Workplace Attributes and Women’s Labor Supply Decisions: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

Nivedhitha Subramanian

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2026, vol. 74, issue 4, 1141 - 1166

Abstract: Social norms discouraging women from working, and particularly from working with men, are prevalent in many settings with low female employment. I implement a field experiment and survey experiment with educated women via a job-matching platform in Pakistan, one such setting, to elucidate the role of information about supervisor or employee gender on women’s job search. At the job-application stage, among women who are reminded about job-search discussions with their families, information about a male supervisor significantly decreases the job-application rate by nearly 60%. However, at the stage of accepting an offer that includes sufficiently high salary, women are willing to accept a male supervisor but exhibit a strong preference to work in an environment with mostly female coworkers.

Date: 2026
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