Power of partnership conference: Presentation: Women’s labour supply in rural areas of Bangladesh: Does participation in poverty alleviation programmes influence women’s involvement in outside paid work?
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Power of partnership conference: Presentation: Women’s labour supply in rural areas of Bangladesh
1. Women’s labour supply in rural areas of
Bangladesh: Does participation in poverty
alleviation programmes influence women’s
involvement in outside paid work?
Simeen Mahmud
CGST, Brac Institute of Governance and
Development, Brac University
&
Sadia Mustafa
CGST, Brac Institute of Governance and
Development, Brac University
4 December, 2018
1December 4, 2018
2. Introduction
• Female participation in the LF rising slowly since last 30 years
• But the increase did not follow the usual route of salaried
employee rather through work for the household
• Possible reason-Poverty alleviation programme or women’s
own attitude
2December 4, 2018
3. Hypothesis
• Hypothesis 1: PAP has direct positive effect on women’s
labour supply for market oriented economic activity
• Hypothesis 2: indirectly through its impact upon women’s
own attitudes about paid work and gender roles
December 4, 2018 3
4. The circles
in the far
north and
south of
Bangladesh
show our
villages.
4December 4, 2018
5. Findings: Tobit Model
December 4, 2018 5
Variables Model 1 Model 2
(Pov)
Model 3
(Int_F)
Model4(In
t_Ind)
secondary -** -** -** -**
Sec_above -** -** -** -**
Wear borkha -** -** -** -**
Child<5 -* -* -*
Remittance -* -* -* -*
Has Livestock +*** +*** +*** +***
Anti-poverty prog +*** +***
Attitude factor -
Interaction_pov_F
actor
+**
Interaction_pov_I
ndex
+*
Flat land/Non-
char
+*** +*** +*** +***
6. Policy Implication
December 4, 2018 6
• More poverty alleviation programmes are needed in
vulnerable region to increase women’s productive
work
• A supply side (job opportunity) approach rather than
a demand side one (attitude change through
education) would lead to greater involvement of
women in paid work
• Public work schemes/socially empowering schemes
will have higher influence in women’s participation in
the labour force than just cash transfer social safety
net
Hinweis der Redaktion
Good morning everyone. I am Sadia Mustafa from Bangladesh worked on the Bangladesh part of the Gender norms project. My paper is on Women’s labour supply in rural areas of Bangladesh: Does participation in poverty alleviation programmes influence women’s involvement especially in outside work? This paper is supposed to be presented by the main author Ms. Simeen Mahmud. Many of you must have known that she is no more with us. God be with her. I will try to explain her work in my word
Before going to the main component of the paper let me give you a background on our current situation of the female labour force participation in Bangladesh. If you look at the chart for the last 2 decades female labour participation is rising from around 8.0 per cent in the mid-1980s to almost 36 per cent in 2016-17. Given the patriarchal and conservative social structure of the country, such trend in female labour force participation, though praiseworthy, should be analysed more critically for a particular reason.
The rise in participation is not through the modern route of salaried/waged employment, but through routes of work for the household/family. These trends were reversed between 2010 and 2013. There was a relatively greater rise in participation in the market oriented activity which suggests influence of norms about women’s market oriented work and gender roles on women’s labour supply decision.
Among the possible drivers of labour supply for market oriented activity among women in urban area we would have said it’s the readymade garments sector. But in rural areas of Bangladesh we explore in particular the role of women’s participation in government and NGO run poverty alleviation programmes as they are more active in the rural area. A second focus is to ascertain whether women’s own attitude have any impact on women’s labour supply.
So the hypothesis are:
Hypothesis 1: PAP has direct positive effect on women’s labour supply for market oriented economic activity
Hypothesis 2: PAP affects women’s labour supply for market oriented economic activity indirectly through its impact upon women’s own attitudes about paid work
So The conceptual framework used in this empirical investigation is that Individual and household factors in the background like age, education, marital status, type of household, household assets, and so on are denoted X, involvement in a programme is denoted T, and indirect effects may be mediated through attitudes. In particular, we tried to examine whether participation in programmes that encourage and support women’s economic activity have direct and indirect effects on women’s labour supply
Direct effect means participation or it creates opportunities within the household by providing inputs like credit, skills training, income support, and market outreach.
Indirect effect means change in attitudes to women income earning roles and gender roles more broadly
As the main objective of the larger project is under the contexts of poverty. Hence, we decided to conduct the study in 4 districts in southwest and northwest regions that were generally known to be ‘poverty pockets’ . 4 districts were divided into 3 areas- char/river island, flat land and the forest. A total of 450 households were surveyed for time use diaries that is a detailed 24 hours activity list of men and women. Also 12 attitudinal questions to capture their views towards market work
Poverty alleviation programme includes socially empowering safety nets not social protection like Vulnerable Group Development (VGD), Char Livelihood and 2 public work schemes 100days and 40 days work for cash.
To determine labour supply into the market oriented activity we used a tobit model as our dependent variable was time spent in paid work. We have also constructed a factor using 6 attitudinal questions to measure if more favourable attitude alone can pursue one to get into market. So the regression result showed that PAP directly influence to paid work, positive attitude of the women herself alone don’t influence her to join the workforce , but being in poverty alleviation program influence attitude significantly to participate paid outside work. This part is determined by the interaction term.
Other finding along with that is involvement in paid work was lower for women who had secondary or above education contradicts the traditional human capital theory of labour supply. But this seems quite possible in this rural context where formal employment opportunities for women were not available or very limited.
Clearly, gender norms around women’s purdah and homemaker role as mother continued to influence women’s time allocation by depressing labour supply for paid work
In case of household wealth in form of remittance, dampened women’s labour supply,
Also women living in the non-char/flat lands were more likely than women living in the char/river islands to engage in paid work confirmed that women’s labour supply responded to variations in opportunities for women’s economic activity rather than just the attitudes.
With the current state of the paper I cant talk about about policy implication rather than impact. We have seen in our result that women in flatland spend more time in paidwork than River Island which suggests char area has less work opportunity. So More poverty alleviation programmes that will create job are needed in vulnerable region to increase women’s productive work.
As more education isn’t increasing labour force participation. May be a supply side approach meaning creating more job opportunity rather than a demand side one -attitude change through education would lead to a greater involvement of women in paid work.
Public work schemes will have higher influence in women’s participation in the labour force than other cash transfer social safety net
That is the end of my presentation. Our next presenter will discuss how poverty alleviation programmes influenced negotiating gender norms to gain access to the labour market.