Women Disrupting the Workplace: Employer Attitudes Against Hiring Women in South Asia

ABSTRACT This study explores the prevalence of employer attitudes towards women workers and whether such attitudes influence women employment in South Asia. The study leverages firm‐level data with a survey instrument that included questions on employer perceptions of hiring women. It investigates whether employers' belief that hiring women could cause disruption in the working environment is associated with lower women employment. Using data for about 11,000 firms surveyed between 2012 and 2013 across five South Asian countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan, the study finds that 30% of firms perceive women workers as disruptive to the working environment. Firms that perceive female workers as disruptive to the working environment are negatively associated with women employment. The link between employer perception of women disrupting the work environment and firm performance is less robust and challenging to identify, although when the attitudes are captured at a more aggregate level, some negative associations are uncovered.