IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/sbusec/v60y2023i1d10.1007_s11187-022-00637-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The penalty of work from home: gender gap in productivity of unorganised manufacturing firms in India

Author

Listed:
  • Saheli Bose

    (Centre for Training and Research in Public Finance and Policy, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences)

Abstract

This study estimates the contribution of gendered social norms in explaining the gender gap in productivity of unorganised manufacturing firms. Restrictions on mobility and burden of household work mean that female firm-owners primarily operate from their household premises. Using data from unorganised firms operating in the manufacturing sector in India, this paper finds gender gap in firm productivity. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition at mean show that despite controlling for size of the firm, assets and other conventional factors, the location of a female proprietary firm within the household premises of the owner explains 19% of the observed gender gap in productivity. The RIF decomposition results show that at the different quartiles, this contribution varies from 19 to 36% of the composition effect. The evidence suggests that the persistence of the gender gap in firm productivity is associated with the persistence of gendered social norms.

Suggested Citation

  • Saheli Bose, 2023. "The penalty of work from home: gender gap in productivity of unorganised manufacturing firms in India," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 351-369, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:60:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11187-022-00637-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11187-022-00637-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-022-00637-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11187-022-00637-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. DiNardo, John & Fortin, Nicole M & Lemieux, Thomas, 1996. "Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: A Semiparametric Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1001-1044, September.
    2. Seema Jayachandran, 2021. "Social Norms as a Barrier to Women’s Employment in Developing Countries," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 69(3), pages 576-595, September.
    3. Fletcher, Erin K. & Pande, Rohini & Moore, Charity Troyer, 2019. "Women and Work in India: Descriptive Evidence and a Review of Potential Policies," India Policy Forum, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 15(1), pages 149-216.
    4. Oaxaca, Ronald, 1973. "Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(3), pages 693-709, October.
    5. Rijkers, Bob & Costa, Rita, 2012. "Gender and Rural Non-Farm Entrepreneurship," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(12), pages 2411-2426.
    6. Sergio Firpo & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2009. "Unconditional Quantile Regressions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 953-973, May.
    7. Prabal De & Priya Nagaraj, 2014. "Productivity and firm size in India," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 891-907, April.
    8. Alan S. Blinder, 1973. "Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 8(4), pages 436-455.
    9. Suresh de Mel & David McKenzie & Christopher Woodruff, 2009. "Returns to Capital in Microenterprises: Evidence from a Field Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 423-423.
    10. Deshpande, Ashwini & Khanna, Shantanu, 2021. "Can weak ties create social capital? Evidence from Self-Help Groups in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    11. Erica Field & Seema Jayachandran & Rohini Pande, 2010. "Do Traditional Institutions Constrain Female Entrepreneurship? A Field Experiment on Business Training in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 125-129, May.
    12. Kausik Chaudhuri & Subash Sasidharan & Rajesh Seethamma Natarajan Raj, 2020. "Gender, small firm ownership, and credit access: some insights from India," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 1165-1181, April.
    13. Kumar, Neha & Raghunathan, Kalyani & Arrieta, Alejandra & Jilani, Amir & Pandey, Shinjini, 2021. "The power of the collective empowers women: Evidence from self-help groups in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    14. Luisa Fernanda Bernat & German Lambardi & Paola Palacios, 2017. "Determinants of the entrepreneurial gender gap in Latin America," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 727-752, March.
    15. Ira N. Gang & Rajesh Raj Natarajan & Kunal Sen & Myeong-Su Yun, 2021. "The gender productivity gap: Evidence from the Indian informal sector," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-183, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    16. Alex Coad & Jaganaddha Tamvada, 2012. "Firm growth and barriers to growth among small firms in India," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 383-400, September.
    17. Erica Field & Seema Jayachandran & Rohini Pande & Natalia Rigol, 2016. "Friendship at Work: Can Peer Effects Catalyze Female Entrepreneurship?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 125-153, May.
    18. Susan Coleman, 2007. "The Role of Human and Financial Capital in the Profitability and Growth of Women‐Owned Small Firms," Journal of Small Business Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(3), pages 303-319, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Markus Nagler & Johannes Rincke & Erwin Winkler, 2024. "Working from home, commuting, and gender," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 37(3), pages 1-23, September.
    2. Balaji, Arun M & Vijay, R, 2023. "Changing structural composition of the Informal Manufacturing Sector in India during 2011-16: An analysis of unit-level NSSO Data," MPRA Paper 118846, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Islam, Asif M. & Amin, Mohammad, 2023. "The gender labor productivity gap across informal firms," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    2. Charles Ackah & Holger Görg & Aoife Hanley & Cecilia Hornok, 2024. "Africa’s businesswomen – underfunded or underperforming?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 62(3), pages 1051-1074, March.
    3. Sergio Longobardi & Margherita Maria Pagliuca & Andrea Regoli, 2018. "Can problem-solving attitudes explain the gender gap in financial literacy? Evidence from Italian students’ data," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 1677-1705, July.
    4. Victor Chernozhukov & Iván Fernández‐Val & Blaise Melly, 2013. "Inference on Counterfactual Distributions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(6), pages 2205-2268, November.
    5. Ramos, Raul & Sanromá, Esteban & Simón, Hipólito, 2022. "Collective bargaining levels, employment and wage inequality in Spain," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 375-395.
    6. Luis Ayala & Javier Martín-Román & Juan Vicente, 2023. "What Contributes to Rising Inequality in Large Cities?," LIS Working papers 850, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    7. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Mathias G. Sinning, 2014. "Distributional Changes in the Gender Wage Gap," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 335-361, April.
    8. Trinh Thi, Huong & Simioni, Michel & Thomas-Agnan, Christine, 2018. "Decomposition of changes in the consumption of macronutrients in Vietnam between 2004 and 2014," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 259-275.
    9. Domenico Depalo & Raffaela Giordano & Evangelia Papapetrou, 2015. "Public–private wage differentials in euro-area countries: evidence from quantile decomposition analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 985-1015, November.
    10. Jan Eeckhout & Roberto Pinheiro & Kurt Schmidheiny, 2014. "Spatial Sorting," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(3), pages 554-620.
    11. Kaltenberg, Mary & Foster-McGregor, Neil, 2020. "The impact of automation on inequality across Europe," MERIT Working Papers 2020-009, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    12. Anglade, Boaz & Useche, Pilar & Deere, Carmen Diana, 2017. "Decomposing the Gender Wealth Gap in Ecuador," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 19-31.
    13. Sierminska, Eva & Piazzalunga, Daniela & Grabka, Markus M., 2018. "Transitioning towards more equality? Wealth gender differences and the changing role of explanatory factors over time," GLO Discussion Paper Series 252, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    14. Melanie Jones & Ezgi Kaya, 2024. "Performance‐related pay and the UK gender pay gap," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 512-529, October.
    15. Koomen, Miriam & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2022. "Occupational tasks and wage inequality in West Germany: A decomposition analysis," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    16. Joanna Małgorzata Landmesser, 2019. "Decomposition Of Gender Wage Gap In Poland Using Counterfactual Distribution With Sample Selection," Statistics in Transition New Series, Polish Statistical Association, vol. 20(3), pages 171-186, September.
    17. Janet Currie & John Voorheis & Reed Walker, 2023. "What Caused Racial Disparities in Particulate Exposure to Fall? New Evidence from the Clean Air Act and Satellite-Based Measures of Air Quality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(1), pages 71-97, January.
    18. Daniel Baumgarten & Gabriel Felbermayr & Sybille Lehwald, 2020. "Dissecting Between‐Plant and Within‐Plant Wage Dispersion: Evidence from Germany," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 85-122, January.
    19. Nicodemo, Catia & Raya, Josep Maria, 2012. "Change in the distribution of house prices across Spanish cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 739-748.
    20. Maximilian Longmuir & Carsten Schröde & Matteo Targa, 2020. "De-Routinization of Jobs and Polarization of Earnings: Evidence from 35 Countries," Working Papers 1397, Economic Research Forum, revised 20 Jun 2020.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gender-gap; Firm productivity; Social norms; Unorganised sector; India; Decomposition method;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:60:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11187-022-00637-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.