Abstract: We examine whether exposure to female factory employment lowers a woman's son preference. We first geo-locate thousands of Bangladeshi garment factories, which operate in an industry that employs a large share of female workers. We then determine a woman's exposure to female factory employment using her proximity to garment factories and her exposure to total garment exports based on her birth cohort. We find that for a woman aged 26 years, exposure to female factory employment explains 5.38 percent of the difference in a woman's son preference between the capital city, Dhaka, which is close to garment factories, and another city 61 km away. We show that our results can be explained by two channels that raise the perceived economic value of daughters: (a) greater gender-specific earning potential for girls, and (b) relaxation of purdah norms that restrict women's access to the workplace. Our results suggest that exposure to female factory employment can have a positive intergenerational effect on girls.

[Download working paper]