Event on Gender and Structural Transformation on the Sidelines of the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings

EGC is collaborating with partners based in Washington D.C. to host a discussion focused on structural transformation, jobs, growth, and gender dynamics on the sidelines of the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings, on Friday, April 25, 2025. We invite colleagues who will be at the Spring Meetings in D.C. to join us at this discussion. More information is available below, which will be updated as additional details are confirmed.

This event, organized by EGC in partnership with the Gates Foundation and the Center for Global Development, and hosted at the Gates Foundation’s Washington D.C. office, will present new research on gender, labor markets, structural transformation, and policy intervention in India, Mexico, and Morocco, bringing in additional insights from a set of studies across Sub-Saharan Africa. 

The session will address the following questions: how do gender gaps in labor market outcomes evolve with structural transformation as labor moves out of agriculture and into manufacturing and services? How can policy decisions avoid the downward-sloping section of the historic inverse-U relationship between female labor force participation and economic growth, and enable growth that matches talent to opportunity regardless of gender? What is the differential impact on women and men of digital transformation? How does migration out of agriculture into urban areas affect gendered outcomes in labor markets? What is the impact of a minimum wage policy intervention on the gender wage gap?

Agenda

Registration and Light Breakfast (9:00-9:30 am)

Panel Discussion: Why tracking gender disparities is important for productivity and growth? (9:30-10:15 am)

• Moderator: Markus Goldstein (Center for Global Development)

Panelists

• Oriana Bandiera (London School of Economics, joining virtually)
• Douglas Gollin (Tufts University)
• Rohini Pande (Yale University)

Research Presentations: Gender Gaps and Structural Transformation: Country Perspectives (10:15 - 10:45 am)

• Moderator: Markus Goldstein (Center for Global Development)

Presenters:

• Michael Peters (Yale University), Pamela Torola (Yale University), Lindsey Uniat (Yale University) & Fabrizio Zilibotti (Yale University), From Rural Fields to Urban Kitchens: Structural Change and the Decline of Women's Work in India
• Maria Kogelnik (Yale University), Rohini Pande (Yale University), Charity Troyer-Moore (Ohio State University) and Akash Uppal (Yale University), presenting early insights from field experiments in India designed to study preferences for power and paternalism, and whether these vary by gender and influence labor market decisions
• Gaurav Chiplunkar (University of Virginia) & Pinelopi Goldberg (Yale University), presenting findings from a forthcoming working paper on the impact of the expansion of 3G in Mexico on gendered labor market outcomes
• Louise Paul-Delvaux (World Bank), Minimum Wage, Informality, and Gender Gaps: Evidence from Morocco

Reflections on Policy Engagement: Gender Equality and Economic Transformation -  Lessons from Africa (10:45 - 10:55 am)

• Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi (African Center for Economic Transformation) will reflect on the session and summarize insights from the Center’s recently published flagship  2025 ACET African Transformation Report, which focuses on gender equality and economic transformation in Africa.

Audience Q&A and Closing Remarks (10:55 - 11:15 am)

If you have any questions about this event, please contact Jonathan Bower, Senior Research Manager at EGC, at jonathan.bower@yale.edu

Oriana Bandiera is the Sir Anthony Atkinson Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and a honorary foreign member of the American Economic Association, a fellow of the British Academy, the Econometric Society, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA). She is director of the Hub for Equal Representation at the London School of Economics and of the Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries programme at IZA.

Gaurav Chiplunkar is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. He studies how digital technology and industrial policy reforms mitigate the labor market barriers faced by women and youth, and their implications for aggregate productivity and growth. Chiplunkar is a Research Affiliate at a range of institutions including J-PAL, Y-RISE, and Inclusion Economics, and holds a PhD from Yale University.

Markus Goldstein is Vice President and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development. Prior to joining CGD, he was at Amazon where he led research teams building human resources solutions. Earlier in his career, as Lead Economist at the World Bank, he founded and led the influential Africa Gender Innovation Lab. Goldstein holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from University of California, Berkeley; his expertise spans poverty reduction, gender equity, firm growth, agricultural productivity and health. 

Douglas Gollin is the Jason P. and Chloe Epstein Professor of Economics at Tufts University and the Research Director for a major global program of academic research on Structural Transformation and Economic Growth (STEG), funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office. He is also a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development.

Maria Kogelnik is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Yale Economic Growth Center and the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics. Her research fields include experimental and behavioral economics, and applied microeconomics. In addition to her work on power, paternalism and gender in India, she has written on career progression and the gender gap in persistence. She holds a PhD in Economics from UC Santa Barbara.

Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi is the President and CEO of the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), Africa’s leading economic policy institute focused on moving Africa beyond growth and toward transformation, and a Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow. Her career spans over twenty-five years in economic and social policy making and development, including the UK Department of International Development, Save the Children, and the Power of Nutrition.

Rohini Pande is the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. She is also the faculty director of Inclusion Economics at Yale. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Econometric Society fellow, and a former co-editor of American Economic Review: Insights. Pande received the 2018 Carolyn Bell Shaw Award from the American Economic Association for promoting the success of women in the economics profession and the 2022 Infosys Prize in Social Sciences.

Louise Paul-Delvaux is a Research Economist at the World Bank's Development Research Group. Her research primarily focuses on studying labor markets in low-income settings and policies that can reduce gender disparities in employment and income; she has also written on the impact of female directors on gender gaps in labor market outcomes in France. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. 

Lindsey Uniat is in the final year of the economics PhD program at Yale University. She studies macroeconomics and labor economics and her work has been supported by a fellowship from the NBER Gender in the Economy group. She holds an MSc in Economics from London School of Economics as well as a BA in English Literature from Yale University. She will join the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in summer 2025