Review Question: What are the effectiveness and design features of interventions that aim to overcome barriers to women’s participation in the labour market in higher growth/male dominated sectors?

Start to finish: 1 November 2016 – 31 October 2017

Co-Led by: Laurenz Langer and Yvonne Erasmus

Team: Charity Chisoro, Mary Opondo, Zafeer Ravat, Ruth Stewart, Natalie Tannous, Carina van Rooyen from the University of Johannesburg

Partners: Jan Tripney from the EPPI-Centre, UCL Institute of Education; Ekwaro Obuku from the Africa Centre for Systematic Reviews and Knowledge Translation at Makerere University, Uganda; and Alison Bullen, an independent consultant

Funder: the Department for International Development, United Kingdom

Region of focus: Global; low- and middle-income countries

ACE theme: Producing useful research evidence

Description: The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) has funded a year-long systematic review on the evidence on interventions that aim to support women’s participation in labour markets in higher growth or male-dominated sectors in low- and middle-income countries. The project consists of two parts: an interactive evidence interface, and a full systematic review. The evidence interface has mapped any intervention that helps women overcome barriers to their labour market participation in higher growth/male-dominated sectors against outcomes of women’s participation in formal or informal employment, entrepreneurial success, or economic empowerment. The second part of the project consists of a full systematic review on a question of priority developed after consultation with the funder.

The review includes a meta-analysis and a qualitative comparative analysis. The review team is supported by the EPPI-Centre, which is based in the Social Science Research Unit at the Department of Social Science, UCL Institute of Education, London.

You can follow the progress of the review from the perspective of its team members here.