mexico approved a major constitutional reform in 2014 which resulted in a gender parity requirement at the municipal executive level. We exploit time and spatial variation to analyze the extent to which this reform impacted the number of female municipal presidents elected and other policy outcomes. Using a differences-in-differences methodology, we show that parity rules had immediate significant positive effects on the gender makeup of municipal executives; our further analyses demonstrate that the effects are lasting, but full parity is not reached due in part to party strategizing. We also explore whether this new legal environment affected various measures of municipal spending and tax collection. We find that the parity rules are associated with more fiscally conservative municipal budgeting. This is consistent with (a) the entry of fiscally conservative women after the introduction of the gender parity rules and/or (b) a "penalty" in funds disbursement for female executives. Next steps will analyze the impact of this reform on gender initiatives, and the gender composition of  the public-sector labor force.

Municipal-level Gender Norms: Measurement and Effects on Women in Politics

Authors: Carrer Luisa, Lorenzo De Masi

Abstract: We study the implications of traditional gender norms for legislators' engagement with women's issues. We leverage rich data from Facebook on the popularity of gender-related interests (processed using machine learning algorithms) to develop a granular Gender Norms Index (GNI) at the municipal level within Italy, a geographical resolution that would otherwise be unavailable. After validating our index, we leverage this local variation in norms to isolate their impact on legislators' policy activity in the Italian Parliament. We show that while female legislators generally sponsor more gender-related bills than their male counterparts, their engagement is substantially smaller if they were born in a gender-conservative town. This result persists even when comparing legislators within the same party, constituency or with similar characteristics. The absence of such a systematic impact on non-gender legislation further reinforces the causal interpretation of our estimates. Supplementary evidence on voting behavior suggests that traditional gender norms also negatively affect the passage of pro-equality legislation. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of social norms and sexist culture in lawmaking, thereby slowing down reform for the expansion of women's rights.

Political power and the influence of minorities: theory and evidence from Italy

Authors: Righetto Giovanni, Paolo Vanin

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze the relationship between minority and majority in politics, and how it can influence policy outcomes and potential conflict between parties. In particular, we focus on the consequences of a sudden increase in the political power of a minority (e.g. female politicians after a gender quota), and its potential effects on the relationship with the long-standing majority. We first present a theoretical model describing the possible consequences of such an increase in a minority’s political power and show how it can increase difficulties in reaching a compromise on policy outcomes between parties. In the case of a high increase in minority’s power, its demands in terms of policy outcomes increase and make the compromise costlier for the majority, which might
prefer to engage in conflict. Furthermore, we empirically test these implications by exploiting the introduction in 2012 of a gender quota in Italian local elections. By means of a Difference-in-Discontinuity strategy, we show how the generated increase in female politicians had heterogeneous effects on the level of funding for daycare, based on its differential effects on the share of post-quota women councillors. For high shares of female councillors, a decrease in expenditure for day care was observed with respect to control municipalities, while in municipalities with low shares the quota was followed by a relative increase in funding for day care.

Climate Change, Intimate Partner Violence, and the Moderating Effects of Climate Resilience Initiatives

Authors: Amanda Guimbeau, Xinde James Ji, Nidhiya Menon

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of climate change on women’s agency in Bangladesh. Utilizing a novel dataset linking meteorological data with information on women’s agency from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey, and controlling for a variety of weather indicators in flexible specifications, we find that dry shocks increase tolerance for intimate partner violence among poorest women in agriculture-dependent communities, thus amplifying existing socio-environmental vulnerabilities. Climate resilience projects funded by the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust (BCCT) moderate the negative impacts of dry shocks on intimate partner violence, indicating an important role for initiatives that appear to have positive externalities in terms of ameliorating the harmful consequences of climate change on women. Our findings offer insights into the complex environmental and social dynamics that shape gendered climate change effects, and highlight the role of policy interventions in fostering resilience and women’s wellbeing.

Victim-blaming Norms and VAW: Correcting Misperceptions or Morality Drive Policy and Behavior Change?

Authors: Konstantinos Matakos, Sevinc Bermek, Asli Unan

Abstract: Intimate partner violence (IPV) entails huge socioeconomic and psychological costs, yet policy and behavior that combat it respond sluggishly. Are prevailing victim-blaming social norms responsible? What can change them to enact policy, and behavior change? We address these with a survey experiment on a representative sample of Turkish population (N = 3,600). We incentivize both the elicitation of social norms and subjects’ behavior. Leveraging a within-subject design, we provide information correcting any (mis)perceptions about victim-blaming norms. We find that attitudes and policy/behavior are influenced by different channels, respectively. While correcting misperceptions about norms (through information) causes a positive change in attitudes, it does not cause policy or behavior change. The former simply reflects re-anchoring: initial perceptions about social norms were too “pessimistic”. In contrast, the process of eliciting higher-order beliefs about others’ views (norm) --absent any information provision-- forces subjects to engage in relative moral evaluations and causes a sizable {policy and behavior} response. The latter is driven by subjects who perceive themselves to be more virtuous (less victim-blaming) than average and donate to IPV prevention. Thus, moral comparisons triggered by introspection, raise the salience of norms generating `soft learning' that causes policy and behavior change. The policy implication is that, while changing societal attitudes is a long-run process, welfare-improving policy change is possible in the short-run even without changing people's values, through a stepping stone approach to social change.

The unintended impacts of legislating to handle workplace sexual harassment

Authors: Kanika Mahajan, Sonia Bhalotra, Medha Chatterjee, Daksh Walia, Fan Wang

Abstract: India is one of the few countries that has mandated firms to set up an internal complaints committee to encourage reporting and redressal of sexual harassment against women under the 2013 Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) Act. We examine the impacts of this legislation on the employment of women relative to men, leveraging a discontinuity in the scope of the mandate, which requires workplaces with ten or more workers to comply with its provisions. The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, using nationally representative individual-level survey data that cover employment in paid work across sectors, we estimate an approximate 12% decline in the probability that women relative to men are in wage work in regulated vs unregulated enterprises after the Act. Second, we use data on registered manufacturing enterprises and find that the share of women in regulated firms falls by close to 5% and that this is driven by regulated vs unregulated firms hiring men at a faster rate than they hire women relative to before the policy change. Overall, while the work environment may have improved for some women following POSH, our results show an increase in the chances that employed women are in smaller (unregulated) firms where both wages and amenities are lower. In the former data, the relative decline in female employment is significantly larger in occupations that had a lower share of women at baseline. Analogously, in the firm level data it is  significantly larger in firms that had a lower share of women at baseline. Thus, POSH acted to intensify workplace gender segregation. Our findings cohere with previous evidence that firms often respond to costly legislation by changing gender composition of employment.

Local Media Reports about Sexual Crimes and Judicial Outcomes in India

Authors: Mahima Vasishth

Abstract: Does media coverage of sexual crimes affect judicial decision-making? I answer this question using rich administrative data on the universe of cases filed in lower courts in India. I combine this court data with high-frequency daily district-level media coverage of sexual crime events that are unrelated to the case on trial. Using a generalized difference-in-difference model, I find that judges are more likely to convict individuals charged with sexual crimes that carry low punishments. I find suggestive evidence that a central mechanism behind this result is heightened judicial scrutiny of these cases in response to greater media coverage. I do not find an impact on the more serious sexual crimes that may involve forensic evidence. These findings highlight the role of media as an extra-legal factor impacting judicial decision-making processes.

Can Children’s Education Enhance Formal Female Labor Force Participation?

Authors: Gunnar Poppe Yanez, Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza

Abstract: Developing countries face challenges in enhancing women’s participation in the labor force and improving their job quality, partly due to the substantial presence of the informal sector. In this paper, we study the case of Bolivia, the country with the highest degree of informality in Latin America. We empirically assess if the increase in children’s education access offers an additional potential explanation for the decline of female workers in the informal sector, as children attending school would have required less parental supervision. Using a structural model where mothers and households decide to participate in formal markets at a cost that is inversely related to the probability of their children being enrolled in school, we find that the increase in children’s primary school enrollment in Bolivia can explain up to approximately 40% of the decline in female workers in informal markets below the age of 40. Our results add to the growing body of evidence on the benefits of children’s access to school on women’s labor market outcomes in developing countries.

School Schedules, Parental Labor Participation and Gender Specialization: Evidence From The Dismantling Of Full-Time Schools

Authors: Johabed G. Olvera, Alejandra Penilla, Guillermo M. Cejudo

Abstract: Female labor force participation in developing countries increases with access to affordable childcare. In Mexico, a country where women's labor participation is low even compared to other Latin American countries, a federal program was launched in 2007 to increase the number of hours children spend in school. In this paper, we study the effects of access to Full Time Schools (Escuelas de Tiempo Completo, as the program was called in Spanish), a federal program for pre-school, primary, and middle public schools in Mexico that extended the school day from four and a half to eight hours. The program was canceled by the federal government in 2021. We use its cancellation as an exogenous shock that sent children from over 25 thousand schools back to reduced school times to explore its effects on women's participation in the labor market. We explore the differentiated effects of dismantling the program on alternative types of family structures. We pay special attention to the effects on households where the woman is both the main carer and the sole provider. We can expect that family dynamics will be different since sharing care responsibilities is not an option and the mother cannot stop working and forgo income. We found that the termination of the program had a negative impact on female parents: male parents increase the time they work in a week by 0.66 hours, but mothers from the same cohort reduced their working time per week by 2.05 hours, approximately. In terms of income, we found that for mothers faced a greater negative impact of the termination of the program since they lost, on average, $658 Mexican Pesos, in comparison with male parents that increased their income by $199.46 Mexican Pesos after the termination of the program.

Child Penalties and Fertility across Sectors

Authors: Sena Coskun, Husnu Dalgic, Yasemin Ozdemir

Abstract: Women who work in female-dominated sectors tend to have higher fertility rates. We find that women have significantly higher sector-switching probabilities prior to giving birth, especially towards female-dominated sectors which provide flexibility and lower 'per child' penalties, thus enabling women to increase their fertility. We observe an overall child penalty across sectors that are positively correlated with the female share. However, this correlation arises due to higher fertility among women in those sectors. Our findings shed light on the endogeneity of fertility and child penalties, which should be taken into account when comparing groups of people/countries or analyzing the evolution of child penalties over time. In a world of low and declining fertility, attempts to address gender inequality, mostly driven by child penalties, might be confounded by fertility choices.

Human Capital Accumulation, Equilibrium Wage-Setting and the Life-Cycle Gender Pay Gap

Authors: Noriko Amano-Patino, Pengpeng Xiao, Tatiana Baron

Abstract: We study how turnover and human capital dynamics shape the life-cycle gender pay gap when employers are forward-looking and able to set gender-specific wage rates. In our equilibrium wage-posting model with learning-by-doing and fertility events, the life-cycle gap can be attributed to worker productivity, job search, employers’ endogenous wage- setting, and job productivity. Estimating the model on NLSY79 data, we find that although the high school and college gender gaps are driven by different forces, employers’ wage- setting accounts for one-third of the gap in both groups. Neglecting interactions between turnover and human capital dynamics biases down the estimated role of turnover substantially.

Good from Far, Far from Good - The Impacts of the 2016 Female Labor Reform in Iran

Authors: Ebad Ebadi, Maggie Chen

Abstract: We investigate the impacts of the 2016 female labor reform in Iran–a country with one of the world’s poorest gender equity records–mandating a reduction in working hours without pay cuts for certain female workers to “ensure the social security of vulnerable women.” Exploring quarterly household income and expenditure survey data, our analysis reveals that the reform reduced both
targeted and non-targeted women’s employment and labor participation rates. Targeted households also experienced a drop in expenditure, especially on housing and education. These findings highlight that gender-targeted policies failing to incentivize employers and address different margins of discrimination may cause greater distortions.

The Effects of Pregnancy-Discrimination Laws: The Case of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978

Authors: Giacomo Marcolin, Andrea Di Giovan Paolo

Abstract: Pregnancy discrimination is a common form of discrimination faced by women in the labor force. Nonetheless, before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) of 1978, it was not forbidden by existing federal anti-discrimination laws: firms who provided job-protected sick-leave to male workers, often fired their female counterparts upon pregnancy. However, the effects of the employment protection component of the PDA have not yet been studied. In this paper, we first calibrate a matching model to find that (i) the effect of the legislation on employment is unambiguously negative unless it significantly raises the firing costs for discriminating employers, (ii) conditional on being strongly implemented, the law could increase women's employment, but only if the degree of discrimination is not too high. We then examine the actual effects of the PDA empirically exploiting quasi-experimental variation, granted by US states' staggered enactment of similar policies. Difference-in-differences types of analyses, based on individual-level survey data, show that the PDA had negative effects on employment of fertile-age women. Evidence of null effects on proxies of job dismissals suggests that the PDA was not effective in sufficiently raising costs of firing for discrimination. We finally document a muted response of women's wages, likely due to prior equal pay legislation. This may have exacerbated the negative effect on employment, limiting one margin of adjustment.

Lawful Progress: Unveiling the Laws That Reshape Women’s Work Decisions

Authors: Nishtha Sharma, Anna Fruttero, Diego B. P. Gomes

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of women’s legal rights on labor force participation decisions made by women and men through a granular analysis of 35 gendered laws. Building on previous literature, it departs from the analysis using aggregate indices due to concerns about (i) the usability of an index for policymaking purposes, (ii) the economic interpretation of an index’s average marginal effects, (iii) and the implicit assumption of homogeneous effects underlying regressions with an index. The findings identify nine key laws that can foster female labor force participation. Notably, laws related to household dynamics and women’s agency within the family, such as divorce and property rights laws, and laws regarding the ability of women to travel outside the home, are especially important in influencing their decision to work. The paper also shows that improving women’s legal rights does not improve their labor force participation through a substitution effect as it has no systematic negative effect on men’s labor force participation.

Fertility Policy and Gender Discrimination in the Workplace: Evidence from the Two-Child Policy Reform in China

Authors: Yijun Yu, Hisaki Kono

Abstract: The nationwide Two-Child Policy in 2013 represents a significant relaxation of the One-Child Policy, allowing a proportion of individuals to give birth to a second child. This paper investigates the impact of this revision of family planning policy on female labor participation in China. The argument put forth is that the new policy exerts a negative effect on women’s labor participation due to the demand-side discrimination based on the number of children. Female labor participation among mothers with one child is negatively affected by employers’ discrimination, due to a perception that they are more likely than mothers with two children to become pregnant again. We employ the China Family Panel Studies data set and a difference-in-difference model, combined with an inverse propensity weighting approach and the Heckman two-step method, to investigate differences between women with one child and women with two children in terms of employment status, job instability, and unemployment. The findings indicate that the probability of obtaining employment in a wage-paying position is 8% lower for women with one child compared to women with two children. Additionally, one-child women are 11% more likely to experience unemployment, suggesting the existence of demand-side discrimination.

Private versus Public Support for Gender Equality: Evidence from a Social Norms Intervention for Adolescents in Somalia

Authors: Sreelakshmi Papineni, Niklas Buehren, Munshi Sulaiman, Rajdev Brar

Abstract: Gender inequality and restrictive norms are often reinforced and internalized during adolescence, influencing pivotal life choices. We present results from a randomly assigned gender norms intervention for adolescents in Somalia that led to greater support for gender equality in privately reported attitudes among both girls and boys.
Moreover, the intervention improved adolescent mental health and boys’ engagement in household work. In a novel lab-in-the-field experiment designed to observe social group dynamics, we measure the likelihood of adolescents changing privately held gender attitudes when assigned to groups of peers of the same or opposite sex, and when expressing their attitudes publicly. The gender group composition matters for social influence as boys endorse more egalitarian responses when grouped with girls, while the opposite is true for girls. We find that treated adolescents are less likely to succumb to peer pressure to conform when stating their gender attitudes in public, even when faced with opposing opinions within their group. Perceptions of gender norms shift for boys, leading to greater public support for gender egalitarian ideals. These results suggest that gender norms interventions for adolescents can be effective in influencing the attitudes and public discourse around gender equality.

Managers and the Cultural Transmission of Gender Norms

Authors: Kieu-Trang Nguyen, Virginia Minni, Heather Sarsons

Abstract: This paper examines the influence of managers’ gender norms on gender disparities in labor market outcomes. Using data from a multinational operating in over 100 countries, we exploit cross-country manager rotations that are orthogonal to workers to estimate the impact of male managers’ gender attitudes on the work outcomes of male and female workers within the same team. We find that managers from countries with 1s.d. more progressive gender attitudes close the gender pay gap by 3.8 percentage points, primarily by promoting women at higher rates. The effects last beyond the manager’s rotation and are three times larger when the manager is assigned to countries with conservative gender attitudes. Moreover, workers in the destination office change their own attitudes, as evidenced by those workers in turn being more gender-equal with their subordinates. Our evidence points to individual managers as critical in shaping corporate culture.

Intergenerational Transmission of Working Behaviour: Preferences or Gender Role Identity?

Authors: Martina Querejeta, Cecilia Parada

Abstract: The positive association between parents and offspring's working status is well-established in the literature. In this paper we provide evidence on the gender role identity hypothesis behind the intergenerational transmission of working behaviour among women from one generation to the next. We study the transmission of working behaviour between mothers and offspring in Uruguay. Based on longitudinal survey data combined with administrative labour records, we exploit the variation in the proportion of peers with working mothers across classes within schools to investigate to what extent the exposure to working women at early stages of the life cycle determines female labour supply as a young adult. Our results show that a higher exposure to working mothers has positive effects on women's labour outcomes. The magnitude of the effect is sizeable, and an increase in the peers variable by one standard deviation results in an increase of 6.3% in the probability of women ever having had a formal employment at age 24. Interestingly, the analysis of separate effects by peer's sex shows that the main effect is fully driven by same-sex peers. Robustness checks and estimates from  an alternative empirical strategy give support to our results suggesting an impact of non-traditional factors such as gender norms on women’s working behaviour.

Shaping Gender Role Attitudes: Intergenerational Impacts of Parental Occupational Differences during Adolescence

Authors: Shu Cai, Wei Luo, Zheng Zhong

Abstract: This paper examines how the relative occupational status of parents shapes individuals’ gender role attitudes. By leveraging the State-Owned Enterprise reform in China during the 1990's as a source of exogenous variation in occupational status, we employ an instrumental variable approach to identify the consequential impacts. Our findings reveal that improved occupational status of mothers within the family is associated with the development of more egalitarian gender role attitudes among their children. Moreover, for these children, their marriage matching patterns in terms of occupational status are strongly shaped, as indicated by the increased differences in occupational status between wives and husbands. We further provide evidence on both the instillation and internalization channels. Overall, this study underscores the importance of family socialization in fostering egalitarian gender role attitudes among the next generation.

The College Melting Pot: Peers, Culture and Women's Job Search

Authors: Fererica Meluzzi

Abstract: Differences in labor market outcomes between men and women have been extensively documented. Yet, little is known about the role of peers in shaping these gaps, especially at the beginning of the career. This paper provides novel large-scale evidence on the effects of the social environment, as represented by college classmates, as a driver of women’s early-career labor market decisions. I exploit unique administrative and survey data covering the universe of college students in Italy and cross-cohort idiosyncratic variation in peers' geographical origins within Master's programs. My findings indicate that exposure to female classmates originating from areas with egalitarian gender culture significantly increases women's labor supply, primarily through increased uptake of full-time jobs. A one standard deviation increase in peers' culture increases female earnings by $3.7. The estimated peer effects are economically significant, comparing to more than a third of the gender earnings gap. Leveraging information on elicited job-search preferences, I present evidence that peers shape women's valuation of non-pecuniary job attributes. Moreover, analysis of original survey data on students' beliefs supports social learning explanations. I first show that the gender culture in a woman's province of origin shapes her beliefs on the relative arrival rates of part-time vs. fulltime jobs and her perceptions on employers' discrimination. Second, consistent with the predictions of a standard job search model, I provide evidence that these beliefs matter for women's acceptances of part-time jobs. Finally, I provide evidence of beliefs' updating.

Session VI: Division of Work & Female Participation in Business

The Gender Division of Work across Countries

Authors: Charles Gottlieb, Douglas Gollin, Cheryl Doss, Markus Poschke

Abstract: Across countries, women and men allocate time differently between market work, domestic services, and care work. In this paper, we document the gender division of work, drawing on a new harmonized data set that provides us with high-quality time use data for 50 countries spanning the global income distribution. A striking feature of the data is the wide dispersion across countries at similar income levels. We use these data to motivate a macroeconomic model of household time use in which country-level allocations are shaped by wages and a set of “wedges” that resemble productivity, preferences, and disutilities. Taking the model to country-level observations, we find that a wedge related to the disutility of market work for women plays a crucial role in generating the observed dispersion of outcomes, particularly for middle-income countries. Variation in the division of non-market work is principally shaped by a wedge indicating greater disutility for men, which is especially large in some low- and middle-income countries.

What Works for Working Couples? Work Arrangements, Maternal Labor Supply, and the Division of Home Production

Authors: Martina Uccioli Martina, Ludovica Ciasullo

Abstract: We document how a change to work arrangements reduces the child penalty in labor supply for women, and that the consequent more equal distribution of household income does not translate into a more equal division of home production between mothers and fathers. The Australian 2009 Fair Work Act explicitly entitled parents of young children to request a (reasonable) change in work arrangements. Leveraging variation in the timing of the law, timing of childbirth, and the bite of the law across different occupations and industries, we establish three main results. First, the Fair Work Act was used by new mothers to reduce their weekly working hours without renouncing their permanent contract, hence maintaining a regular schedule. Second, with this work arrangement, working mothers' child penalty declined from a 47% drop in hours worked to a 38% drop. Third, while this implies a significant shift towards equality in the female- and male-shares of household income, we do not observe any changes in the female (disproportionate) share of home production.

Rural roads, small business creation, and the gender-gap in entrepreneurship

Authors: Abhiroop Mukherjee, Sumit Agarwal, Pulak Ghosh, S. Lakshmi Naaraayanan

Abstract: We study the causal effect of new roads on small business creation. Our identification strategy uses a program that prioritized road-building for Indian villages with populations above specific thresholds. Findings reveal a doubling of new micro-enterprises in these villages after the program, compared to a 9% increase in their below-threshold counterparts. Our evidence indicates two channels behind this growth. First, paved roads allow year-round accessibility to external markets, which especially matters in flood-prone areas. Second, many new food/beverage-related businesses start up, benefiting from the ability to transport perishable goods more quickly and easily. Notably, the increase in new businesses is largely driven by a four-fold increase in female entrepreneurship, leading to a substantial reduction in the pre-existing gender gap. Two mechanisms, in turn, contribute to this reduction: an erosion of patriarchal social norms resulting from men migrating to towns for work; and a reduction in the time women have to spend on childcare, due to connectivity-induced improvements in local schools.

Female Participation in Business and Productivity in Africa: Does Gendered Law Matter?

Authors: Abebe Ayana, Habtamu Edjigu, Yohannes Ayele

Abstract: This study explores the link between female business participation and firm productivity in Africa, emphasizing the role of legal frameworks. Despite the recognized importance of women's entrepreneurship for economic development, their ownership and leadership roles in African businesses remain low. We investigate the constraints faced by women-led and owned enterprises and analyze how gendered laws impact their success.
Using data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey and the Women, Business, and the Law (WBL) index, we find that stronger legal gender equality, as measured by the WBL index, is associated with a significant increase in female business ownership and leadership. Moreover, firms with higher WBL scores exhibit greater total factor productivity (TFP), particularly female-owned businesses. Our findings suggest that legal reforms promoting gender equality can create a more enabling environment for women entrepreneurs, leading to increased business participation and productivity. The study concludes by highlighting the importance of policy interventions that address discriminatory legal provisions and promote financial inclusion for women in Africa.

A Period in Isolation: Measuring the Prevalence Rate of Chhaupadi using the List Experiment in Nepal

Authors: Alina Ojha Alina, Athina Swahn

Abstract: Harmful traditional practices play an important role in development as they not only oppress people, but also inhibit economic wealth, health, and social progress. Chhaupadi is a practice prevalent in the Far and Mid–Western Nepal that forces women out of their houses to live in huts during their menstrual period. The existing literature of Chhaupadi has relied on direct questioning techniques, ignoring the respondents’ incentives to answer untruthfully. Chhaupadi fulfills the criteria for direct questioning to not elicit the truthful response since it is both a socially accepted tradition and an illegal practice. This study sets out to measure the prevalence rate of Chhaupadi, and understand the characteristics of those who actually practice and claim to practice the tradition, using an indirect questioning method called list experiment. With the data collected from 500 respondents in the district of Achham, this paper shows that when the respondents’ answers are anonymous, 38% reveal that they are practicing the tradition whilst, when asked directly, 50% supposedly do. When respondents are asked to estimate the prevalence rate in their own village, the number rises to 67%. Despite Chhaupadi being illegal, respondents seem to over–report practicing it due to the impending fear of becoming a social outcast in society. In particular, people living further away from the local market place have a stronger incentive to over–report, while literate respondents are less likely to.

Masculinity Norms: International Evidence and Implications for Economics, Health, and Politics

Authors: Pauline Grosjean, Victoria Baranov, Ralph De Haas, Ieda Matavelli

Abstract: This paper explores the roles of masculinity norms: gender norms that prescribe and constrain the behavior of men. We collect the first cross-cultural evidence on men’s adherence to masculinity norms from nationally representative face-to-face surveys across 43 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Our analysis unveils substantial variation across and within countries and reveals three domains where these norms exert significant influence. First, masculinity norms play an ambivalent economic role. They correlate positively with behaviors supporting economic growth, such as labor supply at the intensive margin and competitiveness, but also generate frictions by constraining occupational choice to traditionally masculine sectors. Second, masculinity norms encourage risk-taking, including in health behaviors, and are associated with depressive symptoms among men and shorter male life expectancy across countries. Third, masculinity norms correlate with both the demand for and the supply of strongman populism. Crucially, in all three domains—economics, health, and politics—the role of masculinity norms is distinct, and sometimes opposite, from that of social norms about women and a positive driver of gender gaps.

We Don't Talk About Boys: Communication and Misperceived Masculinity Norms

Authors: Ieda Matavelli 

Abstract: How do adolescents form their views about what is expected of their gender? This paper provides causal evidence that the lack of communication drives incorrect inferences about what their peers think regarding gender norms about men. I conduct a field experiment that encourages communication about masculinity norms among peers with 2,249 Brazilian teenagers in 22 schools. I show that a majority of male and female adolescents overestimate the share of classmates who hold traditional views of masculinity with respect to emotional vulnerability and the use of violence. I then randomly assign adolescents to a structured discussion group to learn peers’ opinions about these masculinity beliefs, or to a control discussion. The masculinity discussion groups reduce misperceptions about classmates’ beliefs by at least 50% in the short run. The effects are similar whether students self-selected into speaking, or were randomly selected. In the medium run, effects persist, indicating that there is no persuasion between students once the discussion is over.

Political Regime and Women’s Marriage Outcomes

Authors: Bipasha Maity

Abstract: We study the causal impact of theocratic political regime on women’s age at first marriage. We leverage spatial variation of the first Taliban regime in Afghanistan and temporal variation in women’s timing of marriage relative to the establishment of the regime in a difference-in-difference estimation framework. We find that exposure to the Taliban government reduced women’s age at first marriage by nearly 9 months and this is accompanied by a concomitant reduction in the age at first birth. Likelihood of experiencing intimate partner violence was also higher among women exposed to the regime. Reduction in educational attainment due to the Taliban’s policy of prohibiting access to education appears to be a plausible mechanism driving the results and influencing their persistence even after the fall of the regime. Our results demonstrate the detrimental effects of political regimes that curtail women’s civil rights on their welfare.

Has Colombian legislation affected domestic violence reports and health outcomes?

Authors: Ana Melissa Perez Castano 

Abstract: In Colombia, three out of ten women have been victims of domestic violence at some point in their lifetime. Specific laws have been created in the last 20 years to avoid underreports of partner crime offenses and decrease domestic violence. This article aims to analyze the effect of the reporter and the femicide law on domestic violence reports. The former allowed any person who witnesses domestic violence to report it to the police, and the latter increased the years of jail for a person who kills a woman for being a woman. As a secondary goal, it studies the impact of the femicide law on self-reported health outcomes. I find evidence that the two laws helped increase reports to the police and had a modest but significant effect on better self-reported health outcomes.

Women's Labor Supply, Decision Making Power, and Cultural Norms: The Case Study of Indonesia's Domestic Violence Law

Authors: Lolita Moorena 

Abstract: Married women have the lowest labor force participation rate, a phenomenon that can be attributed to intrahousehold decision making dynamics and influenced by local cultural norms. Before 1999, the Indonesian authoritarian government enforced regulations and propaganda imposing control over women’s role and discouraging divorce, as such shaping the cultural norms to view divorce as harmful for society. Afterwards, the government transformed into a more democratic regime leading to the enactment of the Domestic Violence Law, which changed the trend of divorce rate in Indonesia. To examine the impact of decision making power on women’s labor supply, I utilize an instrumental variable strategy by using the variation in the regional divorce rate trend triggered by the Domestic Violence Law. I rule out possible explanation that changes in women’s power are due to enforcement; instead, I lean the explanation on the increase in public awareness of domestic violence. I found that the changes in regional divorce rates cause an increase in female labor force participation and working hours through women’s power. Furthermore, women living in regions with conservative gender norms experience a larger improvement in their household bargaining power than those living in progressive regions.

Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces and Police Patrols: Experimental Evidence from Urban India

Authors: Sofia Amaral, Anjani Kumar, Girija Borker, Mica Sviatschi, Nishith Prakash

Abstract: We conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of an innovative police patrol program on sexual harassment in public spaces in Hyderabad, India. In collaboration with the Hyderabad City Police, we randomized both exposure to police patrols and the visibility of officers by deploying both uniformed and undercover personnel to hotspots. We implemented a novel, high-frequency observation exercise to measure sexual harassment at 350 hotspots, where enumerators took note of all observed instances of sexual harassment and women’s responses in real time. We find that although police patrols had no impact on overall street harassment, the visible policing patrols reduced severe forms of harassment (forceful touching, intimidation) by 27% and reduced the likelihood of women leaving the hotspot due to sexual harassment. We uncovered the underlying mechanisms and found that both police visibility and officers’ attitudes toward sexual harassment are key to understanding its incidence. While the performance of undercover officers was similar to that of uniformed officers, harassment did not decrease when undercover officers were on patrol. This suggests that the visibility of police officers is critical in deterring perpetrators. Additionally, using lab experiments we find that, on average, police officers were more tolerant of mild street harassment and less inclined to punish offenders in such cases. Correspondingly, we observed in uniformed hotspots a decline in all types of harassment only when assigned officers held stronger personal views on harassment.

Women's Political Representation and Intimate Partner Violence

Authors: S Anukriti, Bilge Erten, Priya Mukherjee

Abstract: Recent studies demonstrate that female leaders can improve gender-specific outcomes along multiple dimensions through better provision of public goods and legislative changes that benefit women. Using quasi-random exposure to female leaders in India, we show that there may also be an unintended effect: an increase in rural women’s reported experience of physical spousal abuse. We find that a plausible channel underlying this effect is an increase in women’s modern contraceptive use—potentially resulting from improvements in public provision of health services—which leads to marital conflict among couples where the husband has a stronger preference for sons.