Resource information
This paper evaluates the impact of
strengthening legal rights on the types of economic
opportunities that are pursued. Ethiopia changed its family
law, requiring both spouses' consent in the
administration of marital property, removing the ability of
a spouse to deny permission for the other to work outside
the home, and raising women's minimum age of marriage.
Thus both access to resources and the removal of
restrictions on employment served to strengthen women's
bargaining position within the household and their ability
to pursue economic opportunities. Although this reform now
applies nationally, it was initially rolled out in the two
chartered cities and three of Ethiopia's nine regions.
Using nationally representative household surveys from just
prior to the reform and five years later allows for a
difference-in-difference estimation of the reform's
impact. The analysis finds that women were relatively more
likely to work in occupations that require work outside the
home, employ more educated workers, and in paid and
full-time jobs where the reform had been enacted,
controlling for time and location effects. As the relative
increase in women's participation in these activities
was 15-24 percent higher in areas where the reform was
carried out, the magnitude of the impact is significant too.
