Work Package 1: African Women Through History
a) A Gender Perspective on African Economic Development Through History
A primary objective of this sub-project was to build datasets to analyze the long-term evolution of sub-Saharan women’s relative well-being. The main focus was the DR Congo due to the uncovering of remarkable material.
1. Pro-birth Policies and Women’s Fertility During Colonial Times: This study combined information on the birth calendar of women surveyed in the 1970s in the DR Congo with data on their exposure to pro-birth policies, showing higher fertility among targeted women and the critical role of female education by Catholic nuns.
2. Investment in Colonial Education and Persistence in Geographic and Gender Inequalities: This research combined data on education spanning from the 1950s to the 2010s, with information on schools during colonial times and the universe of schools in 2020, showing persistent geographical inequalities affecting women more than men.
3. Women’s Height and Well-being: We compiled a dataset on height for men and women in Africa, finding that women fare better in groups practicing the bride-price, as parents protect daughters against negative income shocks.
b) Family Laws and Women’s Outcomes in SSA
This research combined analyses of formal and informal laws and customs, focusing on three aspects:
1. Judgments by Indigenous Courts in the Congo: We investigated the effects of judgments by indigenous courts on women’s outcomes, revealing harsher sentences for women linked to colonial-era demand for female labor.
2. Role of Religious Conversion in Shaping Gender Norms: We explored how conversion to evangelical churches can serve as an alternative pathway to women's emancipation in patriarchal institutions.
3. Family Laws in Kenya: We examined the impact of the 2010 Constitution on women’s access to land and fertility behaviors.
Work Package 2: Intra-Household Bargaining – Violence and Access to Resources
1. Women’s Empowerment, Marriage, and Violence: We developed a model of violence, showing that better economic opportunities or decreases in divorce costs for women lead to ambiguous effects on violence. In a separate paper (published in World Development), we examined trends in marriage, divorce, and polygamy in Burkina Faso, highlighting the emancipatory trajectories of women.
2. Separate Spheres and Household Cooperation: We developed a delegation model of household decision-making and tested it with first-hand data from an experimental game. In a separate paper we challenged the conventional view on polygamous households, arguing that co-wives may cooperate and unite against the husband, especially when they have low levels of agency.
3. Labor, Nutrition, and Women’s Household Position: Using objective measures of physical effort and nutritional outcomes in Burkina Faso, we compared the workload of men and women, providing an assessment of gendered labor contributions. In a separate paper, we investigated how new labor opportunities (gold mining in Burkina Faso) affect child labor and education for girls and boys. We also designed an RCT to examine how a new economic opportunity affects women’s position within their households. We focused on an intervention that offers women the means to expand pineapple production in Benin. Since one treatment arm involves husbands, we learned whether such inclusion helps leverage husband support. We also investigated discrimination against female producers by workers on their field (“bottom-up discrimination”), using original games designed for this purpose.
