 Welcome to the second webinar of the Think Wider webinar series of 2022, New Perspectives on Development. I'm Kunal Sen, the director of Rainy Wider. The Wider seminar series features a lineup of eminent researchers and development specialists to present their work and discuss new perspectives on the topic of global development. On the occasion of International Women's Day, we are pleased to host a webinar on women's work. The webinar will present the initial findings of the UNU Wider project, women's work leads to social and economic empowerment. We know that the gender gaps in pay and labour force participation are real and persistent worldwide. Women often occupy the worst-paid jobs with lease protection, but gender-related social norms often hinder women's access to better opportunities. The project tried to understand how processes of economic development and social change affected women's labour market outcomes. What forces can bring about opportunities for women's work that truly enhance their economic empowerment. And what development agendas are most likely to improve gender equality and bring about the achievement of FG5. I'm pleased to welcome Ashwini Deshpande and Nyanaki Peters, who will present today's webinar. Ashwini and Nyanaki are the two project leads of Wider's Women's Work Project. Let me introduce the two speakers in turn. Ashwini Deshpande is Professor of Economics at Shope University, India and UNU Wider non-resident research fellow. Her PhD and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action with a focus on caste and gender in India. Among Ashwini's many publications are the books Grammar of Caste, Economic Discrimination in Contemporary India, published by Oxygen Depress in 2011, and Affirmative Action in India, published by Oxygen Depress in 2013. She is a co-editor of Boundaries of Plan and Color, Transnational Corporate Comparisons and Degroup Disparity, published by Routledge in 2003. Ashwini has also received the Ex-Im Bank Award, outstanding dissertation in 1994, and the VKRB-Row Award to Indian Economist under 45 years of age in 2007. Let me introduce Nyanaki Peters, who is a professor of economics at Wider University, Netherlands, Research Fellow at IZA, and like Ashwini also, we are a wider non-resident senior research fellow. Her research interests are primarily the fields of labor economics and development economics with a focus on labor markets and gender inequality. She has studied the determinants and consequences of female labor supply in developing countries, including the links between trade liberalization and women's labor market outcomes in Brazil, Indonesia, and India. Nyanaki is currently working with the World Bank on the measure of labor and agriculture and on the implications of the new ICLS definition of work employment in several African countries. Now on to a few logical issues before I hand over to Ashwini and Nyanaki. Please type in your questions using the Q&A feature that you see on your screen. I'll read out the questions on your behalf. The webinar will be recorded and shared later on our YouTube channel afterwards. Nyanaki will speak first and then Ashwini for around 30 minutes, which will live around 25 minutes for Q&A. So now over to Nyanaki. Nyanaki, thanks so much. You go ahead. Thank you very much, Kunal. Thank you everyone for attending this webinar. It's a great pleasure to speak today on International Women's Day about the issue of women's work and economic development and social change. Let me see if I can move the slide. I'd like to first very briefly take a moment to remember Stefan Klassen, who passed away in October 2020. Stefan contributed greatly to the study of gender inequality. He was also actively involved in the start of this UNU wider program on women's work. And you'll see that some of the last papers that he published before he passed away were on the issues that we're talking about today and inspired directly or indirectly lots of the papers written as part of this program. So I'm very much thinking about Stefan today and of course said that he's no longer with us as he would have been a very active and inspiring member of this community to discuss and research these issues. So to start, as I mentioned, Stefan's recent work was on exactly this topic. And some facts that emerge from recent studies on women's labour force participation are, first of all, that on the supply side we see across many countries that rising education levels and declining fertility have contributed to rising female labour force participation. And this is a joint experience across many low and middle income countries, but at the same time we see that there's still use variation in terms of trends in women's labour force participation but also in terms of levels that are really largely unrelated to differences in educational attainment and fertility trends. And they're also largely unrelated to differences in other observed characteristics of women and their families. And so these observed characteristics by and large, we use those to capture typically supply side factors that determine women's labour force participation. So including education and fertility but also family composition, location, etc. So these differences that are not so much explained by supply side or individual level observed characteristics for sure partly reflect differences across countries in the barriers that women face which are related to social norms that as we need we'll talk more about. And they're also related to various sources of discrimination, they're related to differences in historical economic structures and gender roles that are persistent so that still impact outcomes today. But these differences will also reflect what is happening on the demand side of the labour market. And we know much less about the importance of demand side factors. I think empirically it's just more challenging to study. But from, for example, from recent studies analyzing trade liberalization reforms. I think what's very clear is that the sectoral structure of the economy as well as technological change are very relevant factors. So two studies I cite here but there's more studies have explored the fact that many low middle income countries underwent massive liberalization of their trade policies in the 1990s. And in most cases, those reforms had very different impacts on men and women in the labour market because they affected the sectoral structure and technological change in the economy. Now why, why are these so important that's related to the sectoral and occupational segregation that we observe across the world at all countries, this segregation is quite persistent. And so men and women tend to concentrate in different industries in different occupations and even within occupations we see strong gendered patterns in terms of the tasks that men and women perform. So two recent studies conducted as part of this UNU program, explore or they use this notion of segregation to try and get a better understanding of the role of labour demand and macroeconomic policies in shaping women's labour force participation and also their access to good jobs. So I'm going to highlight some insights from these two studies that are that happen to be on Latin America both. And I'll highlight a few interesting methodological or measurement issues that I wanted to share today, as well as of course some key findings that have emerged. Sandra and Fernandez study the rising female labour force participation rate in Mexico since the 1960. The graph here shows male and female participation rates the blue line is the rate for women with the vertical axis on the right hand side associated with that. And so from the 60s to 2015 women's participation rate in Mexico increased from 13 to 47% with a very steep acceleration in the 1990s. And so what what the authors do is they exploit, they explore census data to look at both supply side and demand side factors. And so the classic supply side factors considered our education, marital status and fertility and a few others but these three and especially education account for a huge part of the rising female labour force participation. Here they explain almost three quarters of it so over this over these these five or more decades. Now of course, education marriage patterns and fertility in turn might well be affected by what's going on at the demand side but this is sort of a typical way to try and tease out what these factors have contributed. And then in the paper they explore variation across municipalities in Mexico to understand a bit better what what the demand side might have contributed and, and they do this by looking at sectoral shifts and occupational shift so the idea is that if you look at the total employment growth in Mexico, which sectors has this employment been concentrated in or which occupations has this been concentrated in. And what they conclude is that the occupational shifts in employment growth in Mexico have actually put it to drawing women into the labour force. And based on their estimates and some back of the envelope calculations this for about 40% of the total increase in female labour force participation over this period. Now what, what are these occupational shifts so why are they conducive to women's labour force participation, mainly because the occupations that have expanded have have been relatively female intensive. So I'd like to show two figures that the authors present that nicely illustrate this. On the left here you see for three female dominated occupations the the female share of workers within each of these occupations so those are technicians associate professionals that's the black line in the middle clerks the blue line on top and third services and sales So you see that in 1960 between 20 and 27% of workers within these occupations was female and that share has increased a lot over time. But on the right hand side you see that the share of these occupations in total Mexican employment has also changed and very notable here is the the increasing importance of services and sales workers. So, so in 1960 service and sales workers accounted for about 10% of total employment and that more than doubled by 2015. And so what the authors conclude is that sort of the change in the occupational structure of employment in Mexico can explain within Mexico across municipality variation in female labour force participation growth and overall seems to be able to account for a large part of the overall growth of female labour force participation in Mexico. Now as I said it's well possible that shifts in the occupational structure of employment shifts in the sectoral structure of employment can also indirectly affect women's education levels right the extent to which families invest in girls education. Women's labour market opportunities have an effect on their marriage market decisions on their decisions related to fertility. So it's also very well possible that these shifts in the structure of labour demand have contributed much more than, than this 40% to overall increases in female labour force participation. But I think this study is very, very nice example of how to, how to explore that what's going on the demand side and so I encourage everyone to to to download and read that paper for more details on the methodology and for more interesting figures. There's many in the paper. Another paper by Aurora Brownstein and Seguino focuses on multiple Latin American countries and asks, Okay, we've seen rising participation of women in the labour force in Latin American countries, but we also see persistent segregation across occupations and sectors. So have women really gotten access to high quality jobs. And can we also study what macroeconomic or policy factors are correlated with women's access to high quality jobs. So to measure high quality jobs or what they call good jobs in the paper. They take groups of industry by occupation. So we can call these jobs so for example sales workers in the textiles industry is one type of job. In the total they analyze 250 jobs. And so within each job. They assess the median weekly earnings of workers, and they compare it to the overall national median weekly earners. Right so do sales workers in in the textiles manufacturing, their median earnings are they above or below the national average. If they're above then this is these are good jobs. And by gender and by industry. So they're asking within a particular industry Z how many female workers are in jobs where women earn more than the national median. And I think this is a very nice way to use data sources from different countries that might have different definitions to get a consistent definition of, you know, a high quality or a decent job even if it's just based on earnings. But it's still, I think it's still insightful. And so I've taken some of their data to construct the following picture which illustrates very well that women have much worse access to good jobs than men. So what you see here on top is is the distribution of employment across industries so in blue are male workers you see that almost 40% of male workers work in trade services, which includes host hotels restaurants retail trade etc. And also 30% of women are in trade services. And then for women community and domestic services are important education and healthcare. Well for men, mining construction and utilities comes second. So that's on top and then in the bottom panel, you see separately again for men and women, the share of good jobs within each industry. So if we look at trade services which is a major employer for both men and women, see that that about 50% of men in trade services work in good jobs so jobs where men earn above the national median weekly income, compared to only 14% of women. So only 14% of women in trade services are in jobs where women earn above the national median weekly income. And so this can reflect job segregation within the industry obviously but also men earning more than women in the same job. And now what the authors do is they construct for 15 Latin American countries for for many years covering the period 1990 to 2017 if I'm right. And then they're they analyze so does the share of women in good jobs and share of men in good jobs how does it correlate with macroeconomic policies or or macroeconomic variables like like trade related variables. And they do the same types of analysis on segregation. So just a few key findings then from their analysis first of all I find that public social spending increases the share of women in good jobs, and it also reduces occupational segregation so that's, I think that's, that's a very interesting research and something that begs for further analysis like what type of social spending is it is it healthcare spending or other type of spending but certainly very interesting result. Second they find that minimum wages increase the share of men in good jobs but not women, and they. So one potential explanation they offer is that women are more likely to work in the informal sector or to be in self employment where the minimum wage has less of an impact. So it's not directly doesn't directly apply to informal businesses. And so that's why it might affect men more than women. And finally, they find that industrial productivity measured as real output per worker. They associate it with an increase in the share of good jobs for men, but a decline in the share of good jobs for women. And they argue this is in line with some some other research that shows that industrial upgrading actually pushes out women from industry. They also find that it's associated with increased industry and occupational segregation. So it seems that women may lose good jobs in manufacturing as industries upgrade which is of course very worrying finding. So then to wrap up a few thoughts about going forward. I think the importance of labor demand is clear. Because of the traditional sexual structure matter a lot because of persistent segregation in the labor market. We know that macroeconomic policies, which may be non gendered in their design can have very gendered implications because of that, as well as technological change. But then it's much less clear how how one could bring about changes in labor demand that support women's work and access to good jobs. So we're challenging an interesting research agenda where many questions might be hard to study in low income countries, as they require a lot of data and sometimes research is also limited by the fact that data sets are often not directly comparable across countries or over longer time periods, which is really a challenge for this more sort of macro and globally focused research. Some areas, some fruitful areas for research are, you know, to look again and more into to the impact of trade and investment policies. In that sense, it's, it's also great to see this recent initiative by the World Trade Organization of starting a gender research hub. Also, I think social spending is a very, very interesting area for more research on how this affects supply as well as demand side factors that impact women. Another paper in this program by if you and clever shows the impact of maternity leave extensions in Vietnam, which has, you know, impacts on women's labor supply but it can also affect demand because it makes hiring women more costly. And then, and minimum wages would also be a very important area to study more how these effects, men and women differently, depending on the distribution of wages depending on who's concentrated in the informal sector, etc. And then finally, I have no doubt that targeting social norms and discrimination need to happen as well alongside any macroeconomic non gendered policy initiatives. So I'm very happy to hand over to Ashwini to talk more about the role of norms. Thank you Yannicka for the excellent summary. And thank you, Kunal and your new wider for organizing this and for giving us a chance to to present some summaries of the project that Yannicka and I have been leading at your new wider. I'm going to start a very happy International Women's Day to everybody listening. So I'll talk a little bit about another set of issues that that our project has thrown up the papers that you know we commissioned. Now, in terms of social norms particularly in developing countries and especially for India, which has persistently seen a low labor force participation rate of women that has recently been declining. So a big deal of focus on gender norms and the explanations for women's low labor force participation rates are often sought in non economic or sort of sociological norm related issues so you know what are gender norms customs taboos practices that you know women. And these have as I said you know for developing countries somehow these acquire a greater significance in the discussion. South Asia, the region that I come from is known as the belt of classic patriarchy, and almost every phenomenon that we observe in terms of male female gaps in women's economic empowerment and labor force participation participation in paid work entrepreneurship and so on and so forth. So almost everything is attributed to patriarchal conservative social norms in in in India and in developing countries. When you look at in a in egalitarian or patriarchal norms and support to such norms, which are adverse to women. You see that almost in every country of the world. You know whether you look at the reproductive rights issue that's going on in the United States, you look at, you know domestic intimate partner violence in the in the UK, and so on and so forth there are there are examples galore because there's a lot of differences in the context of where. And so the question then is, you know, where do norms matter and where they don't. And how do they matter. So one of the norms that for example in the context of India has been particularly talked about is violence against women. And it's, it's there are papers that talk about how a decline in female labor force participation rate can be attributed to women. Now I have data from India as well but this is just some global, you know, calculations that I did with a student of mine. And when you see violence against women which is again present in every single country. And if you look at the ratio of female to male labor force participation rates, you really don't find a negative relationship with FLFP globally. Right. And so while violence against women is an extremely important problem everywhere and needs to be tackled its relationship with women's participation in paid work is less obvious, at least, you know, to me. One of the norms for example in for which South Asia is particularly notorious is the very high degree of inequality between men and women in terms of domestic chores, you know unpaid work that that you do on a routine basis at home and India and you sort of have the most unequal ratios you know in India women do as much as 1010 times more spend 10 times more hours on domestic chores compared to compared to to men. And again South Asia has also been, you know this picture has been changing, whereas India and Pakistan have sort of stuck to this unequal norm in Bangladesh over time you see a much more equal division of unpaid of domestic chores. You see that an increase in female labor force participation rate has brought about this change in norms, you know, it's, it's something worth thinking about. And I'm going to present some more evidence to support my, my hunch, right. And so when we talk about social norms, when we talk about patriarchal norms, given that they are present in pretty much every country, they matter, and how do they matter in terms of women's economic environment. And so I think that one of the things that our project has brought out and something that I'm always fond of saying is we need to have more nuanced conversations about the role of social norms in explaining women's economic indicators, you know to make this very black and white picture of developing countries have norms that lead to low labor force participation rates, and develop countries have no patriarchal norms. And that sort of black and white picture to my mind doesn't seem very convincing. And it's really good that in our project we've actually find papers that have that that bring out that part. Sorry to begin with my own paper, but basically, you know, my paper with Naila Kabir, which you can access from the UNU wider website is precisely on norms that matter. The norms that matter that we've identified through a primary survey in India is the burden of reproductive labor, domestic chores care work which is incessant repetitive monotonous unrecognized, not respected. And it is definitely inimical to women's economic participation and economic empowerment, because even if paid work is available, they are unable to access is because of the burden of domestic chores. And we find that the conventional culprit of you know religion or whaling or all of these things. We don't find that to be statistically significant when we look at the data. I have another paper which is not a part of this project but I'll just make very quick reference to that, which is that we have with my student Jitendra Singh, we've been looking at high frequency panel data for India longitudinal data. And we find that over a short period of four years, the same women repeatedly enter and exit from the labor force. If it were just norms, you would not see this picture, either women would be in the labor force or they would be out of it, but literally every four months you see women changing the labor force status which actually gives us reason and you know we've examined the demand versus supply side issues in that paper and we find really that you know what Yanukkah was talking about earlier, which is it's the demand for women's labor nature of occupational segregation, etc all of these other factors matter, you know determine these frequent entry and exit. One paper in the project by Sarah Khan on on marital customs. Looks at female education and marriage in Pakistan and she analyzes the role of financial shocks and marital customs. And again, contrary to what you might expect a priority she finds that when households suffer a wealth shock financial wealth shock. It does not have a gender defect on school dropouts and adverse shocks economic shocks during the individual's teenagers do not increase the probability of early marriage. High educated women receive more marital assets, which increase their bargaining power inside the household. And it also has positive intergenerational effects on their children's schooling. So again, many myths about the way you know norms play a role in developing countries, you find those also getting a little bit, you know, questioned or shattered. So I think that that's a very, it's very important to have these sort of nuanced, nuanced conversations. We have a paper on the motherhood penalty, which is the evidence for which mainly comes from developed countries because you do have data, which includes mothers and non mothers as well as mothers and fathers, immediately before and after the birth of the first child. So it's very rare to find exact estimates of motherhood penalty on from developing countries but we have a paper in our project that we have four South American countries, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. And what they find is that motherhood reduces women's labor supply, because women then are, you know, have the additional burden of childcare, and they also seek better work life balance it increases the demand for more flexible occupations, and it reduces women's labor supply. And what, and countries that are more conservative gender norms, and less generous family policies, see greater differences between mothers and non mothers labor market outcomes. Right. Now this brings me to the question, you know, notice here the word generous family policies, which, which brings me to the question of our norms static, or whether was there always a difference between these gendered norms between motherhood and developing countries well, the answer to that is no, you know, for example, here's a picture from our world in data that looks at weekly hours dedicated to home production in the United States, between 1900 and 2005. You see, over, you know, over 100 years, you find that men's weekly hours in home production have increased women's weekly hours dedicated to home production have declined. But even in 2005 women do more domestic work compared to men in the United States. So, and the gap was pretty wide, you know, in 1900. So what we think of as these very fixed norms, even historically, even the present day developed countries you see that they've also evolved and norms have changed, right. And when we you know in the previous slide we talked about a generous family policies. So I think going forward, the challenge that we need to grapple with is how do we change norms in developing countries, such that they enable women's empowerment and women's participation in paper. Now, I would like to make, you know, draw a distinction which everybody knows about, but I'd like to draw our attention to the distinction between social norms and social institutions, right, and institutions is a wide term, it includes norms. So all the informal institutions like sanctions taboos customs traditions code of conduct, etc. These are what we call norms, but there are also formal social institutions, you know property laws inheritance laws education, right to work freedom of movement, right to vote, etc. You know we are celebrating International Women's Day today, which is which marks the demand for women's right to vote right and so formal institutions can signal and establish norms of equality, even when the underlying informal institutions might be more in egalitarian than what the formal institutions are signaling right now of course then there will be a conflict between a formal equality and substantive equality it doesn't automatically follow that you change laws and you change the formal institutions and automatically there will be a change on the ground, but that's really the way forward, right, when women got the right to vote 100 years ago, after that many things changed in the present present day developed countries and so on. So what I would argue for and I think that's the lesson to take away also from our project is that we need to figure out ways in which formal social institutions that guarantee formal equality can be strengthened and which will also weaken the material basis of male dominance which in South Asia takes a form of son preference you know very very strong desire for a son. And this together will eventually lead to changes I think in the in the norms, you know, a picture in developing countries. I know this is easier to put on a slide than to actually, you know, make, make it take effect. But his history tells us that it has happened, you know, ROMs have changed in countries, maybe over 100 years but they have changed. And so similarly I feel like the push should be now to figure out what kinds of changes in formal institutions need to be brought about and economic structures to be brought about to ensure women's equality. So I'll stop there and hand over back to Kunal. Thank you. Well, thanks, Yanik and Ashwin it was very clear and extremely and also on time so you have some time for Q&A. Sorry a question I could see from Rajiv Goyal. Can please everyone can send it a question to the chat function, so I can then see who's asking and I can read that question out or ask you to invite you to ask a question live, then we can see if I can find Rajiv Goyal. The participants I can ask Rajiv to actually ask his question live, if not I'll read his question out. As you can see the question to Yanik and Ashwini. Let me see if I can find Rajiv Goyal on the audience. Okay, Rajiv, if you want to, you can ask a question live. I think you are muted. Taking the point that norms you know this difference between male and female household work. Over time for any country could be changing for a number of reasons for instance, institutions change and like you mentioned you know the government regulations, also social customs, but I think all most importantly it's the technology, you know, over time for instance, just to you know what what comes to my mind is this microwave oven, you know, so now that is made some of the chores more accessible across gender, you know, then I think men would be more or have been more willing to do some chores because you know technology is there and so I was wondering what your thoughts are on that. So my point was that overall, you know, whether norms are changing by themselves or institutionally changing or technologically changing, it might be very hard to capture over time for any country. Right, thanks Rajiv it's a very nice question so Yanik and Ashwini either of you can answer the question you want to. Yeah, I mean so there's a there's always a multiplicity of reasons that lead to a change in norms, but technology doesn't automatically change norms. You know in India is a very good example of that which is, you know, whether it's my microwave ovens or LPG gas or whatever, it doesn't lead men into the kitchen to start doing domestic chores. You know one wishes that it was the case but that hasn't happened. So I think that my own analysis of the Indian scenario is that if women start going out to work. If women paid opportunities for paid work are created for women which they want to do a survey after surveys demonstrated. If women go out of the house to work that will change the norms of sharing domestic but not overnight, but over time. The break has to be in that vicious cycle, the break has to be let women go out. First, I think that's what has happened in Bangladesh, the change that you see in the sharing of domestic chores. You know, so that's that's my hunch but yeah so technology does play a role but it doesn't automatically guarantee that change in sharing. Jenny, did you want to also respond. Yeah, I just wanted to maybe add that. I mean it's obviously difficult to disentangle but I also agree that some, some forms of technological progress may mitigate the impact of norms without changing the norms themselves right so we might see women spending on chores because there's technological improvement but it doesn't change the perceived the responsibility that you know that women have in taking care of domestic duties and children. Yeah, and I, but I think, you know, economists are of course, or a large part of economists are very much focused on on disentangling sort of what is caused by shifts in norms and then ultimately are those caused by technological change or were they caused by shifts in the structure of the economy or by changes in the law etc so I think we're all very keen on understanding better what ultimately drives these changes. So that's the anarchy. There's a question from anchor Sarah Philip on the dowry system, perhaps more address to Ashwin anchor do you want to ask a question. If you want to. Hi, my name is and see. So I'm asking whether this female labor force participation issues that we have in India, especially after this 2005 where we see a massive drop can be explained in terms of structural employment policies, or is it the pervasive dowry system that has been there that is there even with legal interventions, we still have the system which actually increases the opportunity to stop having the girl child. You know that the decision itself so do you really think that we can talk, we can think about the female labor force participation rating terms of the dowry system, or the pervasive nature of it in India or South Asia. Yeah, so one thing just to clarify as you mentioned in the beginning, we in today's talk we focus really on papers that were a part of our project. And our comments were, you know, set focused around the papers of course there are many things many things that we didn't talk about and dowry being one of them. The paper on Pakistan does talk about both bright price and dowry. In terms of the relationship between dowry in India and female labor force participation decline, I doubt if you can make that direct connection, because a low level of labor force participation is one issue and the other is a decline. And I, I can't see a very obvious connection between dowry which has been pervasive. And as you say, you know, despite legally not being, it being illegal, you know, it still persists. And so I don't, I don't immediately see a direct connection with female labor force participation. What I think it reflects is a very strong some preference, and things that follow from that. It's a different conversation but maybe we can have that maybe offline sometime. I don't know if Yanaka you want to add something to this. No, maybe we should turn to the next question remaining questions. So there's a question from on who say milk is I hope you've got the name right. And I say I think I can unmute you so if you want to, you could ask a question yourself. And just a question. Thank you. Thank you so much. Alright, so my name is an issue and I'm asking about. So, um, Professor they found a you mentioned that, you know, norms that matter need to be addressed. So I'm talking about formal institutions when you're bringing a change in them is care to be exercised in that domain as well because for example. I've read about how, you know, so I'm not the same rights about the missing women in India, and the entire phenomenon that happened with sex selective abortion, despite it being, you know, legislated upon in India, and then you've got things like the adult. The marriageable age for women which is being raised in India as well recently, but we don't know what kind of unintended consequences that could have I mean child marriage is still a very big part of Indian society and if women continue to be married that way, they might be excluded from services such as the ones that are given to mothers and their children. If they are found to be a child married. So how do we exercise that, you know care in thinking about the trade off in at least a short run with these institutions. Well, you know, thank you for asking that question and there's no doubt that we, we have to be very careful in terms of formulating changes and formal institutions, especially in a country as diverse as India, multiple communities, multiple levels of development now that is child marriage is concerned. Unfortunately, don't agree with you which is that I don't think child marriage is isn't is a huge problem in India, age at marriage has been rising over time. You know that there's a lot of literature on age at marriage about how it's related to economic development and you know so India seen that same trajectory as all other countries in the world have seen you know, and so I, you know there's been excellent commentaries on the recent change that the government is trying to bring about. And personally I don't think that's what is the most pressing element of change women from working outside the home. In fact, if you criminalize marriage above 80 you know marriage below 21 for women that can have many other kinds of very disastrous consequences on families and community so I yeah, it's not. I mean that's not certainly not the biggest problem for women in India today, because in any way it's been rising over time so fertility is low. It's been rising so what's I don't see what the issue is here. I think female labor force participate in yes that is an issue that needs to be worked on. Perhaps the next question might be for you. So this is from Anna gendered Jen. And if you wanted to ask a question. Thank you. We because very much in my in our work in FAO the issue of informality in rural development in agriculture and we see this patterns, but I would like your opinion about how much the change of social norms comes from the type of agricultural employment, and whether this is there has been any evidence and especially with Aurora's paper at all, you were mentioning that there is a clear evidence that such certain public policies encourage access to go to jobs. Yeah, thank you for your question so. So maybe first I should clarify that Aurora at all paper on Latin American countries was about non agricultural employment. So, but one clear messages that industrial upgrading leads to sort of more good jobs for men but not, but less actually good jobs for women. And I think it's a very, very important question, like to what extent upgrading and modernization of agricultural jobs and agricultural value chains in low income countries is going to affect the quality of labor market outcomes or work outcomes for men and women. And I don't think we know that much about it. So, so one one comment I want to make is that it's not necessarily the case that formal employment is going to be of better quality than informal employment right so we see that when new like in Ethiopia when new industrial job opportunities become available it's not, it's not guaranteed that these are jobs with any type of security or opportunities for advancement or even decent work conditions. So I think it's, I do think it's promising to see that, you know, within within Africa if there is modernization of agricultural supply chains that would offer low income families job opportunities in more advanced agricultural production facilities. That's definitely an opportunity for well increasing their standard of living but also through exposing workers to new social networks new experiences, it could potentially contribute to shifting norms. But yeah I think we should be careful not not to sort of equate the two because, you know, low income families, the women in those families might might be pushed into sort of factory work or more formal types of jobs just out of pure economic distress and they have very little bargaining power and so, so there's always a concern that these workers are actually exploited and they don't have any opportunity to develop productive new networks and skills etc. So I think it's a very important area to study more and I also think that sometimes agricultural employment and rural employment is a bit under researched in this literature. In part because maybe the data is, is, is of lower quality I'm not sure but yeah, I'm very interested also to learn more about what FAO is doing in that direction. Yes, so Yannick actually it's also a question. Sarah, if you want to ask a question. Yes, good morning. I was really struck Yannicka by the graph in your presentation that kind of don't didn't directly show wage gaps but we're a version of wage gaps by occupation and maybe occupation and industry. Sorting across jobs with brought brought to mind Claudia Golden's work on this and I was just curious this is a literature question. The extent to which there's work in developing countries and her argument that you know greedy jobs in combination with higher household responsibilities explain wage gaps and women sorting into lower paid jobs within occupations. Yes, so basically a general literature question. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's a good question I'm. I'm not sure I've seen papers focusing on developing countries I know there's some, some new research on sort of sorting into different occupations. I know that how that relates to differences in preferences for different types of work but also differences in skills and discrimination by employers. But yeah so I know in the US did the pictures very clear that it's about the flexibility of ours or that you have to work sort of more than than 40 hour work weeks. And that sort of increases man's chances of advancing in these occupations. But no, no, I haven't, I haven't really seen any, any of that for developing countries. Can I, can I come in here. Sure, yeah. Yeah. So, Sarah, you know I have a paper in world development we've looked at regular wage and salary workers in India which is a very small segment of the workforce. And we plotted wage gaps across the entire wage distribution. And actually, in India, like in China you have not so much a glass ceiling but a sticky floor. So wage gaps are much higher at the lower end of the distribution, compared to the higher end and we also have this classic you shape where of, you know, labor force participation by education. So labor force participation rates for women with very low education and women with very high education, but it's the middle that that goes down. And for richer women in India basically outsourced the domestic chores you know, in middle class and middle class households, you hire people to do the domestic work for you. And so some of the constraints that you find in the US, you know, they work outside differently in countries, at least India, I don't know about developing countries, but certainly India. Thanks, Ashwini. There's a question from Garima. Garima, if you, if you wanted to ask a question. Hi, everyone. Thank you. My name is Garima. I'm a PhD student at the Delhi School of Economics. I was wondering this is sort of related to some of the interventions that I've studied where do you have good examples where long term changes and norms could be facilitated by interventions, which have in kind transfers. So my concern is that you know if the transfer itself isn't leading to those change in norms then is it really a sustainable policy solution. What happens when you withdraw the policy, do you go back to original behaviors and if so do we know of, of things that have worked which could be sort of replicated. Thank you. Yeah, could you clarify, Garima, what you have in mind with in kind transfers. So for instance some of my work I look at things like sanitary napkin distribution. Now, one would imagine that these are the kind of transfers that could lead to changes but those changes might be slow changes in norms might be very slow. That perhaps is still worthy of attention and one should keep doing those programs. But I was wondering if there's other examples out there where programs which I think you mentioned mitigating the effect of norms, even if not changing them. Do you know of other examples from the collective experience which one would keep in mind here. So one paper I'm now that comes to my mind is the paper by Erica Field and others when related to offering women their own bank account so that the wages from in their case public work participation are transferred to their private bank account, which sort of induce more women to actually supply labor, and then also shifted, if I remember correctly shifted how people, how men and women feel about women working in those programs. And so I'm not sure if that qualifies as an in kind transfer but it's, it's sort of an intervention where you, you know, you provide a very specific. Yeah, it's a very specific intervention with offering a private bank account and it just, I mean in that paper it really uncovers sort of how these sort of intra household processes are related to, to labor supply decisions and that that's sort of what calls will affect in both directions that you can sort of try to break this cycle by, for example, giving women more power over their own earnings. So that's one paper that comes to my mind I don't know as we need a few. Yeah, so I don't know about in kind transfers as much but you know for example if you look at the literature on the self help groups in India, you know rural groups that get formed and also certainly in Bangladesh. Huge changes in women's propensity for, you know, collective, you know, collective participation in terms of intervening in village level problems, etc, etc. So, in terms of participating in local decision making at the grassroots level, and all of that has come about as a result of just being a member of a self help group. And that need not lead to a huge change in income, but it certainly leads to a change in which women see some themselves as citizens of their rural community. So, you know, it's a fairly consistent literature and there's huge amounts of evidence so not an in kind transfer, but yeah collective action, you know, does does make a difference seems to be sustainable also, but you will see. Right. I'll just read the question because I don't think it's unmute of sheep Kumar can financial need be taken as a push factor to raise women's policy level force. And what are the role of women's social capital. And then we also had my question to this, that, and this the Anakin Ashwini, if you're to think of one policy implication, or one do you want to see the policy makers in the occasion of international women's day about women's economic empowerment, what would it be as one has shown me and one for Yankee to close. So question about financial need and social capital but also what are the big policy method that you want us to take away from from the women, the women's work project. Thanks. So financial need I mean you know in India you do see much higher labor force participation rates by the poorest women. While they are participating in, you know, basically trying to earn some money, that's what it is. So it is labor force participation but you know as Yankee mentioned, we also have to focus on the quality of employment. And so they would not the kind of work that the poorest women in India do would not count as good jobs or decent work by any stretch of the imagination. So if you're talking about women's economic empowerment, you do have to. Yes, financial need is definitely a push factor for everyone, including for women, but that should not be the reason to think of women, you know that women should get jobs because just because their families need the money in India as it turns out even the richer women, I mean it's only the middle income women that that have lower labor force participation rate so in India it's a little more complicated because you do see that that you one policy implication one policy prescription I guess create create jobs or have very clearly a gender lens when hiring and recruiting people for any kind of position. And, you know, whether it's the government or whether it's the whether it's the private sector, always pay attention to the gender composition of employees at all stages at all at all occupational levels. And maybe I would add that always pay attention to the gendered impact of your non gendered policies right and and so. And so one part of that is that we know there's this widespread and very persistent segregation of men and women in the economy. And of course, I think it's unrealistic to say you know governments should design a trade policy to stimulate job growth and female intensive sectors and occupations and not a million. That would not be but but you know, be aware that there are these gendered implications and then if, if you feel that you know we expect that this is going to generate labor demand, mostly in traditionally male dominated areas of the economy then also think about policies that attract more women to those jobs and and there is clearly a role for employers discrimination on the employer side how they advertise jobs how they try to attract new workers. And I think we know quite a lot about what at the micro level what firms can do to attract a more diverse set of workers. Thank you so much. I think I think you can come to the close of this webinar. As Ashwini and you can mention the many wider women's work project all the papers, working papers on the website on the project web page on our website the wider website. The papers are really fascinating papers and of course you can actually need the best summarize some of the key insights in the papers but of course, unless you read the papers you don't understand how rich the papers are, and how interesting they are and how much they cover the global south because they have papers in Latin America, and on something African also on Asia. So do take a look at those papers on our website on a web page of the for this project on the on really wider website. And also hopefully we will also have a general special issue coming out some point. And of course that will also help us to more, you know, help you to see exactly any also further research being done on this topic of a very important topic. Thank you very much Ashwini and Anike so much for the for this presentation and this very nice discussion of the very nice question we've got in the audience today. And, and hopefully we will see you all in the next webinar. What do you any wider web webinar, the second the next one takes place on 24 May the third webinar for this year. Again, full details are on our website, and look forward to seeing with that too. Thanks. Take care. Bye. Thank you.