Africa Gender Innovation Lab

95 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/25446

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.

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Policy Solutions to Close Gender Gaps in the Agriculture Sector in Nigeria
(Washington, DC, 2022-07) World Bank
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.
Coping with COVID-19 Shocks in Western Uganda
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-09) Sharma, Ambika; Gruver, Ariel; Montalvao, Joao; O'Sullivan, Michael
In Western Uganda, women farmers and their households were facing widespread agricultural and non-agricultural income shocks in September 2020, indicating a protracted crisis. To cope with these shocks, many households liquidated productive agricultural assets. Women who had higher decision-making power within the household before the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, appeared to cope better with post-outbreak shocks by engaging in more income-generating activities and having better food security in the household.
What’s Mine is Yours: Pilot Evidence from a Randomized Impact Evaluation on Property Rights and Women’s Empowerment in Cote d’Ivoire
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06) Donald, Aletheia; Goldstein, Markus; Hartman, Alexandra; La Ferrara, Eliana; O'Sullivan, Michael; Stickler, Mercedes
The protection of formal institutions can help to strengthen women’s property rights, potentially improving welfare and economic efficiency of the household with broader implications. Individual land certification in women’s names and civil marriage registration offer two routes for women towards a more formal delineation of their property rights. In the context of the World Bank Land Policy Improvement and Implementation Project (PAMOFOR), this pilot project examines what drives the take-up of innovative interventions that aim to strengthen women’s property rights in rural Cote d’Ivoire: providing economic incentives for a man to register land in his wife’s name, shifting attitudes through an emotionally resonant video, and encouraging civil marriage in the wake of a new legal reform. Pilot results show how highlighting the benefits of women’s land ownership for family harmony, economic efficiency, and security for the family can induce husbands to reallocate land to their wives.
COVID-19 Impacts on Women Factory Workers in Ethiopia: Results from High-Frequency Phone Surveys
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06) Ajayi, Kehinde; Buehren, Niklas; Ebrahim, Menaal; Hailemicheal, Adiam
As the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to disrupt international supply chains and local economies, workers employed in export-oriented industries are likely to experience both demand and supply shocks due to the crisis. In Ethiopia, a slowed global economy can pose a significant threat to the country’s industrial parks and their factories in the female-concentrated garment industry, forcing them to lay off workers or even shut down their operations. To monitor the potential effects of the pandemic and support the design of evidence-based policy responses, the gender innovation policy initiative for Ethiopia (GIPIE) is conducting a high-frequency phone survey on a sample of 323 recently hired female factory workers in Ethiopia. This brief reports on the first two waves of data collected between late March and late May 2020, showing the evolution of this sample of female workers’ employment status, earnings, and expectations over the course of the pandemic. Due to the size of the sample and the fact that it only includes recent hires at the Bole Lemi Industrial Park, the results may not generalize for the full population of women factory workers in industrial parks. Data collection from the ongoing high-frequency phone survey of women factory workers in Bole Lemi Industrial Park will continue in the coming months, with recurring surveys every month for a total of 6 rounds. By tracking the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, these data collection efforts aim to equip policymakers with timely, actionable data to better design and implement policy responses in support of Ethiopia’s women factory workers.
Reducing the Agricultural Gender Gap in Cote d'Ivoire: How has it Changed?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-02) Donald, Aletheia; Lawin, Gabriel; Rouanet, Lea; Rouanet, Léa
Over the last decade, Cote d’Ivoire has witnessed a remarkable shrinking of its gender gap in agricultural productivity. When comparing similar households, the gender gap has been reduced by 32 percent.
Competing Priorities: How Household Income Management Affects Women’s Microenterprises in Urban Ghana
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01-08) Pierotti, Rachael; Friedson-Ridenour, Sophia
Cash grants often lead to increases in business profits for male entrepreneurs, but not for female entrepreneurs. This study identifies key household-level factors that constrain women’s ability to grow their business. Through in-depth qualitative research, it provides evidence that intrahousehold relationships influence the business decisions of female microentrepreneurs in urban Ghana. Intrahousehold relationships constrain the decisions women make about their businesses in three primary ways: 1) women hide income and sometimes limit investment in an effort to reinforce their husband’s responsibilities as a primary provider and secure sufficient support, 2) women prioritize savings to meet daily household needs, cover shortfalls in their husband’s financial support, and take care of emergencies, and 3) marital insecurity encourages women to dedicate business income to long-term investments independent of their husbands, such as property or children’s’ education. Efforts to support women microentrepreneurs will need to address barriers to women’s ability to meet daily household needs and to plan for long-term security, in addition to relieving capital constraints. Policy responses could include increasing security by improving marital property rights for women or improving social safety nets to change the calculus that leads women to prioritize savings over investment.
GIL Top Policy Lessons on Increasing Women’s Youth Employment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01) World Bank
Young women in Africa are less likely to be employed than young men, as a result of gaps in access to resources such as skills, time, and capital, and due to underlying social norms. Adolescence is a particularly critical time to intervene, as teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school can have severe impacts on future employment and earnings with significant consequences on their lives. At the macroeconomic level, investing in adolescent girls is also crucial for Sub-Saharan Africa`s demographic dividend.
Empowering Adolescent Girls in a Crisis Context: Lessons from Sierra Leone in the Time of Ebola
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-07) Bandiera, Oriana; Buehren, Niklas; Goldstein, Markus; Rasul, Imran; Smurra, Andrea
In Sierra Leone, the empowerment and livelihoods for adolescents (ELA) initiative sought to enhance adolescent girls’ social and economic empowerment by providing life skills training, livelihood training, and credit support to start income-generating activities. The Ebola crisis occurred during the project, resulting in curbed implementation. In contrast, younger girls (12 to 17 years old) who resided in communities that benefitted from the program in high Ebola disruption areas were more likely to be in school and saw their numeracy and literacy levels improve. However, as younger women spend less time with men in the presence of ELA, men likely shift their attention to older girls: the evaluation finds an increase in unwanted and transactional sex by older girls in areas highly exposed to the Ebola crisis. As the program was implemented, the Ebola epidemic hit Sierra Leone. First, in an effort to stem the spread of the disease, the government-imposed quarantines, limited travel, and closed public spaces such as markets in certain areas, which significantly impacted the economic activities of men and women. Second, schools were closed for an entire academic year. Finally, Sierra Leone’s limited health resources were diverted into caring for patients and preventing the spread of the epidemic, limiting their ability to attend to other issues such as sexual and reproductive health. These results show how safe spaces interventions can be effective even in the face of large-scale shocks such as Ebola crises as seen in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, as well as other shocks constraining economic and social life, by buffering girls from the adverse effects of crises.
What Are the Economic Costs of Gender Gaps in Ethiopia?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-03) Buehren, Niklas; Gonzalez, Paula; Copley, Amy
Despite Ethiopia’s remarkable economic progress over the past decade, gender gaps in key economic activities - agriculture, entrepreneurship, and wage employment - indicate that challenges remain to realizing the full potential of women’s economic empowerment. Differences in simple averages between men and women show that women lag men by 36 percent in agricultural productivity, by 79 percent in business sales, and by 44 percent in hourly wages. This brief examines the costs of these gender gaps and estimates the potential gains from closing them.
Making It Easier for Women in Malawi to Formalize Their Firms and Access Financial Services
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01-28) Campos, Francisco; Goldstein, Markus; McKenzie, David
The rate of informal firms is high in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially for those that are women-owned and in the poorest countries, despite a total of 107 business regulatory reforms recorded by Doing Business across 40 economies in the region. Through an experiment in Malawi, we established an effective and replicable design to offer informal firms support to formalize, costing much less than the typical private sector development intervention. The study shows that one of the primary barriers to registration for women-owned firms is transaction costs. When registration is madevirtually costless, an overwhelming number of women-owned firms (73 percent) choose to register. However, when offered the chance to engage in costless registration for taxes, almost no firms select to pursue this opt ion. Combining business registration with an information session at a bank including the offer of a business bank account leads to an increased use of formal financial services, and results in increases in women owned firms sales and profits of 28 percent and 20 percent respectively. On the other hand, business registration on its own is not as effective in improving access to financial services and does not result in enhanced sales and profits.