Africa Gender Innovation Lab
80 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
The Gender Innovation
Lab (GIL) conducts impact
evaluations of development
interventions in Sub-Saharan
Africa, seeking to generate
evidence on how to close
the gender gap in earnings,
productivity, assets and
agency. The GIL team is
currently working on over
50 impact evaluations in 21
countries with the aim of
building an evidence base
with lessons for the region.
Items in this collection
1 - 7 of 7
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Publication
Evening the Credit Score: Can Psychometric Credit-Scoring Address Collateral Constraints for Women Entrepreneurs?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-13)Despite gender parity in access to microfinance, and many group-based microfinance schemes favoring women, women face more difficulty than men in getting loans of larger size, longer duration, individual liability, and more flexible terms that may promote firm growth.1 In Ethiopia, as in many contexts where credit information systems are in their infancy, financial institutions typically impose stringent collateral requirements for larger loans. Women are less likely than men to own large, collateralizable assets such as housing, land, or vehicles due to inheritance practices, unequal land ownership laws, and social customs. Innovative solutions to replace or reduce the reliance on fixed-asset collateral may help to expand access to capital for growth-oriented women owned firms. -
Publication
Taking Control: How Financial Inclusion Impacts Labor Supply
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-13)Social and familial financial transfers are common in low-income communities and have positive social effects. To address this challenge, the authors designed and implemented a financial innovation to lower redistributive pressure among female cashew-processing workers: a blocked savings account into which gains in workers’ earnings get transferred. Take-up of the private account was substantially higher at 60 percent, compared to 14 percent for the non-private account. Being offered a private account increased workers’ attendance by 9.7 percent and earnings by 11.4 percent. The estimates imply that workers face a 9-23 percent social tax rate, and that the welfare benefits of informal redistribution may come at the cost of depressing labor supply and productivity. -
Publication
Helping Female Entrepreneurs Access Digital Platforms: The Importance of a Tech-Plus-Touch Approach and Other Lessons Learned - Case Study 1
(World Bank, Washington DC, 2023-03-12)Connecting female entrepreneurs to digital platforms that provide access to information and resources is possible, even in low-income and low-bandwidth settings. However, supporting initial take-up may require traditional, in-person marketing and onboarding. This brief shares lessons from a pilot of a digital mentoring platform in Ethiopia. The target users were female entrepreneurs in Ethiopia’s Somali region. The pilot found that on-boarding female entrepreneurs to digital platforms and helping them progress through the user experience is possible, but also suggests that thoughtful design modifications are critical. These modifications include: (a) using old-fashioned marketing strategies; (b) adopting a tech-plus-touch approach; (c) prioritizing a mobile-first low-bandwidth option; (d) simplifying onboarding requirements; and (e) providing educational and guidance resources. -
Publication
Policy Solutions to Close Gender Gaps in the Agriculture Sector in Nigeria
(Washington, DC, 2022-07)Substantial gender gaps exist in labor force participation and productivity in the agriculture sector in Nigeria. Closing the gender productivity gap in agriculture could lead to sizable gains in the Nigerian economy, boosting gross domestic product. Key factors driving the gender gaps in agriculture include women farmers’ limited use of farm inputs, choice of lowvalue crops, and lower productivity of hired labor. To successfully close gender gaps, policy makers not only need a detailed account of what drives these gaps, but also a rigorous evidence base on cost-effective policy options. This brief offers guidance on interventions that could be adopted to address the underlying constraints faced by women farmers in Nigeria. These recommendations could also meaningfully inform the framework and implementation of the National Gender Policy on Agriculture. -
Publication
Two Heads are Better Than One: Agricultural Production and Investment in Côte d’Ivoire
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-05)Increasing agricultural productivity and investment is critical to reducing poverty, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture remains the dominant income-generating activity. One potential way to promote investment and improve the efficiency of household farm production is to empower women as co-managers and facilitate the coordination of production decisions within the family. The authors test this approach in Côte d’Ivoire through a couples training delivered to rubber producers, and find that including women in economic planning improved the efficiency of household farm production and promoted higher levels of investment. -
Publication
Addressing Gender-Based Occupational Segregation: Experimental Evidence from the Republic of Congo
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-01)Gender-based occupational segregation - the fact that men and women are typically concentrated in different occupations and economic sectors - contributes to gender gaps in earnings. In an experiment in the Republic of Congo, the authors examine whether addressing informational constraints around returns from male dominated sectors can encourage young women to apply for training in more profitable male-dominated sectors. There is high potential for interventions that pair information on returns and trade exposure. However, there are gender gaps in access to early opportunities, mainly relevant technical experience and network connections. Providing information on earnings is a low-cost intervention that can encourage young women to crossover to more lucrative trades, thereby reducing the gender gap in earnings. -
Publication
New Insights on Women’s Employment in Ethiopia’s Industrial Parks
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-10-01)Low take-up of job offers and high early turnover continue to affect employment of Ethiopia’s female factory workers. Despite starting factory work around the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the women in our sample still left factory employment primarily for voluntary reasons unrelated to COVID-19. This is consistent with early separation being a longer-term feature of factory employment. Women who voluntarily left their factory jobs reported they had received wages close to the minimum of what they were expecting. Much of the COVID-related separations we observe are “voluntary”, with women choosing to leave factory jobs and mainly staying at home due to personal health concerns. Therefore, while measures to reinforce input chains and demand for factory orders remain key, immediate interventions to address workers’ health and safety concerns are crucial to counter voluntary quitting in times of a public health crisis.