Randomization for women’s economic empowerment? Lessons and limitations of randomized experiments

Worldwide, policy-makers and academics alike are searching for ways to enhance women’s economic empowerment. One important route to economic empowerment – paid employment – still shows wide gender disparities. We discuss some lessons from randomized evaluations of microfinance, business training, an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWorld development Vol. 127; p. 104820
Main Authors Pieters, Janneke, Klasen, Stephan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2020
Pergamon Press Inc
Subjects
Academic staff
Child care
Development policy
Earnings
Economic conditions
Economics
Employment
Empowerment
Equality
Experiments
Gender
Gender equity
Gender inequality
Intervention
Labor market
Macroeconomics
Market entry
Microfinance
Norms
Panel data
Policy making
Randomization
Social norms
Women
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Summary:Worldwide, policy-makers and academics alike are searching for ways to enhance women’s economic empowerment. One important route to economic empowerment – paid employment – still shows wide gender disparities. We discuss some lessons from randomized evaluations of microfinance, business training, and other interventions aimed at increasing women’s employment and earnings. We then point at important barriers related to women’s responsibility for childcare and domestic duties as well as other social norms. To improve policies for gender equality, we need to understand how norms affect women’s labor market entry and trajectories, what works to mitigate their impact, and how they can change. We argue that RCTs can help us find answers, but that we also need to keep studying macroeconomic changes, non-randomized development and gender policy interventions, and large-scale micro-level panel data capturing employment dynamics.
ISSN:0305-750X
1873-5991
DOI:10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104820