Publication: What Do We Know About Interventions to Increase Women’s Economic Participation and Empowerment in South Asia?
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2021-06
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2021-06
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The World Bank’s South Asia Region Gender Innovation Lab is conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions with direct or indirect effects on measures of women’s economic empowerment. The review focuses on changes in labor force participation, employment, income, and empowerment outcomes. The goal is to document what has worked and has not for women in the region (covering all countries; Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), the types of interventions implemented, and identifiable gaps in knowledge and action. The review organizes interventions in six broad categories: skills, assets, credit, labor market, entrepreneurship, and empowerment. This note summarizes the main findings from skill-building interventions.
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“World Bank. 2021. What Do We Know About Interventions to Increase Women’s Economic Participation and Empowerment in South Asia?. Systematic Review On Women’s Economic Empowerment. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35963 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication What do We Know About Interventions to Increase Women’s Economic Participation and Empowerment in South Asia?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-09)The World Bank’s South Asia Region Gender Innovation Lab (SAR GIL) is conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions with direct or indirect effects on measures of women’s economic empowerment. The review focuses on changes in labor force participation, employment, income, and empowerment outcomes. The goal is to document what has worked and what has not for women in the region (covering all countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), the types of interventions implemented, and identifiable gaps in knowledge and action. The review organizes interventions in six broad categories: skills, assets, credit, labor market, entrepreneurship, and empowerment. This note summarizes the main findings from asset transfer interventions and changes in inheritance and property right policies.Publication What do We Know About Interventions to Increase Women’s Economic Participation and Empowerment in South Asia?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-04-07)The World Bank’s South Asia Region Gender Innovation Lab (SARGIL) is conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions with direct or indirect effects on measures of women’s economic empowerment. The review focuses on changes in labor market outcomes, income, and other empowerment indicators. The goal is to document what has and has not worked for women in the region (covering all countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), understand the types of interventions implemented, and identify gaps in knowledge and action. Interventions are organized into five categories: Skills, Assets, Financial Products, Care, and Empowerment. This brief summarizes the main findings from the financial products category.Publication What Do We Know About Interventions to Increase Women’s Economic Participation and Empowerment in South Asia(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-25)The Care category covers interventions and mandates that reduce the care burden on women and, consequently, enable them to participate as active economic agents. For the review, care responsibilities are defined as activities that keep women engaged in looking after members of their household. Particularly, the review explores care activities that prevent women of working age from entering the labor force, both at the extensive and intensive margins. Household care activities include childcare, elder care, and care for the sick and disabled. The research for this review accounts for interventions that reduce this burden of care on women and enable them to enter or re-enter the work force. First, this includes childcare services—those provided by the government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private and employer-provided, or supported onsite childcare. Second, it accounts for policies or mandates that provide women with care services and childcare mandates. It also includes additional mandates that provide families with tax breaks, vouchers, and subsidy benefits to help with care responsibilities, and it accounts for labor market regulations, such as leave, family-friendly policies, and arrangements. Lastly, the review excludes policies or programs that provide education to school-age children beyond the pre-school level.Publication Promoting Women's Economic Empowerment : What Works?(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-11)A review of rigorous evaluations of interventions that seek to empower women economically shows that the same class of interventions has significantly different outcomes depending on the client. Capital alone, as a small cash loan or grant, is not sufficient to grow women-owned subsistence-level firms. However, it can work if it is delivered in-kind to more successful women microentrepreneurs, and it should boost the performance of women's larger-sized SMEs. Very poor women need a more intensive package of services than do less poor women to break out of subsistence production and grow their businesses. What works for young women does not necessarily work for adult women. Skills training, job search assistance, internships, and wage subsidies increase the employment levels of adult women but do not raise wages. However, similar interventions increase young women's employability and earnings if social restrictions are not binding. Women who run subsistence-level firms face additional social constraints when compared to similar men, thus explaining the differences in the outcomes of some loans, grants, and training interventions that favor men. Social constraints may also play a role in explaining women's outcome gains that are short-lasting or emerge with a delay. The good news is that many of the additional constraints that women face can be overcome by simple, inexpensive adjustments in program design that lessen family and social pressures. These include providing capital in-kind or transacted through the privacy of a mobile phone and providing secure savings accounts to nudge women to keep the money in the business rather than to divert it to non-business uses.Publication The Economic Participation of Adolescent Girls and Young Women : Why Does It Matter?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-12)This note summarizes available research on the impact of schooling and employment of adolescent girls and young women on earnings and poverty reduction, demographic outcomes, child development outcomes, and female empowerment. It identifies key implications of this research for the formulation of public policy.
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