## Lawful Progress: Unveiling the Laws That Reshape Women’s Work Decisions

_IMF Working Papers, December 8, 2023_

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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

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### 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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_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2023/12/08/lawful-progress-unveiling-the-laws-that-reshape-womens-work-decisions-542209_