Policy

This report is one of several in the region that attempts to unravel the puzzle of the exceptionally low female labor force participation (FLFP) rates in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Iraq’s FLFP rate is the lowest among countries not in conflict, with only 11.5 percent of women of working-age actively participating in the labor market. The cost of such a reality is high. Annual economic growth will remain limited if half of its human capital remains under-utilized. If the Iraqi government were to achieve its 5-percentage point target increase for FLFP by 2025 and sustain that rate of increase over the subsequent decade, its annual GDP growth would enjoy a 1.6 percentage point boost, much needed for national prosperity and stability. To explore these social drivers, we rely on Cristina Bicchieri’s framework4 for diagnosing social norms, capturing the personal beliefs (i.e., what I think), social normative expectations (i.e. what other people think), and social empirical expectations (i.e. what other people are doing) of women and men between in Baghdad, Basrah, and Nineveh. Our study collected responses from mostly men and women living in the same household. Around 69 percent of the sample consisted of married couples, while the remaining were a variation of father and daughter (3 percent), mother and son (10 percent), and sister and brother (12 percent). The sample was identified based on a multi-stage probability sampling method and consisted of 1,983 respondents, of which 938 were male and 1,045 were female. The authors asked the respondents about the acceptability of women’s work and under which conditions. The conditions correspond to one of the following four thematic areas: 1) women’s work (in general), 2) publicness and mixing, 3) gender roles, and 4) work in the private sector. For each of these themes, we probed into respondents’ personal views, as well as their views about other people’s opinions and behaviors. By uncovering the relationship between these social expectations and women’s work, we are able to determine whether FLFP is, in part, a function of social norms and, therefore, could be improved by addressing them through policies and programs.

Women’s labor force participation in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is very low, at 14 percent. This paper investigates a number of social and psychological barriers to participation, using recent methods in the measurement of social norms and cultural beliefs and primary data collected from all three governorates. Furthermore, since greater growth in employment generation is expected in the private sector, the paper explores women and men’s perceptions toward working in the private sector in detail. The findings show that while 70 percent of women and men support women’s participation in the private sector. Several challenges remain in both information about the sector, as well as perceived risks and discrimination. More broadly, the findings show that traditional gender role expectations may still impede women’s labor force participation. Perceptions of common societal practices and beliefs of other members from the same household are all correlated with women’s work. The paper explores additional mental barriers using a smaller sample of younger and more educated female job seekers, who are registered with a jobs agency, and finds that both perseverance in the job search process and trust and engagement with formal institutions are additional behavioral barriers.

Despite considerable achievements over the last three decades, Romania continues to face obstacles in realizing its full economic potential and creating equal opportunities for its citizens. Poor service delivery and infrastructure are in part a result of the low quality of the Romanian public administration, which remains one of the least effective among the European Union (EU) Member States. In response, the government has been undertaking regulatory and institutional reforms. The World Bank is supporting the government in its further efforts to professionalize the public administration and increase its performance and effectiveness by revising the recruitment, selection and appraisal, performance management, competency framework and training systems. In this context, the Romania Public Administration Employee Survey was conducted to provide a quantitative diagnostic of the de facto experiences of workers in the public administration, and to establish baseline metrics against which the impact of reforms can be assessed. This report presents the survey findings on the various human resource management (HRM) practices in an integrated and problem-driven manner, through the lens of the two key drivers of performance: selecting the right staff and keeping them motivated.

Declines in rates of child stunting in the Philippines have decelerated, making it hard for the country to achieve its targets on nutritional outcomes. The knowledge base, beliefs, and practices of caregivers have been extensively researched, but little is known about how health workers and policy makers fare in comparison. The authors conduct qualitative interviews, striving to preclude bias as we capture these stakeholders’ views on factors that affect stunting, and go on to compare and contrast these perceptions. The authors subsequently investigate the importance of the different factors in detail through a large-scale quantitative survey with frontline health and nutrition workers. The findings suggest that while most workers’ knowledge and beliefs are consistent with accepted practices, important deviations from consensus views exist, and these are correlated with worse self-reported service delivery outcomes at local health centers. The findings suggest that in the Philippines any endeavor to further improve service delivery must take into consideration the beliefs of frontline workers.

This study conducted a large-scale, representative survey of social norms for female labor force participation in three governorates of Jordan. The social norms measures are dis aggregated into thematic clusters, empirical and normative expectations, and interpersonal expectations within the household. The measurements satisfy reasonable tests for internal consistency, external validity, and test-retest reliability. The survey shows that the great majority of men and women favor women’s labor force participation, although support falls under specific scenarios. Most non–working women would like a job. Among married women, the strongest correlates of working are the woman’s expecta tions of her husband’s views and the husband’s personal beliefs. Among unmarried women, empirical expectations of the number of women working correlate strongest with labor force participation. The study findings indicate that information campaigns highlighting hidden support for women working could be effective, although distinct messages for men, married women, and unmarried women may be useful.