Women's Employment and Natural Shocks

Eugenia Canessa and Gianna Claudia Giannelli

Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa

Abstract: We employ georeferenced data and longitudinal household panel survey data to investigate the impact of the dramatic flooding that hit Bangladesh from August-September 2014 on women's employment and empowerment. Development economics models suggest an increase in household members' labour supply as a shock-coping strategy. Our difference-in-differences estimates confirm this assumption: women's employment probability increases by approximately 13 percentage points. Correcting for selection bias due to the initial employment status of women, we also find significant increases in the probability of non-employed women entering employment, in the average monthly income of employed women and in the probability of women engaging in autonomous wage-earning activities. Finally, we show that the greater earning capacity of employed women - instrumented by the intensity of flooding in the villages where women live - contributes to raising their bargaining power within the household as measured by the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index and by economic decision-making indicators.

Keywords: Bangladesh; Flood; Shock-coping strategy; Women's employment; Intrahousehold bargaining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F66 J16 Q12 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2021_01.rdf

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