Publication: Can Job Training Decrease Women's Self-Defeating Biases? Experimental Evidence from Nigeria
Loading...
Published
2018-10
ISSN
Date
2018-10-02
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Gender-based occupational segregation – where women are concentrated in low-paid or low-profit sectors – is a non-trivial source of the gender wage gap worldwide, accounting for as much as 50 percent of the gap in some countries (World Bank 2011). There is evidence that women's biases about their own potential can affect their performance and aspirations. Through an experiment in Nigeria, we found that an information and communications technology (ICT) training resulted in university graduates being 26 percent more likely to work in the ICT sector.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Croke, Kevin; Goldstein, Markus; Holla, Alaka. 2018. Can Job Training Decrease Women's Self-Defeating Biases? Experimental Evidence from Nigeria. Gender Innovation Lab Policy Brief;No. 28. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30495 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Can Job Training Decrease Women’s Self-Defeating Biases?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-07)Occupational segregation is a central contributor to the gap between male and female earnings worldwide. As new sectors of employment emerge, a key question is whether this pattern is replicated. This paper examines this question by focusing on the emerging information and communications technology sector in Nigeria. Using a randomized control trial, the paper examines the impacts of an information and communications technology training intervention that targeted university graduates in five major cities. The analysis finds that after two years the treatment group was 26 percent more likely to work in the information and communications technology sector. The program appears to have succeeded only in shifting employment to the new sector, as it had no average impact on the overall likelihood of being employed. However, viewed through the lens of occupational segregation, the program had a surprising effect. For women who at baseline were implicitly biased against associating women with professional attributes, the likelihood that the program induced switching into the information and communications technology sector was more than three times as large than that of unbiased women. These results suggest that training programs can help individuals overcome self-defeating biases that could hamper mobility and reduce efficiency in the labor market.Publication Designing Targeted Business Trainings for Impact(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-07)Business training in low-income countries have scarcely shown impacts on revenues and profits, especially for female entrepreneurs. In this study, we test two kinds of trainings, one basic in-class training and one enhanced version supplemented with individualized coaching, to test their respective impact on women with established small businesses in Tanzania. We found that targeting the right entrepreneurs can improve the effectiveness of a tailored training and even lead to improvements in performance. We also determined that the content and delivery method of business support provided to the female entrepreneurs impact their adoption of business practices.Publication Up before Dawn(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01)Small-scale cross-border trade provides opportunities for economic gains in many developing countries. Yet cross-border traders -- many of whom are women -- face harassment and corruption, which can undermine these potential gains. This paper presents evidence from a randomized controlled trial of a training intervention that provided access to information on procedures, tariffs, and rights to small-scale traders to facilitate border crossings, lower corruption, and reduce gender-based violence along the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)–Rwanda border. The training reduces bribe payment by 5 percentage points in the full sample and by 27.5 percentage points on average among compliers. The training also reduces the incidence of gender-based violence by 5.4 percentage points (30.5 percentage points among compliers). The paper assesses competing explanations for the impacts using a game-theoretic model based on Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty framework. The effects are achieved through early border crossings at unofficial hours (exit) instead of traders' use of voice mechanisms or reduced rent-seeking from border officials. These results highlight the need to improve governance and establish clear cross-border trade regulations, particularly on the DRC side of the border.Publication The Profits of Wisdom(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-12)Business training programs in low-income settings have shown limited, if any, impacts on firm revenues and profits, particularly for female entrepreneurs. This paper uses a randomized design to compare the impacts of two types of business training programs targeting women with established small businesses in urban Tanzania. The basic version of the training relied on in-class sessions to strengthen the managerial and technical skills of the participants. In the enhanced version, training was supplemented by individual visits from business coaches to the sites of participants’ activities, as well as other services tailored to their individual needs. The study finds no impact of the basic training on business practices and business outcomes. Participants in the enhanced training are more likely to adopt new practices, but show no effects for revenue or profits, on average. However, the average masks large heterogeneous effects: entrepreneurs with low levels of experience show reduced revenues; those with more experience benefit from the program. This finding suggests that business training programs may have greater impacts if they are more carefully targeted.Publication How Should the Government Bring Small Firms into the Formal System? Experimental Evidence from Malawi(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10)Developing country governments seek to reduce the pervasive informality of firms for multiple reasons: increasing the tax base, helping firms access formal markets and grow, increasing the rule of law, and as a means to obtain data that can be used for other government functions. However, there is debate as to the best approach for achieving these goals. This study conducted a randomized experiment in Malawi to test three alternatives: (a) assisting firms to obtain a business registration certificate that offers access to formal markets but imposes no tax obligations; (b) assisting firms to obtain business registration and tax registration; and (c) supplementing the assistance to obtain business registration with a bank information session intended to help firms utilize one of the key potential benefits of formalizing. The study finds incredibly high demand for obtaining a formal status that is separate from tax obligations, and very low take-up of tax registration. Business registration alone has no impact on access to formal markets or firm performance. However, coupling registration assistance with the bank information session increases the use of formal financial services, and results in increases in firm sales by 20 percent and profits by 15 percent. The results highlight the advantages of separating business and tax registration, but also the need to assist firms in benefiting from their new formal status.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Services Unbound(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-09)Services are a new force for innovation, trade, and growth in East Asia and Pacific. The dramatic diffusion of digital technologies and partial policy reforms in services--from finance, communication, and transport to retail, health, and education--is transforming these economies. The result is higher productivity and changing jobs in the services sector, as well as in the manufacturing sectors that use these services. A region that has thrived through openness to trade and investment in manufacturing still maintains innovation-inhibiting barriers to entry and competition in key services sectors. 'Services Unbound: Digital Technologies and Policy Reform in East Asia and Pacific' makes the case for deeper domestic reforms and greater international cooperation to unleash a virtuous cycle of increased economic opportunity and enhanced human capacity that would power development in the region.Publication Morocco Economic Update, Winter 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03)Despite the drought causing a modest deceleration of overall GDP growth to 3.2 percent, the Moroccan economy has exhibited some encouraging trends in 2024. Non-agricultural growth has accelerated to an estimated 3.8 percent, driven by a revitalized industrial sector and a rebound in gross capital formation. Inflation has dropped below 1 percent, allowing Bank al-Maghrib to begin easing its monetary policy. While rural labor markets remain depressed, the economy has added close to 162,000 jobs in urban areas. Morocco’s external position remains strong overall, with a moderate current account deficit largely financed by growing foreign direct investment inflows, underpinned by solid investor confidence indicators. Despite significant spending pressures, the debt-to-GDP ratio is slowly declining.Publication The Mexican Social Protection System in Health(World Bank, Washington DC, 2013-01)With a population of 113 million and a per-capita Gross Domestic Product, or GDP of US$10,064 (current U.S. dollars), Mexico is one of the largest and highest-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The country has benefited from sustained economic growth during the last decade, which was temporarily interrupted by the financial and economic crisis. Real GDP is projected to grow 3.8 percent and 3.6 percent in 2012 and 2013, respectively (International Monetary Fund, or IMF 2012). Despite this growth, poverty in the country remains high; with half of the population living below the national poverty line. The country is also highly heterogeneous, with large socioeconomic differences across states and across urban and rural areas. In 2010, while the extreme poverty ratio in the Federal District and the states of Colima and Nuevo Leon was below 3 percent, in Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca it was 25 percent or higher. These large regional differences are also found in other indicators of well-being, such as years of schooling, housing conditions, and access to social services. This case study assesses key features and achievements of the Social Protection System in Health (Sistema de Proteccion Social en Salud) in Mexico, and particularly of its main pillar, Popular Health Insurance (Seguro Popular, PHI). It analyzes the contribution of this policy to the establishment and implementation of universal health coverage in Mexico. In 2003, with the reform of the General Health Law, the PHI was institutionalized as a subsidized health insurance scheme open to the population not covered by the social security schemes. Today, the PHI covers all of its intended affiliates, about 52 million peoplePublication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.