January 2020 GIL TOP POLICY LESSONS ON INCREASING WOMEN’S GENDER INNOVATION LAB YOUTH EMPLOYMENT The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) conducts impact evaluations of development interventions in Young women in Africa are less likely to be employed than young men, as a Sub-Saharan Africa, seeking result of gaps in access to resources such as skills, time, and capital, and due to to generate evidence on underlying social norms. Adolescence is a particularly critical time to intervene, as how to close gender gaps in teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school can have severe impacts on future earnings, productivity, assets, and agency. The GIL team is employment and earnings with significant consequences on their lives. currently working on over 60 impact evaluations in more than 20 countries with the aim WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO IMPROVE YOUNG of building an evidence base WOMEN’S EMPLOYMENT OUTCOMES? with lessons for the region. • Youth unemployment rates in Sub-Saharan Africa are double those of adult The impact objective of GIL is unemployment, and unemployment rates for women are higher than rates increasing take-up of effective faced by men1. The large majority of women who are employed work in policies by governments, vulnerable employment. development organizations, and the private sector • The differences in the constraints facing young women stem from differential to address the underlying access to key resources which enable employment, as well as (and related causes of gender inequality in to) underlying norms and institutions that govern men’s and women’s Africa, particularly in terms of women’s economic and social economic and household roles. empowerment. The Lab aims • The employment of young women can improve development directly to do this by producing and delivering a new body of through economic growth and productivity, and indirectly via increased evidence and developing a agency and lower fertility. compelling narrative, geared towards policymakers, on what works and what does not work in promoting gender Chakravarty, Shubha; Das, Smita; Vaillant, Julia. 2017. Gender and Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa 1  : A Review of Constraints and Effective Interventions. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 8245. World Bank, equality. Washington, DC. http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab WHAT WORKS TO EMPOWER THE this context, we evaluated the impact of an action NEXT GENERATION? planning intervention in tandem with job counseling, on the efficiency and effectiveness of search among I  NCREASING EFFICIENCY IN THE JOB unemployed youth in South Africa. We find that action SEARCH planning helps unemployed youths follow through on • Nearly 1 in 5 unemployed young women in sub- their job search intentions and adopt a more efficient and Saharan Africa say that they cannot pursue effective search strategy. Participants who completed a their preferred career paths because the entry detailed job search plan increased the number of job requirements exceed their education and training2. applications submitted, but not the time spent searching. Greater search efficiency and effectiveness translates • Job search is a largely self-regulated process, to sizeable improvements in employment outcomes. subject to behavioral biases that lead to sub- Participants in the action planning group receive more optimal search and employment outcomes. job offers and have a greater likelihood of employment.3 POLICY IN ACTION: TESTING AN INNOVATIVE TOOL TO INCREASE JOB SEARCH EFFICIENCY IN SOUTH AFRICA DEVELOPING SKILLS FOR EMPLOYABILITY Drawing on lessons from behavioral science, GIL • Job training programs offer a potential opportunity designed, implemented, and tested an action-planning to reduce occupational segregation by shifting tool to promote greater job search intensity. Existing norms about the appropriate sectors for men and studies show that search intensity depends on job women to work in. seekers’ biases in beliefs about returns to search • Additionally, job training can increase aspirations efforts, their level of impatience, their locus of control, among women who lack the confidence to see as well as their self-confidence and willpower. Within themselves as successful. International Labour Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund. 2018. GirlForce: Skills, Education and Training for Girls Now, ILO and UNICEF, Geneva and 2  New York. Abel, Simon Martin; Burger, Rulof Petrus; Carranza, Eliana; Piraino, Patrizio. 2017. “Bridging the intention-behavior gap ? the effect of plan-making prompts on job 3  search and employment.” Policy Research working paper; no. WPS 8181; Impact Evaluation series. Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group. POLICY IN ACTION: HELPING YOUNG WOMEN TO During adolescence, they face increased risks of CHALLENGE THEIR UNCONSCIOUS BIASES IN NIGERIA contracting HIV/STI, or of having an unintended In Nigeria, a World Bank project provided an information pregnancy, which can limit future earnings. and communications technology (ICT) training to women • However, adolescent girls face specific barriers to university graduates, and GIL found impressive impacts: labor market entry, including smaller networks and participants were 26 percent more likely to work in the limited access to information, domestic work burden, ICT sector after the training. This suggests the potential and concurrent labor market and fertility decisions. for trainings to support the development of emerging sectors and employment in these sectors despite an • Interventions targeting adolescent girls must take initial lack of sector relevant skills. into account the unique constraints that they face. Interestingly, the program’s impact was strongest for POLICY IN ACTION: SCALING EVIDENCE TO EMPOWER women who initially held implicit biases against associating ADOLESCENT GIRLS AND YOUNG WOMEN ACROSS women with professional attributes. These women were TWO CONTINENTS5 more likely to switch into the ICT sector after the program In Uganda, GIL worked with BRAC to document the than initially unbiased women. This seems to indicate impacts of a vocational and life skills training program that even without explicitly encouraging participants to through ‘safe space’ clubs for adolescent girls. Findings defy social norms, training programs can help individuals showed that the clubs raised the likelihood of girls overcome self-defeating biases.4 engaging in income-generating activities by 72% and decreased teen pregnancy by 26%. At a cost of under EMPOWERING ADOLESCENT GIRLS $100 US per girl per year, the program not only worked • For girls, adolescence is the critical time to intervene. but was also cost-effective. Croke, Kevin, Markus Goldstein and Alaka Holla, 2018. Can Job Training Decrease Women’s Self-Defeating Biases? Experimental Evidence from Nigeria. World Bank 4  Other Operational Studies 30495, Washington, DC: World Bank. Bandiera, Oriana, Niklas Buehren, Robin Burgess, Markus Goldstein, Selim Gulesci, Imran Rasul, Munshi Sulaiman. 2017. Women’s Empowerment in Action: 5  Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics In Liberia, GIL found that the Economic Empowerment of Adolescent Girls and Young Women (EPAG) program, which provided six months of classroom-based technical and life skills training, followed by six months of follow-up support, led to a 50% increase in employment among trainees. This evidence helped shape two projects that will reach 900,000 girls and women across India and six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over five years: the Sahel Women Empowerment and Demographic Dividend Regional Project (SWEDD) and the India Tejaswini Socioeconomic Empowerment of Adolescent Girls & Young Women project. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT Kenny Ajayi kajayi@worldbank.org Fannie Delavelle fdelavelle@worldbank.org Photo credit (page 1): Hoel/World Bank 1818 H St NW Washington, DC 20433 USA This work has been funded in part by the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE), which is a multi-donor trust fund administered by the World Bank to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment through experimentation and www.worldbank.org/africa/gil knowledge creation to help governments and the private sector focus policy and programs on scalable solutions with sustainable outcomes. The UFGE is supported with generous contributions from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.