Lifting constraints for women's career advancement in South Asia

We implement a factory-level intervention targeting managerial practices related to promotion and career advancement, and a worker-level training intervention targeting female machine operators. In randomly selected factories in Bangladesh and India, sewing department production supervisors and managers participate in a two-hour, on-site workshop. The workshop is designed to address demand-side constraints to women’s career progression. It presents evidence from our baseline survey, conducted in 95 garment factories across India and Bangladesh and covering over 6,000 sewing machine operators. The content focuses on documenting gender disparities in promotions and advancement, highlighting gaps between workers’ aspirations and managerial perceptions, and encouraging reflection on potential biases in promotion decisions. The workshop also includes structured discussions aimed at identifying practical steps to make promotion processes more transparent and equitable within factories. In addition, in each factory assigned to the intervention, we select 10 to 12 female machine operators to participate in a two-day soft-skills training program. Participants are randomly drawn from two sources: workers previously surveyed at baseline and a list of high-potential employees identified by factory management. The training focuses on self-efficacy, goal setting, leadership skills, and includes exposure to female role models who have successfully transitioned into supervisory roles. Control factories do not receive either component during the study period.

2025-10-01

2026-02-28

1) Measures of horizontal and vertical promotions, i.e., promotion in skill level and wage level (shorter-term outcomes), and promotions in role i.e. to assistant supervisor or supervisor (longer-term outcome).
2) Workers’ aspirations for career development and advancement.
3) Workers’ job related goals and initiatives taken toward achieving those goals.
4) Supervisors’ relative assessment of female workers.

1) Workers’ perceptions of gender bias in evaluations/promotions
2) Workers’ Self-efficacy
3) Workers’ Goal orientation
4) Workers’ Confidence in on-the-job skills
5) Workers’ Emotional well-being
6) Workers and supervisors’ gender attitudes related to factory work

We implement a factory-level intervention targeting managerial practices related to promotion and career advancement, and a worker-level training intervention targeting female machine operators. In randomly selected factories in Bangladesh and India, sewing department production supervisors and managers participate in a two-hour, on-site workshop. The workshop is designed to address demand-side constraints to women’s career progression. It presents evidence from our baseline survey, conducted in nearly 100 garment factories across India and Bangladesh and covering over 6,000 sewing machine operators. The content focuses on documenting gender disparities in promotions and advancement, highlighting gaps between workers’ aspirations and managerial perceptions, and encouraging reflection on potential biases in promotion decisions. The workshop also includes structured discussions aimed at identifying practical steps to make promotion processes more transparent and equitable within factories. In addition, in each factory assigned to the intervention, we select 12 female machine operators to participate in a two-day soft-skills training program. Participants are randomly drawn from two sources: workers previously surveyed at baseline and a list of high-potential employees identified by factory management. The training focuses on self-efficacy, goal setting, leadership skills, and includes exposure to female role models who have successfully transitioned into supervisory roles. Control factories do not receive either component during the study period. We evaluate the impact of the interventions on measures of career progression, aspirations and soft skills such as self-efficacy and goal orientation.

Not available

Randomization done in office by a computer.

Two-stage randomization.
Stage 1: We randomized at the factory level. A total of 27 factories in India and 26 factories in Bangladesh were randomly selected to receive the demand-side intervention (management workshops).
Stage 2: Within treatment factories, we selected 10 to 12 female machine operators to receive the soft-skills training. The selection proceeded in two steps: (1) half of the women were randomly selected from a “talent pool” identified by management; and (2) the remaining half were selected from the women surveyed at baseline using a matching-on-observables protocol designed to identify women similar to those in the talent pool.

Yes

85 factories

The first endline survey will involve approximately 40 female machine operators and 20 male machine operators from each factory in the sample, for a total of 3400 women and 1700 men. We aim to also survey 10 supervisors per factory, for a total of 850 supervisors.

Below, we detail our target sample. The data collection has not yet started (at the time of this pre-registration).

Treatment Factories: 53 factories, 2120 surveyed women and 1060 surveyed men. The sample of female operators will include all trained women, women surveyed at baseline, and women nominated by management as high potential, whenever possible. The sample of male operators will include a randomly selected subsample of men surveyed at baseline and men nominated by management as high potential.

Control Factories: 32 factories, 1280 surveyed women and 640 surveyed men. The sample of female operators will include women surveyed at baseline, and women nominated by management as high potential, whenever possible. The sample of male operators will include a randomly selected subsample of men surveyed at baseline and men nominated by management as high potential.