How do domestic and reproductive work responsibilities affect women’s access to and quality of work? Solutions for Women’s Empowerment Webinar Series

East Asia and Pacific Gender Innovation Lab (EAPGIL)

January 29, 2020

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What is EAPGIL?

Mission: Provide rigorous evidence on what works and what does not in reducing key gender gaps in EAP countries and use it to shape policy and development operations

3 MAIN LINES OF ACTIVITY: Generation of evidence through:

• Impact evaluation

• Inferential research using existing data

Promoting the uptake of knowledge through:

• continuous engagement with IE project teams

• sustained dissemination of research findings

Capacity building to the World Bank teams, counterparts, and other development partners on:

• improving projects through integrating gender perspective

• using evidence for project design

Female Labor Force Participation (FLFP) is lower than men’s

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Timor-Leste

Philippines

Papua New Guinea

Pacific island small states

Myanmar

World

Indonesia

Malaysia

Mongolia

Korea, Rep.

East Asia & Pacific

High income

Thailand

China

Singapore

Japan

Cambodia

Vietnam

Lao PDR

Male LFP Female LFP Source: WDI 2018

Labor Force Participation Rates of Men and Women in EAP

Could lack of childcare hinder FLFP?

Women’s LFP dips during childbearing years in countries with lower FLFP

20

40

60

80

10

0

Pe

rce

nt

20 40 60 80Age

Males Females

Indonesia, 2014

020

40

60

80

10

0

Pe

rce

nt

20 40 60 80Age

Males Females

Vietnam, 2014

020

40

60

80

10

0

Pe

rce

nt

20 40 60 80Age

Males Females

Cambodia, 2014

020

40

60

80

10

0

Pe

rce

nt

20 40 60 80Age

Males Females

Laos, 2012/13

020

40

60

80

Pe

rce

nt

20 40 60 80Age

Males Females

Timor, 2014/15

By age and gender

Labor Force Participation Rates

Evidence from 3 studies

Informal childcare arrangements and women’s work in Indonesia

• Does the presence of grandparents in the household change the likelihood that women with young children work?

• Does the presence of grandparents in the household change the type of work that women do?

Preschool availability and FLFP in Indonesia

• Does the availability of preschools increase FLFP?

• Is the effect different by the type of preschool (public vs. private?)

• Does public provision of preschools crowd out private preschools?

Occupational segregation in Vietnam

• To what extent does occupational sorting explain the gender wage gap?

• Why do women sort into lower paid occupations?

The Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS)

• 5 rounds between 1993 – 2014

• Representative of 83% of Indonesian population

Indonesia Village Census (PODES)

• 9 rounds between 1990 and 2014

Vietnam Labor Force Surveys

• Data from 2011-2014

• Nationally representative

Vietnam Young Lives Project

• Data on younger cohort from 2013 (11-12 years old)

Vietnam Skills Towards Employability and Productivity (STEP) Surveys

• Data from 2012

• Representative of urban working-age population

Data

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Informal childcare arrangements and women’s work in Indonesia

Daniel Halim, Hillary C. Johnson, Elizaveta Perova

Informal childcare

When fertility peaks, more urban women work if there’s an elderly in the household

020

40

60

80

%

20 25 30 35 40 45Age

No elderly Any elderly

Has child under 2

Urban areas

Figure 1a: Percent of women who work / have a child under 2

Informal childcare accelerates the return to work after childbirth

Informal childcare → Urban women return to work 2 years sooner

Prolonged absence → Foregone earnings of approx. US$1,300

-.3

-.2

-.1

0.1

.2

Pro

bab

ility

-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8Years from childbirth

No elderly (N=27,383) Any elderly (N=9,205)

Note: Dashed lines show the 95% confidence interval (see footnote 6).

Compared to year before childbirth

Figure 2: Probability of working in past week, urban areas

Informal childcare mitigates a switch to less remunerative work

Women switch into unpaid family work after childbirth

Without informal childcare:

• Urban: remain in unpaid family work 8 years later

• Rural: remain in unpaid family work until child 6 years old

With informal childcare:

• Urban: do not switch into unpaid family work

• Rural: return to other work after 1 year

Without informal childcare, women switch into less remunerative sectors

Switch does not happen when elderly are in the

household

• Urban: Switch from manufacturing to sales

• Rural: Switch from manufacturing to agriculture

Persistent effects, as they remain in new sector

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Access to preschool and women’s labor force participation in Indonesia

Daniel Halim, Hillary C. Johnson, Elizaveta Perova

Large increase in availability of preschools

2003: pre-primary

education

recognized as part of

national education

system, 25%

enrollment

Government

introduced a

medium-term plan to

increase enrollment

between 2004 and

2009

2016: gross pre-

primary enrollment

rate reached 60.3%

(WDI)

Geographic differences in the availability of both public and private preschools

Public and private preschools have different characteristics

Private preschools are significantly more expensive to attend, and

are likely to vary in quality more than public preschools

Compare

pre-school eligible women and pre-school not eligible women in districts with low and high preschool growth before and after preschool expansion

Identification strategy:

DDD

graphical representation

Does access to preschool increase mother’s likelihood of working?

0.071***

0.002

0

0.01

0.02

0.03

0.04

0.05

0.06

0.07

0.08

Public Private

Does access to preschool change the quality of jobs that mothers get into?

1. PUBLIC PRESCHOOLS

Unpaid family worker

Agricultural worker

2. PRIVATE PRESCHOOLS

Artisanal production worker

Are public and private preschools complements or substitutes?

• Substitutes to a very small degree

• They cater to different subpopulation

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Occupational segregation in Vietnam

Iffat Chowdhury, Hillary C. Johnson, Aneesh Mannava, Elizaveta Perova

Occupational segregation partially explains the gender wage gap

Women’s hourly wages are approximately 10-14% lower than men’s wages

This gap shrinks when controlling for industry and occupation

Why do women sort into lower paid occupations?

Three Hypotheses:

1. Social norms

2. Gender specific barriers in school to work transition

3. Sorting over non-monetary characteristics

Do adolescent girls aspire to lower paying occupations than

boys?

No – girls actually aspire to higher paying occupations

Are women more likely to work outside their field of study?

No – women are more likely to work in occupations

related to their studies

Women are more likely to have a formal contract, paid leave,

health insurance, and social insurance

These benefits may facilitate better balance of domestic and

market work

Women sort into occupations with better non-monetary characteristics

Sorting over non-monetary characteristics reduces gender wage gap

But this is largely explained by occupational segregation

Moreover, within occupation and industry cell, women actually face a wage penalty for better non-monetary characteristics

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Conclusions and policy implications

Domestic work influences women’s LFP and quality of work

Childcare poses a constraint to FLFP, at least for some women

The type of childcare matters

Childcare and domestic work influences type of work and occupation

These choices affect women’s earnings

Policy discussion

Preschool expansion• Policy tools have different implications for FLFP

• Harder to reach populations may benefit more

• Challenges for work quality – expansion of hours?

Need for other types of childcare services• Ages 0-3

• Existing services and informal arrangements not meeting the needs of all women

• Complementary hours to school

Other types of interventions• Social norms related to distribution of work in household

• Flexible working arrangements

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Thank you!

www.worldbank.org/eapgil