Household Survey on Attitudes Toward Female Labor Force Participation in Gaibandha District in Bangladesh

Gaibandha

MOMODa FOUNDATION in co-operation with IDE-JETRO and Florida International University begins an RCT-based experiment in Gaibandha on “Whether and How Role Model Encourages Female Labor Force Participation (FLFP)?”.

This study aims to investigate whether the role model encourages FLFP in rural Bangladesh, and if so, how. For this objective, we conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT). FLFP here means work outside of the home, typically in the factory (not necessarily in the garment industry). We include those jobs that Skill for Employment Investment Program (SEIP) trainees are placed after the training session.

The survey villages are those that are already familiar with GUK/SEIP to assure the credibility of the treatment. A random sampling of 20 villages should be conducted with a pool of these villages. The treatment will be at the village level.
Unmarried women aged 15-29 living with their parents or families in rural areas. We focus on unmarried women because unmarried women face limited social barriers to FLFP simply due to norms/stigma/ and the like while married women face additional barriers, such as traditional responsibility for child and elderly care, and household chores. In this sense, we include divorcees and widows as long as they have no children and do not have any household responsibilities.

500 eligible participants based on the eligibility criteria will be collected from 20 villages with 25 households in each village.

Eligible girls (or with parents) are offered the opportunity to receive an interactive motivational information session given by women who are currently working in the garment factory and belong to the same community (e.g., the same background within the upazila) as the eligible girls. A role model should be one that eligible girls can easily imagine being able to become like her.

After the baseline 500 eligible participants will be distributed into four groups;

1. Control group: minimum information on the spot. Information is the same as the existing GUK/SEIP encouragement to the program.

2. Information RCT Only T1: Information should include, (i) salary, and (ii) working environment (security and female-friendly working environment such as gender segregation, female supervisors, etc.). We guess that audiovisual (i.e., video) information is available in the usual GUK/SEIP training, and we would like to use then in the motivational session.

3. Information + Role model RCT to daughters only T2: Participation fee to SEIP (BDT 2,500) is partially or fully paid. The variation can be (i) a 50% discount, and (ii) a 100% discount

4. Information + Role model RCT to daughters and parents T3: Participation fee to SEIP (BDT 2,500) is partially or fully paid. The variation can be (i) a 50% discount, and (ii) a 100% discount

We may have a T2 session (i.e., daughters only) with all 6 villages, depending on implementation convenience, and similarly for the T3 session. Then within T2 (or T3), we have lottery randomization at the village level about the level of discount.