Experimental Design
Recruitment: We conduct door-to-door sampling in urban neighborhoods in Patna, India. Survey teams are allocated to streets within a neighborhood. We target streets that are close to the call centers we are establishing and contain predominantly middle-income households. We target all households on a given street.
Sample: After approaching a house, we mention that we are conducting a survey on women’s job preferences and will be eliciting interest for working in one of two call centers. We tell them that one of the call centers is mixed-gender and the other is women only. Surveyors then ask to speak with a married woman, who can read and write, and is aged between 18-60. If there are multiple such women, the surveyor will pick one whose husband is currently present, and then select the one who is closest to 35. We recruit a maximum of one woman in any given household. If a woman’s husband is currently present, we ask them to join the survey. If not, we complete the demographic questions for the wife, and reschedule the remainder of the survey for when the husband and wife are both available.
Demographics: After consent, we collect basic demographic details from the wife including work history and education. In this section, we ask the wife whether she is interested in new work opportunities using a 4 point Likert scale. If she says that she is not at all interested in new jobs, we screen the couple out of the survey. Otherwise, we stratify the randomization of mixed-gender and women-only workplaces based on their level of interest. We then move to husband’s demographics (when he is present).
Interest in jobs: We then inform participants of the two nearby call centers we are opening (the mixed-gender center and women-only center) and that we are looking to hire women for the call centers on a part-time basis. We ask women and their husbands whether they are interested in hearing more about the opportunities. If participants say they are not interested, we again screen them out of the survey.
If they are interested, we then explain that the tasks, management, amenities, and probability of getting a job are the same across both centers. We also highlight that this a one-time offer. We then tell them which call center they have been randomized to receive a job in, hand them the relevant job flyer, and read it to them. Finally, we tell participants the job salary and ask whether they are interested in applying for the job. We allow couples to discuss the offer with each other if they would like to.
Randomization: In addition to stratifying treatment into the mixed-gender or women-only workplace, we also randomize which version of the recruitment flyer participants see. We use over 20 unique photos that are split across 4 women-only and 4 mixed-gender versions of the flyers to ensure that treatment effects are not driven by any one photo or flyer. We also randomize the wage offer participants receive to measure willingness to accept jobs and to benchmark treatment effects.
First stage: We then check that participants understood the treatment by confirming their understanding of (i) the salary, (ii) whether or not there will be men working in the call center they have been offered.
Within person job choice: We re-affirm to participants that they will only be allowed to work in the call center they have been assigned to but ask whether they would hypothetically be interested in applying to the other call center at the same wage. We then ask them which call center they would prefer to work in and why.
Beliefs about workplace safety: We then elicit participant’s beliefs about how safe they think the workplace they were randomized into is.
Norms and spousal jealousy: We measure spousal jealousy and gender norms regarding impropriety using four survey questions. We ask these questions to the wife, in private. The questions ask (i) directly about spousal jealousy, (ii) personal beliefs about how appropriate it is for married women to interact with other men (iii) second order beliefs, and (iv) a measure of controlling behavior on the part of the husband. We will create an index using these questions. As secondary analysis, we will analyze heterogeneous treatment effects using the index.
Job application form and contact information: If women are interested in applying for the job, we ask them to complete a job application form outlining their personal details, motivations for applying as well as professional or personal references.
Training day: Interested participants will be invited for training sessions for the job.
Attendance: A subset of the trained candidates will be offered jobs at the workplaces. The 2 week long contract will provide the participants with data collection and data entry tasks.