This study is published within the UNU-WIDER project Transforming informal work and livelihoods.

Motivation Mass adult immunization for COVID‐19, coupled with the urgency, is a challenge for any lower‐middle‐income country (LMIC) like Bangladesh. Our analysis focuses on demand‐side constraints early in the vaccination campaign to help gauge vaccine acceptability and potential contributing factors. Identifying registration and compliance challenges early on will help ensure a seamless immunization programme. Purpose We seek to identify subgroups who may need specific interventions by comparing willingness to be vaccinated and registration behaviour, and to understand how actual registration and take‐up decisions compare between rural and urban slum regions. Approach and Methods We use data from three surveys conducted between late January and early September 2021. The article includes a nationally representative survey on vaccine acceptability and a study on vaccination rollout behaviour in rural and urban slums. Findings Willingness was not an issue in Bangladesh, but the weak link was getting individuals to register. Once they did, compliance was very high. When the information gap regarding registration was addressed by campaigning, registration and take‐up increased. Confidence in public service delivery influenced favourable responses to mass immunization efforts. Women were falling behind initially in terms of both registration knowledge and completion. Online registration needed to be complemented with alternatives. Social networking was a vital source of information and encouragement. Policy implications Communication strategies are necessary to inform the public at an early stage, which should provide information about registration eligibility and detailed registration instructions. Ensuring and sustaining service quality will also be beneficial. In LMICs like Bangladesh, low‐tech intensive registration methods are required. Information campaigns about the registration procedure should specifically target rural communities and women. Community‐based mechanisms may reduce transaction costs and increase confidence.

In Bangladesh, despite increased participation in the labour market in recent decades, women are still lagging behind men by a significant margin, with the former being concentrated chiefly in low-paid agriculture as well as in the lower stages of the occupational ladder. With the help of the latest labour market data of 2016–2017 coupled with 2011 census data, this article attempts to examine gender segregation through sectoral and occupational lenses. Our econometric estimation of different sectors (agriculture, manufacturing, construction and service) reflects the importance of gender-centric factors such as care burden and marital status along with local employment opportunities in constraining women’s labour market engagement. Besides, decomposition analysis highlights that unfavourable returns to endowments play a crucial role in females’ concentration in relatively low-productive sectors. Sectoral and occupational segregation indices reflect a high degree of segregation between men and women. Thus, against the backdrop of the concentration of women in low-skilled jobs and a low-productive sector, this article expects to provide important policy insights for boosting female employment in relatively high-productive sectors and high-paid occupations while utilizing the structural shift in the labour market of Bangladesh. JEL Classifications: J16, J21, J71, J62, C25, O53

With deep-seated gender imbalances prevalent in Bangladesh, it is compelling to understand how those women, who do manage to get employed, are faring in terms of equity. A popular approach involves analysing the gender wage gap across the entire distribution. With the assistance of the latest data from QLFS 2016-2017, the gender wage gap is decomposed, with selection issues addressed by Buchinsky (J Appl Econom 13(1):1-30, 1998) method. The paper has then proceeded to posit the existence of a strong sticky floor effect and a weaker glass ceiling effect in Bangladesh, with discriminatory rewards to observed characteristics being the dominant feature of the observed wage gap across the entire distribution. Women face discrimination at the bottom end chiefly due to differences in returns. On the other hand, women at the top are subject to extensive discrimination despite being superior to men in terms of endowment. Consequently, low-earning women require access to jobs which reward their skills as much as their male counterparts; the same holds true for the high-income group. There is also evidence of selection bias for both genders. Policy prescriptions based on these findings and potential avenues for further scope concerning the paper are also mentioned in the end.