Lifelong Female Labor Aspiration Expansion
RCTReview
Restrictive social norms cause young women in developing regions to view employment as a temporary phase before marriage rather than a lifelong economic pursuit.
Picture this
Imagine a runner who thinks racing is only permitted in middle school because she has never seen an adult woman run. After meeting professional female marathoners, she shifts her vision, deciding to train and compete through her twenties, thirties, and beyond.
What the evidence says
Women aged 18 to 24 from treatment villages showed a statistically significant increase of 10 to 13 percentage points in their desire to work for pay outside the home across three of four life stages (including after marriage and childbirth).
- Who was studied
- 3,200 households across 160 rural villages in North India; cohort of young women aged 18 to 24.
- How
- Cluster RCT measuring self-reported desire to work outside the home for pay across four distinct life stages before and after a three-year recruiting intervention.
What to do
Expose young women to viable formal sector career options early in adulthood to fundamentally reshape long-term career aspirations across post-marital life stages.
From the source
"As Figure 2 shows, there was a significant increase (between 10 and 13 percentage points) in the desire to work during three of four life stages."
Improving_Labor_Market_Opportunities_to_Increase_Womens_Employment.pdf