Improving women’s work opportunities: The role of skills and their complementarities in a digital world

The training will be provided in monthly batches starting between June 2023 - May 2024 (approximately) with the aim of getting baseline data for approximately 1600 female respondents aged 18-40. We will randomize our intervention at the individual level in each batch. To recruit the trainees, our skilling partner will advertise through various channels and through their alumni network about training opportunities. Interested individuals will fill out a basic form that records age, education, marital status, religion, caste, address and phone number. Thereafter, within each training batch registered individuals will be randomly split into three groups:

(1) T1 – we offer only vocational training in beauty which includes classroom training for 189 hours (2 months) and On-Job-Training (OJT) (3 months) – approximately 600 women.
(2) T2 – we offer both vocational training in beauty which includes classroom training for 189 hours (2 months), OJT (3 months) and Project-Based Experiential Learning (PBEL) that incorporates digital skills as the most important component along with communication, organizational and management skills, and basic financial literacy for 76 hours before the OJT – approximately 600 women.
(3) Control group in which we do not offer to enroll the respondents for the training program – approximately 400 women

2023-06-05

2024-10-31

(1) Employment

Y1: Current employment status (working or not, work status by work category, work status by whether working in the preferred (beauty) sector)
Y2: Number of days worked in the past 3 months
Y3: Number of hours worked in the past 3 months
Y4: Earnings in the last 3 months (Rs.)
Y5: Average hourly wage rate in the last 3 months (Rs.)

These will be constructed from the survey data.

1: Number of days/hours worked by work categories in the last 3 months and in the preferred (beauty) sector
2: Earnings across work categories and in the preferred (beauty) sector in the last 3 months.

3. Employment attributes: e.g. benefits, location of workplace, time taken to travel.
4. Confidence: In searching or applying for a job on a digital/gig platform; interviewing for a job; preparing a resume; managing social media account for marketing.
5. Aspiration: An index consisting of expected salary, preference between home-based vs outside-home work outside home, preference between full-time vs part time work, work aspirations in the next 2 years.
6. Job search behavior: Outcomes consisting of number of job applications made, number of job offers received, whether searched for a job, modes of search used (online mode).
7. Decision making: an index of binary variables that equal one if the respondent participates in decisions regarding education, skilling, work, health, clothes and marriage (for those unmarried).
8. Mobility: An index consisting of binary variables for whether a woman needs permission or can go alone to the following locations: health centre, home of relatives or friends (in the neighbourhood), go to the short distance (within city) by bus or three-wheeler, and go to the long distance (like outside city) by train or bus.
9. Gender attitudes: For each statement in our module about gender attitudes, we code the variable to equal 1 if the respondent gives the attitude that is more “liberal” about gender and create an index across statements.
10. Satisfaction: An index consisting of a set of variables that ask about their satisfaction on a 1-10 scale with education, skills, work, financial situation, and life.
11. Self-efficacy: An index consisting of a set of variables that ask about their ability to achieve goals, face difficult situations, overcome challenges and multitasking.
12. Domestic violence: For each of 5 types of violence, we code a binary variable that equals one if a woman faced it and thereafter construct an index.
13. Spill-over effects to other household members: Impact of the intervention on the economic behavior, specifically employment related outcomes, of other household members.

These subsidiary outcomes will be measured both at the endline and the baseline. As before, all indices will be constructed following Kling et al (2007). Whenever we measure using an index we will also report the individual components of the index.

The training will be provided in monthly batches starting between June 2023 - May 2024 (approximately) with the aim of getting baseline data for approximately 1600 female respondents aged 18-40 with approximately 600 from Delhi and 1000 from Bangalore (the exact number can vary depending on allocation of batches across the two cities based on funding available with the implementation partner). We will randomize our intervention at the individual level in each batch. To recruit the trainees, our skilling partner will advertise through various channels and through their alumni network about training opportunities. Interested individuals would fill out a basic form that records age, education, marital status, religion, caste, address and phone number. Thereafter, within each training batch registered individuals will be randomly split into three groups: technical skills training, technical and digital skills training, or control (no training). We expect to mobilize approximately 40 women in each training batch. Of these, 30 will be offered training and the remaining will form a part of the control group. Further, out of those invited for training, half will be offered only the vocational training component and another half will be offered both vocational and digital skills training.

The randomized treatment groups will be as follows:

1) T1 – we offer only vocational training in beauty which includes classroom training for 189 hours (2 months) and On-Job-Training (OJT) (3 months) – approximately 600 women.
2) T2 – we offer both vocational training in beauty which includes classroom training for 189 hours (2 months), OJT (3 months) and Project-Based Experiential Learning (PBEL) that incorporates digital skills as the most important component along with communication, organizational and management skills, and basic financial literacy for 76 hours before the OJT – approximately 600 women.
3) Control group in which we do not offer to enroll the respondents for the training program – approximately 400 women

We provide a vocational training program in the beauty sector which includes classroom and on-the-job training components. In another treatment, along with the hard skills, we additionally provide Project-Based Experiential Learning (PBEL) that incorporates digital skills as the most important component along with communication, organizational and management skills, and basic financial literacy. The training will be provided in collaboration with our skilling partner. Our skill training partner provides work-integrated job training to informal sector workers across sectors like manufacturing, construction, leather, beauty, data entry, tailoring, among others, across the country. We will conduct our study across 4-5 centers in Bangalore and 2-3 centers in Delhi of our partner organization.

To measure the change in the employment status and nature of work by the respondent we will conduct primarily two detailed surveys: baseline survey (before the training begins) and an endline survey, approximately 10 months after the batch in which they were mobilized begins. In both baseline and the follow-up survey, we will collect information about their employment and earnings in the last 3 months prior to the survey.

Not available

Randomization done in office by a computer

Individual

No

The treatment is not clustered.

1600

T1 (600), T2(600), Control (400)