Understanding the costs of hiring women in Pakistan
What deters firms in Pakistan from hiring women? This policy brief suggests that economic constraints – such as the cost of providing safe transportation – may play a more significant role than social norms related to gender segregation.
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Shibuya and Tirmazee Policy Brief August 2024.pdf
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- Of the employers in our survey, 74% think women are at least as good as, if not better than, men at on-site production jobs in the garment manufacturing industry in Pakistan. However, most factories still do not hire many women on factory floors.
- This paper tries to understand this conundrum by asking: what deters firms from hiring women?
- We use unique firm survey data, complemented by a hypothetical-choice methodology and a behavioural game, to examine the economic and non-economic costs of hiring women.
- Findings suggest that addressing the economic constraints faced by employers in hiring women may be more important for increasing female labour force participation than changing social norms for a certain group of employers.
- Employers perceive the cost of providing safe transportation to be more binding as a cost of hiring women.
- Future studies are necessary to understand how the current key findings hold among smaller firms.