Publication: Barriers to Entry: Decomposing the Gender Gap in Job Search in Urban Pakistan
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Date
2025-06-13
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Published
2025-06-13
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Abstract
Gender gaps in labor market outcomes persist in South Asia. An open question is whether supply- or demand-side constraints play a larger role. This paper investigates this using matched data from three sources in Lahore, Pakistan: representative samples of jobseekers and employers, administrative data from a job matching platform, and an incentivized binary choice experiment. Employers’ gender restrictions are a larger constraint on women’s job opportunities than supply-side decisions. This demand-side gap in the quantity of job opportunities closes as education levels increase and jobs become more “white-collar.”
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“Gentile, Elisabetta; Kohli, Nikita; Subramanian, Nivedhitha; Tirmazee, Zunia; Vyborny, Kate. 2025. Barriers to Entry: Decomposing the Gender Gap in Job Search in Urban Pakistan. Policy Research Working Paper; 11142. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43332 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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