Gender disparities in small and medium-size enterprise lending exist around the world and impede the growth of millions of women-led firms. This paper examines a potential driver of these disparities: gender-biased loan officers. Officer bias is measured through a novel loan application...

This paper examines women's power relative to that of their husbands in 23 Sub-Saharan African countries to determine how it affects women's health, reproductive outcomes, children's health, and children's education. The analysis uses a novel measure of women's empowerment that is closely linked...

This paper documents novel evidence of positive assortative matching in African marriage markets along cognitive and socio-emotional skills, time and risk preferences, and education, using data from rural Mozambique, Cote d'Ivoire, and Malawi

Women farmers in the Western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) bear the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work. Women spend less time than men on their plots and more time on domestic work. The authors use a combination of consultations in the field, desk research, and primary data...

Improving women's agency, namely their ability to define goals and act on them, is crucial for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women. Yet, existing frameworks for women's agency measurement -- both disorganized and partial -- provide a fragmented understanding of the constraints...

Intimate partner violence affects 36 percent of women in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper examines the relationship between decision making within couples and the incidence of intimate partner violence across 12 African countries. Using the wife's responses to survey questions, the analysis finds...

Improving women's agency, namely their ability to define goals and act on them, is crucial for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women. Yet, existing frameworks for measuring women’s agency – both disorganized and partial – provide a fragmented understanding of the...

Low levels of agricultural productivity and investment hinder economic growth in developing countries. This paper presents results from a field experiment in Côte d'Ivoire, which randomized wives' participation in an agricultural extension training for rubber, a male-dominated export crop that...

Across a wide variety of regions and contexts, surveys have found high rates of disagreement within couples on matters of household decision making. Using a unique data set from a spousal survey of 421 agricultural households in the Philippines, this paper finds that 50.2 percent of couples...

Across a wide variety of regions and contexts, surveys have found high rates of disagreement within couples on matters of household decision making. Using a unique data set from a spousal survey of 421 agricultural households in the Philippines, this paper finds that 50.2 percent of couples...