G²LM|LIC - Connecting Rural Women to Global Value Chains via Home-Based Work

This public data release contains de-identified research datasets and documentation for the project “Connecting Rural Women to Global Value Chains via Home-Based Work” (IZA/FCDO G²LM|LIC Project GA-6-896). The study is an individually randomized 2×2 factorial field experiment conducted in two villages in the Neemrana region of Rajasthan, India, implemented with Kalaa Trust in a low-skill handicraft sector (crochet production). It evaluates whether flexible, decentralized job offers can increase rural women’s labor supply, earnings, and productivity, and how such opportunities reshape women’s time use and household dynamics.

Eligible women (aged 18–60) living within the workshop catchment areas were identified through door-to-door listing and screening. Enrolled women completed a standardized two-week training at a women-only, child-friendly village workshop (with a training stipend). They were then randomly assigned to an eight-week piece-rate job either from their own homes (Work-from-Home, WfH) or from a women-only workshop inside the village (Work-from-Workshop, WfW). Independently, women were cross-randomized into an identity-revelation “poster” arm versus no poster, varying the public visibility of women’s participation. In the final implementation batch, a contemporaneous pure-control cohort of eligible, interested women received no job offer during the study window, enabling direct treatment–control comparisons.

Data collection includes (i) listing, baseline, endline, and follow-up household surveys; (ii) high-frequency daily monitoring during the production window capturing hours worked, verified outputs, quality checks, and payments for treated participants; (iii) weekly enumerator-assisted time diaries during the intervention window capturing primary and simultaneous activities, location, and co-presence; and (iv) lab-in-the-field productivity exercises conducted under standardized conditions at the end of training and during the final intervention week. Baseline data collection for Batch 1 began in March 2024; Batch 4 endline was completed in June 2025; and the final follow-up survey round was completed in December 2025. The core experimental sample comprises 297 women randomized to WfH/WfW (with or without poster), and the pure-control cohort includes 131 women enrolled in the final batch. Endline completion for the core experimental sample is approximately 92% and balanced across arms.

The release includes Stata datasets with variable and value labels, Excel codebooks for all instruments, a README describing file structure and recommended merge keys, and an Excel mapping file documenting differences between survey-codebook variable names and final dataset variables as well as variables dropped for de-identification. Direct personal identifiers have been removed; users must not attempt re-identification.