Bringing Work Home: Flexible Work Arrangements as Gateway Jobs for Women in West Bengal
中文摘要
发展中国家存在一支庞大的潜在劳动力队伍，由几亿名希望从事有偿工作却仍处于劳动力队伍之外的女性组成。现有可获得的就业机会往往与鼓励女性留在家庭的传统性别角色不相容。在一项涵盖1,670户家庭的随机实验中，我们与一个就业平台合作，向处于劳动力队伍之外的女性提供短期数据工作。我们得到三个主要结果。第一，灵活的居家工作对于将女性带入有偿工作极为有效。工作灵活性使参与率提高两倍以上，从办公室工作的15%提高到女性可以在家一边照顾孩子一边多任务处理的工作的48%。第二，这些工作可以成为通向灵活性较低工作的跳板。在没有工作经验的女性中，尝试居家有偿工作使她们在两到三个月后对灵活性较低工作的参与率提高。对于来自更传统家庭的女性而言，“入门工作”尤为重要：她们的劳动供给更可能处于灵活性的边际状态，进而，工作经历会使其态度发生转变，变得不那么传统。第三，从劳动力需求侧看，远程工作伴随着劳动者绩效方面的取舍。在办公室工作使准确率提高3%，速度提高18%。然而，居家工作安排在这些绩效上的不利之处，可能被可获得的劳动者数量增加所抵消。
Abstract
Abstract There is a large latent workforce in developing countries that consists of hundreds of millions of women who prefer to have paid work and yet are out of the labor force. Often, available job opportunities are incompatible with traditional gender roles that encourage women to stay at home. In a randomized experiment with 1,670 households, we partner with a jobs platform to offer short-term data work to women who are out of the labor force. We find three main results. First, flexible work-from-home jobs are highly effective at bringing women into paid work. Job flexibility more than triples take-up from 15% for an office job to 48% for a job that women can do from home while multitasking with childcare. Second, these jobs can act as a stepping stone to less flexible work. Trying paid work from home increases take-up of less flexible jobs two to three months later among women without previous work experience. “Gateway jobs” are especially important for women from more traditional households: their labor supply is more likely to be marginal to flexibility, and in turn, work experience shifts their attitudes to become less traditional. Third, from the labor demand side, remote work comes with trade-offs in worker performance. Working from the office increases accuracy by 3% and speed by 18%. However, these performance drawbacks of work-from-home arrangements may be outweighed by the increase in available workers.