Enhancing Female Entrepreneurship through Cash Grants : Experimental Evidence from Rural Tunisia
In Tunisia, while social protection and labor programs are in place, severe challenges including inefficiency, fragmentation, and inequity limit the country’s ability to respond to increasing social needs. Gender issues are also one of the critical...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/641181624972357747/Enhancing-Female-Entrepreneurship-through-Cash-Grants-Experimental-Evidence-from-Rural-Tunisia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35863 |
| Summary: | In Tunisia, while social protection and
labor programs are in place, severe challenges including
inefficiency, fragmentation, and inequity limit the
country’s ability to respond to increasing social needs.
Gender issues are also one of the critical areas since young
women are experiencing even more severe challenges getting
into the tight labor market than young men. Unemployment in
the MENA region has been a challenge for some time, markedly
during the Arab Spring, resulting in the need to create over
50 million jobs in the region in the next decade, to ensure
socio-political stability. Unemployment rates are highest in
rural and low-income areas. It is in this context that a
pilot project of Community Works andLocal Participation
(CWLP) was initiated in rural Jendouba in 2015. It was
financed by the Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF) through
the World Bank and implemented by the Tunisia Republic’s
Ministry of Vocational Training and Employment (MVTE). A
rigorous randomized control trial (RCT) was embedded in the
second phase of the CWLP roll-out (starting in late 2015 and
early 2016) and carried out by the World Bank’sDIME
Department in partnership with MVET’s ONEQ. The study’s main
objective was to capture the effects of CWLP’s cash for work
activities. The results of this study, based on a detailed
survey of over 4,000 participants and non-participants 6-12
months after completion of project activities, suggested
that in general, the CWLP has had positive impacts on the
economic well-being of beneficiaries and to a small extent
on social and psychological well-being. However, these
results also raised concerns that these positive effects may
not persist in the long-run, particularly for women who
still face huge constraints participating in the tight labor
market, which has yet to fully recover to pre-Jasmine
revolution levels. |
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