Mobile money has spurred improvements in household welfare, but its use among women lags behind that of men. This gap is especially pronounced in Bangladesh, where in 2021 only 20 percent of women, compared to 38 percent of men, had a mobile money account [1] , and where less than one percent of mobile money agents were women [2].
Bangladesh also has low levels of female labor force participation and high levels of gender discrimination – labor force participation among women in Bangladesh is only 37 percent [3]. Moreover, employers, who are typically male, express strong reservations about hiring women, with 45 percent of business managers expressing concern that female employees would disrupt the work environment [4]. The majority of firms that are willing to hire women operate in the ready-made garments sector, which requires migration to Dhaka or Chittagong, where factories are concentrated. Heath and Mobarak (2015) found that 78 percent of women who worked for pay around Dhaka were employed in the garment sector and that 60-70 percent of working women were migrants [5]. In contrast, there are few local employment opportunities for women with flexible schedules that allow women with children or other responsibilities to work in their communities. Employment as mobile money agents in local shops with flexible hours, rather than as shift workers in a rigid factory, could provide women balance. Simultaneously, the prevalence of female agents could make mobile money more accessible to female customers, who are often reluctant to transact with male agents.
To learn about the effects of employing women as mobile money agents, we launched an experiment with bKash, the largest mobile money operator in Bangladesh. We recruited owners of mobile money businesses who were interested in expanding operations by adding an employee to help serve mobile money customers. We asked these business owners to identify two women and two men whom they knew and would be willing to hire as employees in their shops. We randomly selected a fraction of these business owners to receive a subsidy to hire a particular employee from the list they provided. Some business owners received a subsidy to hire one of the men they nominated, others to hire one of the women they nominated and some who neither received a subsidy nor were told to hire an employee.
This design allows us to make two types of comparisons: between shops that were randomly assigned to hire men, compared to those that were randomly assigned to hire women (or to not hire at all); and between men and women who were randomly selected to receive jobs, and those who were not. We can estimate the effects of having women as employees, compared to having men as employees, on outcomes including use of mobile money by women customers, business profits, and shop owners’ attitudes about the skills and productivity of women as employees. We can also estimate the effects of having a job on workers’ income, skill accumulation, and household empowerment, and speak to the differential effects of employment for men and women.
This project is still in its early days! The launch itself was a challenge – fieldwork initially began in 2019, was delayed due to COVID-19, and further delayed due to management changes with our in-country research partner. Data collection was finally launched in 2023. These delays meant that some of the business owners who originally agreed to participate were no longer interested four years later, and some of the candidate employees identified in 2019 were no longer available. However, in October 2023, we launched the first wave of the study, with 102 shops and 408 candidate employees. More than 80 percent of employees were randomly selected for jobs accepted, with take-up by women matching that of men. Since then, we have monitored the shops monthly and found the vast majority of employees – both women and men – working as scheduled! We will soon launch the second wave of the study, including another 200 shops. While it is too soon to be able to report effects on business outcomes, attitudes toward women’s labor force participation, access to mobile money, or household empowerment, we are encouraged by the adherence of both agents and employees to the design. We are equally excited by the idea that dozens of women are now working in the mobile money sector in Bangladesh – a small but potentially important step for the sector!
