Can Job Training Decrease Women’s Self-Defeating Biases? : Experimental Evidence from Nigeria
Occupational segregation is a central contributor to the gap between male and female earnings worldwide. As new sectors of employment emerge, a key question is whether this pattern is replicated. This paper examines this question by focusing on the...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/879141499698936934/Can-job-training-decrease-women-s-self-defeating-biases-experimental-evidence-from-Nigeria http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27644 |
| Summary: | Occupational segregation is a central
contributor to the gap between male and female earnings
worldwide. As new sectors of employment emerge, a key
question is whether this pattern is replicated. This paper
examines this question by focusing on the emerging
information and communications technology sector in Nigeria.
Using a randomized control trial, the paper examines the
impacts of an information and communications technology
training intervention that targeted university graduates in
five major cities. The analysis finds that after two years
the treatment group was 26 percent more likely to work in
the information and communications technology sector. The
program appears to have succeeded only in shifting
employment to the new sector, as it had no average impact on
the overall likelihood of being employed. However, viewed
through the lens of occupational segregation, the program
had a surprising effect. For women who at baseline were
implicitly biased against associating women with
professional attributes, the likelihood that the program
induced switching into the information and communications
technology sector was more than three times as large than
that of unbiased women. These results suggest that training
programs can help individuals overcome self-defeating biases
that could hamper mobility and reduce efficiency in the
labor market. |
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