March 2023 WHICH SOCIO-EMOTIONAL SKILLS MATTER MOST FOR WOMEN’S EARNINGS? NEW GENDER INNOVATION LAB INSIGHTS FROM SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) Authors: Kehinde Ajayi, Smita Das, Clara Delavallade, conducts impact evaluations of Tigist Assefa Ketema, Léa Rouanet1 development interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa, seeking Evidence on gender-specific returns to socio-emotional skills in developing to generate evidence on economies is lacking. To inform the selection of socio-emotional skills in policy how to close gender gaps in design, a new study mobilizing data from 17 African countries with 41,873 earnings, productivity, assets, respondents examines gender differences in ten self-reported socio-emotional and agency. The GIL team is skills and their relationship with education and earnings. currently working on over 80 impact evaluations in more than KEY MESSAGES 30 countries with the aim of building an evidence base with • Men report higher levels of socio-emotional skills than women, except lessons for the region. for self-control, even after accounting for positive self-concept. Prevailing gender norms and lack of access to educational opportunities The impact objective of GIL is potentially contribute to the reported gap in socio-emotional skills. increasing take-up of effective • Education and socio-emotional skills are positively correlated for both policies by governments, development organizations, men and women. However, higher levels of education are associated with and the private sector higher gender gaps in interpersonal skills. Thus, closing the educational gender to address the underlying gap might not fully address the socio-emotional skills gender gap. causes of gender inequality • Socio-emotional skills are associated with higher earnings for both in Africa, particularly in terms men and women. of women’s economic and o Intrapersonal skills (positive self-concept, emotional regulation, self- social empowerment. The Lab control, perseverance, personal initiative problem-solving and decision- aims to do this by producing making) are associated with higher income for both men and women. and delivering a new body of evidence and developing a o Women’s earnings also increase with their interpersonal skills (empathy, compelling narrative, geared expressiveness, interpersonal relatedness, and teamwork), while men’s towards policymakers, on what earnings are not significantly correlated with these skills. works and what does not work • Findings from our sample suggest that women in Sub-Saharan Africa in promoting gender equality. could benefit from training programs designed to improve their socio- emotional skills, especially interpersonal skills. 1 Cansu Birce Gokalp contributed to the preparation of this policy brief. https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab MOTIVATION WHAT WE FOUND Socio-emotional skills play an important role in shaping WOMEN HAVE LOWER SELF-REPORTED SOCIO- labor market outcomes such as earnings or job type. As EMOTIONAL SKILLS LEVELS THAN MEN such, socio-emotional skills trainings have emerged as a promising tool to improve labor market outcomes, with • Men report higher levels of socio-emotional skills than the potential to reduce the existing gender gap. However, women, looking at both aggregate and disaggregated the question of which skills matter most for women’s socio-emotional skills. In fact, except for self-control, economic empowerment, especially in the context of women report lower socio-emotional skills levels developing countries, remains largely unanswered. Yet than men for all skills considered in the study (see the structure of labor markets and social norms differ Figure 2). Our estimates show that the gender gap greatly from the Western countries where the stylized facts in overall socio-emotional skills is equivalent to the related to socio-emotional skills have been established. socio-emotional skill associated with 5.6 years of education. These findings are robust to controlling for positive self-concept, to address the potential for WHAT WE DID women to underestimate their skills. We analyzed 10 socio-emotional skills (see definitions in Figure 1) in surveys conducted in 8 Sub-Saharan African • The study distinguishes between intrapersonal and (SSA) countries (Benin, the Republic of Congo, Côte interpersonal skills and finds that the gender gap d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Togo) is even greater for intrapersonal than interpersonal and under the Future of Business Survey, which includes skills. Additionally, we find that intrapersonal skills are 15 SSA countries. more widely measured than interpersonal skills. We hypothesize that gender norms could partly explain In our total sample of 41,873 individuals, 42.7% of the these gender differences in socio-emotional skills. respondents are women; most are adults in both urban and rural areas, and the average age is 36 years old. FIGURE 1: DEFINITION OF 10 SOCIO-EMOTIONAL SKILLS INTRAPERSONAL INTERPERSONAL Positive Self Concept: Identifying and Empathy: Understanding another’s viewpoint interpreting one’s own thoughts and behaviors or thoughts and have emotional concern and evaluating one’s strengths and weakness and for another’s situation or experience knowing your preferences, values and biases Emotional Regulation: Maintaining or Expressiveness: Explaining ideas in a way that others changing one’s own emotions by controlling will understand and openly express one’s opinion one’s thoughts and behavioral responses Perseverance: Sustaining effort despite setbacks Interpersonal Relatedness: Taking actions intended to build trust and benefit others, initiating Personal Initiative: Developing long-term goals and and maintaining relationships and being respectful, putting these goals into action under one’s own volition encouraging and caring towards others Problem Solving: Approaching a problem by gathering information, generating a number Teamwork: Taking other’s perspective, listen and of solutions and evaluating the consequences communicate in groups of two or more people, of these solutions before acting identifying situations involving group problem-solving Self-Control: Focusing one’s attention, and decision-making, and organizing and coordinating staying on task, breaking habits, restraining team members to create shared plans and goals impulses and keeping good self-discipline EDUCATION MIGHT NOT BE ENOUGH TO CLOSE SOCIO-EMOTIONAL SKILLS ARE LINKED TO THE GENDER GAP IN SOCIO-EMOTIONAL SKILLS HIGHER EARNINGS • Schooling is positively correlated with socio- • Accounting for demographic and educational emotional skills development, as higher levels of characteristics, women in our sample earn 56% less socio-emotional skills are found among men and than their male counterparts. Given that men have women with higher levels of education. This gap is significantly higher levels of socio-emotional skills, mainly driven by the fact that women without formal one might be interested in the relationship between schooling report lower levels of competence in 3 socio-emotional skills and earnings. out of 6 intrapersonal skills: perseverance, personal • We find that socio-emotional skills are associated with initiative, and problem-solving and decision-making. higher earnings for both men and women, but the Yet, these women hold an advantage over men type of socio-emotional skills driving this relationship regarding self-control and expressiveness. differs by gender (see Figure 3). • We also find that gender differences in socio- • Intrapersonal skills are associated with higher income emotional skills increase as education level increases. for both men and women. However, a high level of This holds for each interpersonal skill, along with positive self-concept is more strongly correlated with emotional regulation and self-control (6 out of 10 income for men than for women, while women’s socio-emotional skills). earnings increase more as perseverance increases. • These findings imply that education might not fully • Women’s earnings also increase with their overcome gender inequalities in terms of socio- interpersonal skills, while men’s earnings are not emotional skills level and may even widen inequalities significantly correlated with these skills. Thus, for some socio-emotional skills. Thus, closing the expressiveness and teamwork correspond to higher gender gap in education would only close about 17% earnings for women, even though these two skills are of the gender gap in socio-emotional skills. the lowest reported ones among educated women. FIGURE 2: GENDER DIFFERENCES FIGURE 3: CORRELATION WITH EARNINGS IN SOCIO-EMOTIONAL SKILLS Women Men All All Intra Intra Inter Inter Positive Self Concept Positive Self Concept Emotional Regulation Emotional Regulation Perseverance Perseverance Personal Initiative Personal Initiative Problem solving and Problem solving and decision Making decision Making Self control Self control Empathy Empathy Expressiveness Expressiveness Interpersonal Interpersonal Relatedness Relatedness Teamwork Teamwork These findings suggest that the current education system may not allow women to acquire, during their schooling, the socio-emotional skills that could benefit them the most in terms of earnings once they enter the labor market. EDUCATED MEN AND WOMEN HAVE THE HIGHEST CORRELATION BETWEEN SOCIO-EMOTIONAL SKILLS AND EARNINGS • While labor market outcomes improve as intrapersonal skills rise for both educated and uneducated men, education for men heralds a stronger positive correlation between earnings and intrapersonal skills, mainly by indicating a switch from a negative to a positive association with expressiveness and interpersonal relatedness. • Socio-emotional skills are not significantly associated with higher earnings for women without education. On the contrary, earnings are positively correlated with both intrapersonal and interpersonal skills for women with the highest education levels. • Overall, the positive link between social-emotional skills and earnings increases with education, and this is especially true for women. Yet the channels through which education plays a role seem to differ between men and women, as while education is associated with a higher positive correlation between earnings and interpersonal skills for men, it is associated with a higher positive correlation between earnings and intrapersonal skills for women. CONCLUSION Evidence from the existing literature shows that socio-emotional skills positively influence labor market outcomes. Findings from our sample suggest that women in Sub-Saharan Africa could benefit from training programs designed to improve their socio-emotional skills, as women earn on average 54% less than men and report lower levels of socio-emotional skills. Educational attainment, which likely contributes to the increase of socio- emotional skills for both men and women, might not be enough to eliminate gender differences in socio-emotional skills, since even among the most educated individuals, women still have lower levels of socio-emotional skills than FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT men. Cansu Birce Gokalp Research on the relationship between socio-emotional skills and labor market cgokalp@worldbank.org outcomes should be deepened to improve the design of future programs teaching socio-emotional skills in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that public Africa Gender Innovation Lab interventions seeking to equip women with interpersonal skills (e.g., teamwork, afrgenderlab@worldbank.org expressiveness, and interpersonal relatedness) may provide an effective pathway 1818 H St NW to reduce gender disparities in the labor market. Washington, DC 20433 USA www.worldbank.org/africa/gil Photo credit: Trevor Samson / World Bank