This project team examined the constraints to women’s mobility and employment by engaging with a set of randomized controlled trials currently in progress in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. These trials, which are run by the DevLab@Duke are evaluating the impact of alternative policies to improve women’s access to physical mobility, as well as social and economic engagement.

Breaking into two subgroups, the team examined women’s mobility and workforce participation in Saudi Arabia and barriers to job seeking for women in Pakistan.

Women’s Mobility and Workforce Participation in Saudi Arabia: The Saudi government lifted the driving ban on women June 2018. Two years after the ban was lifted, only 2% of women in the country obtained their driving license. This subgroup analyzed the key barriers for this low uptake. The findings from this analysis have been developed into a policy brief, which will be published by Al-Nahda and Harvard’s Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD).

After analyzing the data collected from baseline surveys, the team found that there were four major categories of concerns that hindered women in acquiring their licenses, including financial barriers, car ownership, societal/familial constraints and road safety and harassment concerns. The group found that when eliminating financial constraints, women were more likely to obtain their driving licenses. Team members offered free driving training and group transportation, and waived test fees for their treatment group. Approximately 48% of women in the treatment group received their driving license, compared to only 2% in the study's control group (consistent with the national average). This indicates that policy efforts should focus on decreasing the financial barriers to obtaining driving licenses in order to significantly increase the number of Saudi women behind the wheel. 

Job Search Barriers for Women in Pakistan: This subgroup analyzed data from “Job Talash”, a job-matching platform that sends job ads via text message to people in Lahore, Pakistan, and provides information on the job-seeker and firm-side of the labor market. Through this data, team members studied barriers women face in the Pakistani labor market by asking:

• How do people search for jobs and how do firms search for employees in Pakistan?
• What does this reveal about barriers women face in the job search? 
• Are women who have strong networks more engaged in job search?How do women’s job interest and work status change over their life course? 
• What are the differences in pay between men and women, and how does it compare with the salary expectations of job seekers?

Through analyzing data and creating visualizations in STATA, team members discovered insights into female participation in the Pakistani labor force including that there was a greater difference in men and women’s salaries at higher levels of education and that networks play a vital role in searching for jobs but women lack access to networks. The team also learned how to code visualizations in STATA, critically analyze results and synthesize findings in policy briefs and blog posts.

The team published its findings in a policy brief Analyzing Gender Differences in Pay in the Pakistani Labor Market with IZA - Institute of Labor Economics and a blog post Barriers faced by women in labour market participation: Evidence from Pakistan on the International Growth Centre website. Additionally, team members created a set of visualizations on Pakistani women’s participation in the labor force that will be used in further research. 

Timing

Summer 2020 – Spring 2021

Team Outputs

Barriers to Women’s Empowerment in the Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (2021 Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Virtual Showcase)

Women's Mobility, Employment and Empowerment in the Muslin World (poster by Derya Oktay, Hanna Zhang, Julia Wu, Rand Alotaibi, Saba Ali, Sarah Xu, Kendal Swanson, Vaishali Jain, Kate Vyborny and Erica Field)

Analyzing Gender Differences in Pay in the Pakistani Labor Market (policy brief)

Barriers faced by women in labour market participation: Evidence from Pakistan (blog post)