Women in Firms: Experimental Evidence from Indian Firms examines whether reducing informational barriers encourages firms to provide safer workplaces for women and improves female employment outcomes in urban India.
Female labour force participation in India remains low despite legislation designed to protect women at work. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act (SHWA) 2013 requires employers to implement measures such as internal complaints committees and sexual harassment prevention mechanisms, yet compliance remains limited.
The study investigates two key research questions:
- Whether informational constraints prevent firms from adopting workplace safety measures; and
- Whether improving firms’ knowledge of workplace safety legislation increases the provision of safety-related amenities and improves the recruitment, retention, and performance of female employees.
The project consists of a randomized controlled trial involving approximately 1,400 firms in urban India. Firms are randomly assigned to receive:
- information on the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act (SHWA);
- information on job seekers’ preferences regarding workplace safety;
- both information treatments; or
- no information (control group).
Following the information intervention, firms are offered a confidential workplace safety audit conducted by Safecity, a non-profit organization specializing in workplace safety for women. The study measures the take-up of safety audits and evaluates their impact on workplace safety practices, awareness of sexual harassment, employer attitudes, hiring decisions, employee retention, work satisfaction, and firm performance.
To estimate the causal impact of workplace safety improvements, the first-stage treatment assignment is used as an instrument for audit participation. An additional randomized sample of approximately 250 firms receives direct offers of the safety audit to validate the findings.
Data are collected through structured telephone and online surveys of human resource managers and employees and are complemented with publicly available firm information. The project builds on an earlier pilot study conducted jointly with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Safecity.
The project contributes to the literature on barriers to female labour force participation, firms’ compliance with labour regulations, workplace safety, and the role of information interventions in improving employment opportunities for women in developing countries. It also provides evidence on how workplace safety initiatives can influence firm behaviour and women’s labour market outcomes in low-income settings.
