Policy Research Working Paper10659Connecting People to ProjectsA New Approach to Measuring Women’s Employment in the Middle East and North AfricaRagui AssaadCaroline Krafft Middle East and North Africa RegionOffice of the Chief EconomistJanuary 2024 Public Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedProduced by the Research Support TeamAbstractThe Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.Policy Research Working Paper 10659Innovations to date in detecting women’s employment have focused primarily on improving individual-level questions. This paper explores an alternative approach, using data on household enterprises and asking who participates in these activities. This research uses the latest waves of the Labor Market Panel Surveys for the Arab Republic of Egypt (2018) and Tunisia (2014). The research questions are (1) How do men’s and women’s employment rates change when adding enterprise-based detection questions to standard individual-level questions? (2) Was the additional market employment detected with project-based approaches clas-sified as subsistence work with individual measurement approaches? (3) For which women is additional employ-ment detected using project-based approaches? The paper presents descriptive results on work based on the different approaches. It also estimates changes in state (being reclas-sified as working) from adding enterprise-level data. The findings show large increases in employment rates for rural women in both countries when including enterprise-based detection questions.This paper is a product of the Office of the Chief Economist, Middle East and North Africa Region. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at assaad@umn.edu or cgkrafft@stkate.edu.Connecting People to Projects: A New Approach to Measuring Women’s Employment in the Middle East and North Africa Ragui Assaad1 and Caroline Krafft2 Keywords: Employment, gender, household enterprises, Egypt, Tunisia JEL codes: J21, J22, J43 Acknowledgments T...
