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Large-scale evaluation study of the barriers to women’s labour force participation, and how they impact jobseekers and employers in the labour market.
To help alleviate poverty and vulnerability by augmenting the skills-base of low income, poor and vulnerable families through vocational training.
Investigating the extent to which educational entertainment (edutainment) that is aimed at changing social norms about child marriage and girl education changes attitudes, beliefs, norms, and behaviour with respect to child marriage and girl education in men, women, and adolescent children.
The project seeks to provide women with motorbike training and financing as a means to improve mobility and consequently women’s labour force participation.
The project studies the existing market structures that affect day labourers in Pakistan, focusing on easing search frictions and matching costs.
The project aims to conduct rigorous impact evaluation for two major initiatives designed to address challenges faced on basic legal functions and ensure women’s de facto rights in two key areas: their legal share of inheritance and key rights in marriage.
Principal Investigators:
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According to International Labour Organisation, unemployed, underemployed, and economically inactive people are growing in low-income countries. In South Asian cities, women are considerably less likely to participate in the economy, even at high levels of education. Our data suggests that a large number of women may be inactive or “latent job seekers” who are at the margin of participation and lack information about relevant job opportunities. In this study we use our job matching platform, Job Talash to examine how various labour market interventions can improve the job search process for both employers and job seekers. Job Talash is an in-house, phone based job matching platform set up by researchers at CERP and Duke University. The platform connects job seekers to relevant job opportunities, in case their qualifications match with the requirements of the vacancies. The platform currently has over 10,000 jobseekers and 1,200 employers enrolled through a representative sample. The interventions on the platform include:
We observe how these interventions impact job search outcomes such as application, interview and employment behaviour for both job seekers and employers. We particularly observe the impact on marginalized segments of the populations, such as women or inactive latent job seekers, who might lack access to relevant professional networks and internet services.
2014 – ongoing
DFID-IZA, NSF, J-PAL, IGC, ADB, DIV USAID, PEDL and IPA
Punjab Social Welfare Department, Punjab Commission on the Status of Women (previously partnership), Punjab Social Welfare Department (previously a partner)
Research Papers:
Report:
Briefs
Media coverages
Videos
Web Portal: Job Asaan
Gender, Labour Markets, Informational Interventions, Phone-based Survey, CATI, CAPI
Principal Investigators:
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Low-income countries are increasingly setting up welfare systems and providing economic opportunities for their citizens through cash transfer, employment generation, and skills enhancement programmes. Many of these policies are directed towards those who have been historically excluded from state programmes—the poor, rural inhabitants, and women. The success of such policies relies on these individuals being able to access the benefits provided to them. In practice, we often see “money left on the table” in that studies document how villagers do not obtain subsidised rice, widows fail to take advantage of monthly stipends, and women are unable to obtain vocational training, despite the large gains such programmes may have.
This project aims to help alleviate poverty and vulnerability by augmenting the skills-base of low income, poor and vulnerable families by improving their technical and vocational skills. The main goal is to increase the rate of income growth in poor and vulnerable households in high poverty districts of Southern Punjab – Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Lodhran, and Muzaffargarh.
This project uses experimental variation to estimate the value of one such access constraint—travel that requires a woman to move outside her community. We study a skills development programme in rural Pakistan, which is representative of many underdeveloped regions throughout the world where female mobility—a widely recognised barrier to development —is a challenge for both logistical and cultural reasons.
2012 – ongoing
Government of Punjab, Punjab Skills Development Fund (PSDF), DFID (FCDO), British Asian Trust, Kaarvan Crafts Foundation
Social Protection, Poverty, Employment, Economic Mobility, Female Empowerment, Rural Economy, Poverty Alleviation, Technical Skills, Vocational Skills, Welfare Systems, Travel, Female Mobility
Principal Investigators:
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Pakistan is the third most dangerous place for women and girls, with 90% of women facing domestic violence (Thomson Reuters 2011). 50% of Pakistani women are married off at the average age of 19 years, with 13% married by the time they are 15 and 40% by age 18 (Population Council). A little is known about the mechanisms that lead to VAWG and child marriage, and less so about the most effective pathways to curb these mechanisms. In particular, there is little evidence on the effectiveness of interventions targeting men and boys, in addition to women and girls.
The prevention of early marriages and VAWG is crucial, not only because girls who marry as children are particularly at risk of premature childbearing and violence from their partners, but also because it negatively affects economic growth and perpetuates intergenerational transmission of poverty. An important mechanism driving this effect is the interaction between VAWG and low cooperation between spouses, resulting in poor health, education and economic outcomes for women and their children. This research therefore consisted of a cluster randomized control trial (RCT) of a social norms intervention implemented by Bedari in South Punjab and Indus Resource Center in Sindh that addresses women’s empowerment and VAWG.
The intervention consisted of regular group meetings, theater plays, and other community activities that address social norms targeting either men and boys, women and girls, or both, dependent on the experimental arm. The baseline survey was conducted among husbands, wives and their children of marriageable age. Data was also collected through personal interviews as well as behavioural games. An end-line survey will be conducted 6 months after the interventions, to allow us to measure impact and cost-effectiveness, as well as how impact and the route to changing social norms differs across provinces. The project is expected to answer following research questions:
Through this thorough piece of research, we will be able to draw broader insights (beyond just edutainment interventions) about how policy makers can best change norms in communities, especially where women hold low bargaining power. Furthermore, through evidence-based identification of underlying mechanisms of impact, we will be able to draw insights for other regions within and outside of Pakistan.
2018 – completed
Oxford University, Indus Resource Centre (IRC), Bedari
Bedari, Oxfam Novib, Oxfam Pakistan, the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development
Gender, Education, Human Rights, Child Marriage, Edutainment, RCTs
Pakistan has low rates of women’s labour force participation compared to countries with similar GDPs, and access to educational opportunities remains a challenge. This contributes to low levels of women’s agency, harming the economy and society of Pakistan. Our project uses an experiment to alleviate a key constraint for women in Karachi—access to safe and reliable transportation—and measure the impact this has on women and their families in the short- and long-term.
As public transportation in the city of Karachi remains underfunded, privately-organized transportation dominates. For men, a convenient mode of transport for their careers and everyday life is the motorbike. Unlike in other countries of South Asia, the rate of women driving their own motorbikes in Pakistan remains low. This means that women compromise safety (riding side-saddle on the back of their male family members’ bikes, or in rickshaws with unknown drivers), convenience (leaving at the time most suitable for them), and cost (with rising prices all around, ownership of a motorbike asset is among the most cost-effective ways for individuals to get around the city on a daily basis).
Our project seeks to provide women with 1) a motorbike training and 2) a motorbike loan.
Participants cannot receive training without being pre-approved for and demonstrating commitment for a loan.
2022-ongoing
IGC Pakistan, J-PAL
The Hunar Foundation, Pink Riders Pakistan, Kashf Foundation
Labour-force Participation, Women’s Empowerment, Women’s Mobility, Transport Financing
In South Asia, three quarters of ultra-poor households report casual labour as the dominant form of income. In urban areas, short-term construction jobs are found through social connections or by going to a “labour stand”, essentially an intersection where low-skilled labourers wait each morning for employers looking to hire for a day or two. While spot markets like this are generally thought of to be the free-market ideal, these markets appear to be rife with failures including information asymmetries, wage rigidity and large search costs for employees and employers. The presence of these frictions often increases dependence on social relationships.
This project seeks to answer why exactly employers hire workers from their social network, what are the mechanisms at play and, in response to variation in the hiring process, how do workers change their investment in social capital versus productivity?
These questions will be tested through an RCT with a construction firm in Pakistan. Different aspects of the hiring process between contractors and labourers will be varied while observing the resulting effect on hiring patterns by contractors, labourer productivity and labourer investment in their social capital.
2019 – Ongoing
International Growth Center (IGC)
Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL)
Productivity, Social and Professional Networks, Market Frictions, Management and Organisations
CERP is working on a rigorous impact evaluation of two major initiatives designed to address challenges faced on basic legal functions and ensure women’s de facto rights in two key areas: their legal share of inheritance and key rights in marriage. Key rights in marriage: A randomised trial of the training of marriage registrars across the province of Punjab will measure the impact evaluation of their training on women’s financial and legal rights which are already available in the marriage contract. Legal share of inheritance: The land records of Punjab were recently digitised. Using the time lag in the rollout of the newly opened centres of the land database, the project will evaluate the impact of the new system on women inheriting their rightful share of land.
2017- Halted
Female Empowerment