Choice, constraints and the gender dynamics of labour markets in Bangladesh

这项研究将解决呼吁说明中的第一个首要问题，即使人口中最贫穷的阶层能够摆脱贫困的最有效办法。它还将有助于解决第二个问题，即与持续脱贫过渡有关的政治和体制条件。不同背景下的实证研究证明了妇女参与劳动力队伍的积极影响，特别是在提供可预测收入流和体面工作条件的就业形式方面。这些影响涉及家庭成员的健康和福祉以及更广泛的发展目标，包括经济增长和减贫。根据这些调查结果，南亚区域的妇女劳动力参与率持续偏低，是一个值得政策关注的问题，而南亚区域的穷人占世界穷人的很大比例。尽管整个区域的经济都在增长，但这些低比率持续存在，这是由于普遍的文化规范将男性养家糊口的角色放在首位，以及对妇女在公共领域的流动性的严格限制。与此同时，在这些国家，妇女的劳动力参与率一直在上升，尽管速度非常缓慢，但这一事实表明，文化规范并非一成不变。该项目的目的是探讨在孟加拉国具体情况下劳动力市场不断变化的性别动态。孟加拉国为这种研究提供了一个特别突出的背景。该国在独立初期被描述为“发展的试验案例”，也被描述为一种极端形式的父权制，该国经历了适度的增长和减贫速度，以及在教育和卫生领域的性别平等方面取得的巨大进展。对孟加拉国的定量研究表明，获得有偿工作有助于增强妇女的权能（以一系列指标衡量），而定性研究则证明了妇女本身对获得就业机会的重视。尽管如此，妇女在劳动力市场的活动仍然很少，而且主要集中在无报酬的家庭劳动和在家自营职业。我们建议借鉴不同的理论方法，劳动力市场的行为，无论是那些专注于个人选择，以及那些强调结构性约束，探索这个劳动力市场的难题。我们将利用2008年对孟加拉国8个不同地区的5 198名妇女进行的有目的调查所提供的丰富数据集，这是国际发展部资助的妇女赋权途径研究方案（2006- 2011年）的一部分。我们将使用定性研究方法来深入了解定量分析产生的结果。我们的分析将利用2008年调查记录的妇女经济活动的地区差异，探讨当地政治和体制差异对妇女劳动力市场行为的影响。重新调查这些妇女，再加上从研究地点随机选择的2500名男子的劳动力市场行为的额外组成部分，将使我们能够获得劳动力市场动态的性别视角，以及随着时间的推移，来自不同社会经济群体的妇女在不同地点的选择和约束之间的相互作用的变化。我们将特别注意最有可能使妇女利用经济机会的家庭/个人特点和背景因素的结合，并将这些机会转化为家庭生活水平和家庭福祉的改善。这将使我们能够制定短期和长期的政策反应，促进这些有利因素，并与最有能力解决这些问题的政策参与者合作。

This research will address the first overarching question in the call specification concerning the most effective approaches in enabling the poorest sections of the population to exit and stay out of poverty. It will also contribute to the second question relating to the political and institutional conditions associated with sustained transitions out of poverty. Empirical research from different contexts has attested to the positive implications of women's labour force participation, particularly in forms of employment that offer predictable income flows and decent conditions of work. These implications relate to health and wellbeing of family members as well as broader development goals, including economic growth and poverty reduction. In the light of such findings, the persistence of low rates of female labour force participation in the South Asia region, which accounts for a substantial proportion of the world's poor, is a matter of considerable policy concern. The persistence of these low rates despite economic growth across the region has been attributed to prevailing cultural norms giving primacy to male breadwinning roles together with strong restrictions on women's mobility in the public domain. At the same time, the fact that women's labour force participation has been rising in these countries, albeit at a very slow rate, suggests that cultural norms are not immutable. The aim of this project is to explore the changing gender dynamics of labour markets in the specific context of Bangladesh. Bangladesh provides a particularly salient context for such research. Described as a 'test case for development' in the early years of its independence and as an extreme form of patriarchy, the country has experienced moderate rates of both growth and poverty reduction as well as considerable progress on gender equality in education and health. Quantitative studies from the Bangladesh context have suggested that access to paid work serves to promote women's empowerment (as measured by a range of indicators) while qualitative research testifies to the value that women themselves place on access to employment opportunities. Despite this, women's labour market activity remains low and largely concentrated in unpaid family labour and home-based self employment. We propose to draw on different theoretical approaches to labour market behaviour, both those that focus on individual choice as well as those that emphasize structural constraint, to explore this labour market puzzle. We will utilize the rich data set provided by a purposively designed survey carried out in 2008 of 5198 women in 8 different districts in Bangladesh as part of the DFID-funded Pathways of Women's Empowerment research programme (2006-11). We will use qualitative research methods to gain deeper insights into the findings generated by the quantitative analysis. Our analysis will take advantage of the district-level variations in women's economic activity recorded by the 2008 survey to explore the influence of political and institutional variations in the local context on the women's labour market behaviour. A resurvey of these women, together with an additional component on the labour market behaviour of 2500 men randomly selected from the study locations, will allow us to gain both a gender perperspective on labour market dynamics as well as changes over time in the interactions between choice and constraint for women from different socio-economic groups in different locations. We will pay particular attention to the combination of household/individual characteristics and contextual factors most likely to enable women to take advantage of economic opportunities and translate these into improvements in household living standards and family well being. This will allow us to develop both short and longer term policy responses which would promote these enabling factors and to work with the policy actors best positioned to address them.