On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women’s Financial Control Impacts Labor Supply and Gender Norms

Abstract

Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and influence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners, we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program were directly deposited into these accounts or into the male household head's account (the status quo). Women in a random subset of villages were also trained on account use. In the short run, relative to women just offered bank accounts, those who also received direct deposit and training increased their labor supply in the public and private sectors. In the long run, gender norms liberalized: women who received direct deposit and training became more accepting of female work, and their husbands perceived fewer social costs to having a wife who works. These effects were concentrated in households with otherwise lower levels of, and stronger norms against, female work. Women in these households also worked more in the long run and became more empowered. These patterns are consistent with models of household decisionmaking in which increases in bargaining power from greater control over income interact with, and influence, gender norms.

The role of financial inclusion in driving women’s economic empowerment

“…In Niger, funnelling cash transfer payments to mobile accounts helped decrease costs of accessing the money, while improving women's bargaining power and household consumption outcomes (Aker et al 2016). In India, channelling workfare payments to women's own bank accounts (instead of their husbands' accounts) increased women's engagement in the labour market (Field et al 2016). Based on this evidence, we have developed an approach known as "D3": digitising social protection programmes, directing payments into women's accounts, and designing the programme so that they expand women's economic opportunities.…”

“…These cases suggest that the digitisation of G2P transfer payments can be a powerful accelerant to draw women into DFS, overcoming the supply-and-demand side barriers women face, and helping them to move into account ownership and usage at scale. Yet we know that digitising G2P alone may not be successful if we do not also recognise and address barriers facing women in adoption and usage of DFS (Field et al 2016). These barriers include low intra-household bargaining power, social norms that dictate women's earnings are at the command of male family members, and gendered mobility restrictions that can reduce women's ability to access financial services and mobile money agents (Duflo 2012;Doss 2013).…”

Maternal Depression, Women’s Empowerment, and Parental Investment: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial

“…First, we contribute to a growing literature on women's empowerment (Duflo, 2012;Almas et al, 2015), offering the first evidence that treating perinatal depression may improve women's financial empowerment in the medium term. Many successful interventions for women's empowerment (education, fertility planning, cash transfers, savings accounts) target adolescent girls (Bandiera et al, 2017), but have often failed to generate persistent effects (Baird andÖzler, 2016), possibly because of social constraints (Buvinic and Furst-nichols, 2016;Field et al, 2016). Our results suggest that interventions aimed at reducing maternal depression might be an effective policy tool to increase women's empowerment even in difficult contexts, for example among adult women or when social constraints are binding.…”

Analyzing Female Employment Trends in South Asia

“…Evidence from Bangladesh and Pakistan also reflects the influence of traditional gender norms and cultural practices on female employment-related preferences and outcomes (see Heintz, Kabeer, and Mahmud, 2017;Bridges, Lawson, and Begum, 2011;and Luci, Jütting, and Morrisson, 2012). Field et. al.…”