Women's Employment and Natural Shocks

Arbeitspapier

We employ georeferenced data and longitudinal household panel survey data to investigate the impact of the dramatic flooding that hit Bangladesh from August-September 2014 on women's employment and empowerment. Development economics models suggest an increase in household members' labour supply as a shock-coping strategy. Our difference-in-differences estimates confirm this assumption: women's employment probability increases by approximately 13 percentage points. Correcting for selection bias due to the initial employment status of women, we also find significant increases in the probability of non-employed women entering employment, in the average monthly income of employed women and in the probability of women engaging in autonomous wage-earning activities. Finally, we show that the greater earning capacity of employed women – instrumented by the intensity of flooding in the villages where women live – contributes to raising their bargaining power within the household as measured by the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index and by economic decision-making indicators.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 14055

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economic Impacts of Globalization: Labor ; Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination ; Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets ; Climate; Natural Disasters and Their Management; Global Warming
• Subject: Bangladesh ; flood ; shock-coping strategy ; women's employment ; intrahousehold bargaining

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Canessa, Eugenia ; Giannelli, Gianna Claudia
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/232807
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET