Lawful Progress: Unveiling the Laws That Reshape Women’s Work Decisions
IMF Working Papers, December 8, 2023
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- Lawful Progress: Unveiling the Laws That Reshape Women’s Work Decisions
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: Anna Fruttero, Diego B. P. Gomes, Nishtha Sharma
- Published: December 8, 2023
- Series: IMF Working Papers
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400261039.001
Authors and publication
- By Anna Fruttero, Diego B. P. Gomes, Nishtha Sharma
- December 8, 2023
- IMF Working Papers, Working Paper No. 2023/252
- Pages: 31
- Volume: 2023
- Issue: 252
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400261039.001
- Stock No: WPIEA2023252
- ISBN: 9798400261039
- ISSN: 1018-5941
Research question and approach
- Objective:
- Examine the impact of women’s legal rights on labor force participation decisions made by women and men.
- Methodology:
- Granular analysis of 35 gendered laws.
- Deliberate departure from aggregate indices because of concerns about:
- (i) the usability of an index for policymaking purposes,
- (ii) the economic interpretation of an index’s average marginal effects,
- (iii) the implicit assumption of homogeneous effects underlying regressions with an index.
Key findings
- Laws found to influence female labor force participation:
- Identification of nine key laws that can foster female labor force participation.
- Laws related to household dynamics and women’s agency within the family—explicitly including divorce and property rights laws—are especially important in influencing women’s decision to work.
- Laws regarding the ability of women to travel outside the home are also especially important in influencing women’s decision to work.
- Effects on men:
- Improving women’s legal rights does not improve their labor force participation through a substitution effect, as it has no systematic negative effect on men’s labor force participation.
Policy implications and recommendations (as conveyed by the paper)
- Prioritize legal reforms that directly affect household dynamics and women’s agency within the family (for example, divorce and property rights laws).
- Prioritize reforms that expand women’s freedom of movement (laws regarding the ability to travel outside the home).
- Favor granular legal analysis over reliance on aggregate indices for policymaking, given concerns about index usability, interpretability of average marginal effects, and the assumption of homogeneous effects.
Thematic tags and scope
- Subject: Financial inclusion, Financial markets, Gender, Gender inequality, Labor, Labor force, Labor force participation, Women
- Keywords: Financial inclusion, Gender gaps, Gender inequality, gendered law, Gendered laws, Global, Labor force, Labor force participation, Legal barriers, LFP rate, property rights law, selected Laws, Women, women's work decision
Source: IMF Working Paper No. 2023/252, "Lawful Progress: Unveiling the Laws That Reshape Women’s Work Decisions" (December 8, 2023), DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400261039.001.
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- Working Paper