Strengthening Economic Rights and Women's Occupational Choice : The Impact of Reforming Ethiopia's Family Law

Hallward-Driemeier, Mary ; Gajigo, Ousman

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCESS TO CAPITAL;    ACCESS TO CREDIT;    ACCESS TO FINANCE;    ACCESS TO RESOURCES;    ADOPTION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6695
RP-ID  :  WPS6695

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper evaluates the impact ofstrengthening legal rights on the types of economicopportunities that are pursued.Ethiopia changed its familylaw, requiring both spouses' consent in theadministration of marital property, removing the ability ofa spouse to deny permission for the other to work outsidethe home, and raising women's minimum age of marriage.Thus both access to resources and the removal ofrestrictions on employment served to strengthen women'sbargaining position within the household and their abilityto pursue economic opportunities. Although this reform nowapplies nationally, it was initially rolled out in the twochartered cities and three of Ethiopia's nine regions.Using nationally representative household surveys from justprior to the reform and five years later allows for adifference-in-difference estimation of the reform'simpact.The analysis finds that women were relatively morelikely to work in occupations that require work outside thehome, employ more educated workers, and in paid andfull-time jobs where the reform had been enacted,controlling for time and location effects.As the relativeincrease in women's participation in these activitieswas 15-24 percent higher in areas where the reform wascarried out, the magnitude of the impact is significant too.