What Works for Her?: How Work-from-Home Digital Jobs Affect Female Labor Force Participation

In this study, we use novel jobs that are normally performed by Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) units on Personal Computers/Desktops and convert them to smartphone-based micro-tasks that can be performed by women from home. These tasks are presented on a tailor-made Android mobile application, called Rani (Queen). This is a gig economy platform allowing for flexible work hours. They are all shown a similar set of tasks, their work is validated for accuracy, and payments are made weekly.

The intervention is about 100 hours of work per worker (or 1-1.5 months) on this digital job platform for women over their own smartphones. The treatment arms differ in the job contract offered to the women, specifically by location of job and payment level offered.

2022-09-28

2022-12-31

1. The primary outcomes through the baseline survey are the job take-up results that are measured (1) at the end of the survey, (2) through downloading the job application, and then (3) through observed work completed on the application. The job acceptance results are compared across all treatment arms (home vs center, and the three payment levels, and knowledge of husband survey).
2. We also learn about women’s willingness to work, and to take on future work engagements, along with willingness to switch from WfC to WfH (at lower pay) or from WfH to WfC (at higher pay) at Endline.
3. The study also tries to understand the effects of these digital job arrangements on women’s mental health, agency, empowerment, and other well-being indicators.

1. We measure intensive margin outcomes for women’s work, including the amount of time spent on the application, number of tasks completed, accuracy levels (measures their job productivity), and total payment earned.
2. For heterogeneity analysis, we explore the attributes of women who are more or less likely to accept job offers across the different treatment arms.
3. Husband’s perceptions and decisions: We measure the role of husbands in the decision-making process through husband surveys, and by informing some women their husbands would be surveyed
4. Time use: We understand how women are spending their time in household chores and how that might change because of the job intervention.

Women are assigned to one of seven arms (6 treatment, and 1 control). The 6 treatment arms vary in the job location (work-from-home or WfH, work-from-center or WfC) and payment level (low, medium, high). Baseline surveys are completed with all eligible women in the study. At the end of the survey, women are offered a job contract. The job contract includes details about the job task, payment details, and the location of the job. Around 20% of the women are also told that this job contract information will be informed to their husbands through another survey conducted by a male enumerator.

Women are then asked whether they accept the job contract. After the job contract offer, women do the job for about 100 hours (over ~1.5 months) before the Endline. At Endline, women are offered different job contracts, switching the location, and adding other variables of distance to center, among other job characteristics.

Women are assigned to one of seven arms (6 treatment, and 1 control). The 6 treatment arms vary in the job location (work-from-home or WfH, work-from-center or WfC) and payment level (low, medium, high). All the centers in the WfC arms are within the local community, where women can walk to their assigned one in 2-10 minutes. So, many of the usual “outside costs” of women's work are either limited or do not exist. Hence, we see the WfC as a “social signal” of the woman's work, while WfH is private.

Baseline surveys are completed with all eligible women in the study. At the end of the survey, women are offered a job contract. The job contract includes details about the job task, payment details, and the location of the job. Around 20% of the women are also told that this job contract information will be informed to their husbands through another survey conducted by a male enumerator. These husband survey offers are offered to a random subset of households within each arm. A random subset of the control arm also receives the husband survey. For the remaining households, they are not told anything about a husband survey. Women are then asked whether they accept the job contract.

After the job contract offer, women do the job for about 100 hours (over ~1.5 months) before the Endline. At Endline, women are offered different job contracts, switching the location, and adding other variables of distance to center, among other job characteristics. Women are also offered more full-time work and we observe the types of women who are most agreeable to other types of jobs across the treatment arms.

Randomization done by a computer.

Individual households.

No

NA

3000-4000 households

Around 500-530 per treatment arm (treatments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) and around 500-530 for control.