Paternalistic discrimination against women in the labour market

Women in many low-income countries are often excluded from the labour market. This article proposes a new explanation in the form of paternalistic discrimination – the preferential hiring of men to protect women from dangerous or unpleasant tasks. Based on a field experiment in Bangladesh involving night-shift jobs and provision of worker transport and subsidies, it finds evidence of such discrimination among employers.

Women in Bangladesh struggle to access the labour market, particularly in male-dominated occupations (Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey, 2016; Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2021). Only 40% of women have jobs (compared to 80% of men) and working women earn less than their male counterparts, especially in urban areas (World Bank, 2023; Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2018). Bangladesh’s gender segregation is exacerbated by labour laws that permit gender discrimination in hiring and restrict women from operating some machinery or carrying heavy items.

Restrictive gender norms also contribute to the country's prevalent gender-specific employment and large wage gaps. Male guardianship of females is a common feature of traditional relationships in Bangladesh, with women living under the guardianship of their fathers in childhood, their husbands and fathers‐in‐law after marriage, and their sons in widowhood (White 2017).

The lack of safe transport also represents a special concern for women in the capital city of Dhaka. Women report high rates of physical harassment, such as groping, driver misconduct, and discomfort from overcrowding and crush-loading (Rahman 2010, Kabir and Islam 2023, Aachol Foundation, 2022). These problems have led providers to establish women-only bus service routes in recent years, though these services offer limited routes and hours (Naher 2022).

Standard explanations for labour-market discrimination fail to account for certain gender norms such as the global norm to protect women. In recent research, we propose a new explanation for labour market discrimination, which we call paternalistic discrimination: the preferential hiring of men to protect women from dangerous or unpleasant tasks (Buchmann et al. 2024). Do employers in Bangladesh discriminate paternalistically against women? And if so, how does this affect women’s employment and wages?

Data and methodology

We conduct two field experiments with real job applicants and employers in Dhaka between April and August 2023. We examine application and hiring decisions for a job specially created by the research team: a one-time Excel workshop and office job on the night shift (7 pm to midnight) that provides free safe transport home to all workers.

In the first experiment involving 495 employers, we examine how demand for female labour responds to employers’ perceptions of safety. After collecting job applications from real applicants, we ask local employers – individuals with recent hiring experience – to act as hiring consultants, choosing applicants to hire. The key variation in the experiment changes employers’ perceptions of worker safety, by randomising employers into one of two transport ‘treatment arms’:

Transport: Employers are informed about the free safe transport home.
No Transport: Employers are not informed about the transport.

In addition to varying information about the transport in the employer experiment, we also vary whether we offer a wage subsidy, paid either to employers or workers by cross-randomising employers into one of the following four subsidy treatments:

No subsidy: Male and female workers receive BDT 1,500¹ for completing the shift. Employers receive BDT 500 for hiring any worker.
Male worker subsidy: Male workers receive BDT 2,500 and female workers BDT 1,500 for completing the shift. Employers receive BDT 500 for hiring any worker.
Female worker subsidy: Male workers receive BDT 1,500 and female workers BDT 2,500 for completing the shift. Employers receive BDT 500 for hiring any worker.
Employer subsidy: Male and female workers receive BDT 1,500 for completing the shift. Employers receive BDT 500 if their hired worker is a man and BDT 1,500 if their hired worker is a woman.

Figure 1. Experimental treatments

Note: Employers are randomised into a treatment arm, which includes transport information and a subsidy assignment.

The amount of the subsidy would allow workers to purchase a safe ride home for themselves. As a result, employers who trust applicants to judge danger for themselves should hire more women with the female worker subsidy than with the transport. Only employers who wish to control women’s behaviour should hire more women in the transport treatment than in the female worker subsidy treatment. Any changes in hiring between treatments can only be due to employers’ concerns for worker welfare.

In the second experiment involving 770 job applicants, we examine how labour supply responds to applicants’ perceptions of safety. We exogenously vary applicants’ perceptions of job-related danger by randomising whether we inform applicants that safe transport will be provided at the end of the shift.

Key findings

We find that increasing perceptions of safety increase both female labour supply as well as the demand for female labour.

Moreover, we also notice that employers do discriminate paternalistically: withholding information about transport for applicants decreases female hiring by 21%. Information about transport makes women more attractive applicants for the job, suggesting that employers do care about the well-being of the applicants. Moreover, employers prefer for women to receive transport at the end of their night shift than to receive a bonus payment of greater value (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Female hiring rate, by treatment

Notes: (i) Spiked lines represent 95% confidence intervals. A confidence interval is a way of expressing uncertainty about estimated effects – specifically, it means that if the study was repeated over and over with new samples, 95% of the time the calculated confidence interval would contain the true effect. (ii) Asterisks compare hiring rates between ‘no subsidy’ and each of the ‘subsidies with transport’ treatment arms, with p < 0.10∗, p < 0.05∗∗, p < 0.01∗∗∗ on the grey (transport) bars, and pluses compare hiring rates between No subsidy and each of the subsidies without transport, p < 0.10+, p < 0.05++, p < 0.01+++ on the red (no transport) bars. p-values between bars compare hiring rates with and without transport within subsidy treatment. A p-value is the probability of getting results at least as extreme as the results observed, given the assumption that the null hypothesis is true. A p-value lower than a mentioned significance level would be considered statistically significant (if p < 0.01, it is statistically significant at the 1% level).

Turning to job applicants, we see that they value the transport provided – but less so than in the case of employers. Applicants who are informed about the transport are willing to work for about BDT 200 less than applicants who do not know about the transport (Figure 3). At a wage of BDT 1,500, this leads to a drop in female applications of 16%.

Figure 3. Labour supply, by transport treatment

Notes: (i) The spiked lines show 95% confidence intervals based on the estimated standard errors of the regression coefficients. (ii) Asterisks are from p-values from comparing reservation rates across genders with transport, p < 0.10∗, p < 0.05∗∗, p < 0.01∗∗∗ on the grey (transport) bars, and pluses from reservation wages across genders without transport, p < 0.10+, p < 0.05++, p < 0.01+++ on the red (no transport) bars. Within-gender comparisons of reservation wages with and without transport are given by p-values above bars.

Policy implications

Paternalistic discrimination suggests a specific set of policy tools to increase female labour force participation. Investment in gender-sensitive public transport, crime reduction efforts and workplace safety initiatives can make work safer for women and reduce the need for employers to protect them against their will. Further, wage laws and worker subsidies may change employers’ assessments of the jobs that are worthwhile for women. More generally, our findings suggest that ignoring the effects of policies on the demand side of female labour may understate the total benefits of these interventions and lead to mistaken priorities.

Studying paternalistic discrimination offers valuable insights for policymakers aiming to affect labour market outcomes. For one, increasing the security of workers (both in the workplace and during the commute) may increase both the supply of and demand for labour. Programmes such as our intervention to provide safe transport and worker subsidies for women, have the potential to benefit employers as well as workers, resulting in higher female employment rates and overall firm productivity and profits. At a minimum, policymakers should be aware that policies targeting worker supply through workplace conditions and job amenities may also affect employment through unintended demand-side channels.

While our experiment focuses on Bangladesh, the forces that drive paternalistic discrimination in the country – strong gender norms, weak or non-existent anti-discrimination laws, and firms that display biased decision-making – are shared by many low-income countries, including India. We suspect that paternalistic discrimination may limit women’s work opportunities in such places. Our data suggest that those who suffer the most from paternalistic discrimination are women with little experience. Since early-career workers are often willing to undertake unpleasant tasks in order to gain experience, paternalism may be most limiting for these women, keeping them off the first rung of the career ladder and restricting later opportunities.

Future research should explore how paternalism affects women's career trajectories or preferences over the long term, thus contributing to systemic discrimination. While we focus on hiring decisions, there may also be differential treatment in task assignment, promotion, or layoff decisions. Moreover, paternalistic discrimination might occur not only in the labour market but also inside the household (against daughters) or in school (against female students), thus differentially shaping the preferences of girls and boys during their most formative stages. The fact that many hiring managers mention ‘culture’ and ‘fit’ as factors in their hiring decisions suggests the importance of paternalism in these other dimensions. Understanding these issues can enhance our understanding of gender gaps and our assessment of available policies.

A version of this post previously appeared on the IGC Blog.

Note:

100 Bangladeshi Taka is equal to approximately Rs. 72 or US$0.85.