Thesis title: Engendering Development in light of formal and informal labor
Persistent gender disparities in labor market participation remain a major barrier to equitable economic development.
Structural transformations, influenced by global market integration, public investment, and social policy reforms, have reshaped employment landscapes. However, these changes have not translated into equal opportunities for men and women, often reinforcing pre-existing inequalities rather than alleviating them.
Women, especially in developing countries, continue to be disproportionately employed in low-quality, precarious, and informal work, which hinders their access to stable livelihoods, restricts career progression, and sustains persistent wage disparities. Moreover, the uneven distribution of unpaid care responsibilities further constrains women's ability to participate fully in the labor market, creating an additional barrier to economic mobility and long-term security.
This dissertation offers a multi-dimensional analysis of the gendered impacts of economic transformations. It specifically addresses three interconnected domains: (1) the influence of trade openness on the feminization of vulnerable employment, (2) the effect of infrastructure availability on gendered employment outcomes, and (3) the efficacy of maternity-targeted cash transfers for mitigating poverty among informal women workers. Anchored in gendered labor-market theory and social protection and care-economy frameworks, the research integrates quantitative methods, including sector-specific labor data analysis, panel regressions, and microsimulation techniques, to provide robust, policy-relevant insights.
Chapter 1 analyzes how trade openness, measured as domestic value added (DVA) in exports, correlates with gendered patterns of vulnerable employment in developing economies. Moving beyond aggregate trade flows, it focuses on sector-level dynamics and the composition of value creation within global value chains (GVCs). The analysis draws on harmonized labor force data from 33 developing countries between 1994 and 2015, merging I2D2 microdata with sectoral trade accounts from the EORA ICIO. To account for endogeneity and serial correlation in employment outcomes, we estimate both static fixed-effects and dynamic panel models using forward orthogonal deviations and GMM, with instrument curtailment, PCA reduction, and analytic weights. The results indicate that higher DVA is significantly associated with increased vulnerable employment, with effects consistently stronger for women and steeper in downstream, lower-productivity sectors. The women-to-men vulnerability gap widens as sectors become more embedded in final-demand segments of GVCs. Sectoral productivity is generally associated with lower vulnerable jobs, but its protective effects are uneven across sectors and genders. Macroeconomic conditions, especially GDP growth, urbanization, and public investment, are associated with declines in vulnerable employment, whereas FDI is positively correlated with it. These findings underscore the need for targeted policies that enhance labor productivity and education while promoting public investment and urbanization to foster equitable labor markets.
Chapter 2 examines how access to time-saving infrastructure relates to labor market outcomes in WAEMU region, with attention to gender differences and the mediating role of unpaid care. We combine pooled correlational models with a change-in-exposure design estimated via correlated random-effects logit, and assess mediation through total, direct, and indirect unpaid care.
In pooled associations, electricity is positively related to formal employment for women and men, with a concurrent decline in men’s informal work; women’s labor force participation also rises with electrification. Running water is associated with lower informality and higher formal employment primarily among men. A composite physical-infrastructure indicator preserves the formal-employment gains, especially for men. For social infrastructure, access to health and education is consistently associated with lower informality for both genders, with limited and non-robust links to formal work or participation. When focusing on changes in access, patterns differ. Gaining running water is associated with large increases in women’s labor force participation, accompanied by higher informal work and little evidence of formalization; for men, participation also rises while formal employment effects are weak. Electrification aligns with men’s movement out of informality and into formal jobs; effects for women are modest overall. Gaining health or education access is associated with higher participation for women (and, for health, also for men), but with increases in informal work and no robust formalization.
Mediation by unpaid care is small. For women, indirect (domestic-task) time savings modestly support entry, often into informal activities; for men, mediation is negligible. Overall, infrastructure eases time constraints and can raise participation, but—absent complementary childcare, skills, and labor-market policies—does not reliably translate into higher-quality, formal employment.
Chapter 3 Informal women workers in low-income countries often lack access to maternity protection, heightening their risk of poverty and exclusion during childbirth. In Ethiopia, where 93% of women of reproductive age are informally employed, this study simulates the introduction of non-contributory maternity cash transfers for mothers with infants using the ETMOD v3.1 microsimulation model. The analysis assesses the poverty-reduction potential of various benefit levels and durations and incorporates individualized income allocation to account for intra-household inequalities. Findings show modest national poverty reductions, but substantially larger gains among targeted subgroups, particularly informal mothers in rural areas, those with low education, and those working in agriculture. Results also demonstrate that when women retain control over the transfer, their individual poverty risk declines more sharply, challenging the assumptions of the unitary household model and highlighting the importance of intra-household resource allocation. A cross-country sensitivity check using harmonized models for Tanzania and Mozambique confirms the robustness of these results across similar settings, though also underscores the need to calibrate transfer size to local poverty depth. These findings support maternity transfers as a viable and equitable tool to improve economic security among informal women and to reduce gendered poverty. Policy design should prioritize direct access for women and consider broader structural barriers that limit their financial autonomy.
Collectively, the three chapters underscore the importance of integrating gender-sensitive design into economic and social policy, emphasizing that structural change alone is insufficient to advance women’s labor market outcomes without targeted, inclusive interventions.