Gender, Time Use, and Change: Impacts of Agricultural Export Employment in Ecuador

This paper uses quasi-experimental data from Ecuador to understand the impacts of women’s employment on household paid and unpaid labor allocation. The “treatment” area is in the area of the cut flower industry, which has a high demand for female labor. The “control” area is in a culturally similar, but economically more traditional valley. This approach addresses the problem of endogeneity that arises when measuring the impacts of contemporaneous household labor supply decisions. The analysis shows that with the advent of market labor opportunities for women, women’s total time in labor remains constant while men’s time in unpaid labor increases. I would like to thank Harold Alderman, Lynn Brown, Shahidur Khandker, Peter Lanjouw, Martin Ravallion, and Agnes Quisumbing for early guidance on the measurement issues, Peter Lanjouw and Norma Mena for careful reviews of the draft survey instrument, Benedicte de la Briere for insightful comments on the first draft, Patricia Zambrano for excellent research assistance, and Pilar Larreamendy, Ana Maria Maldonado, Gioconda Paez, Marta Ordoñez, Jorge Eguiguren, Alberto Valle, and Vicente Merino for their professionalism and enthusiasm in the two data collection efforts. Funding for this research came from the Gender and Development Thematic Group, the Gender and Poverty Thematic Group, and the World Bank Research Committee.