Moderator: Dr. Hadia Majid

Pakistan has gender parity in tertiary enrollment, yet labor force participation rate of female graduates is one-third that of the male graduates. We conducted a randomised control trial with 2500 final year female undergraduate students in Lahore, Pakistan, a large majority of whom had expressed a desire to work after graduation. We randomly selected half of the sample to watch videos of relatable female role models to encourage students to enter the labor force. The treated students had a significantly higher growth mindset immediately after watching the video. This did not translate into significantly higher job search effort or likelihood of working for the first 15 months after the intervention. However, eighteen months after the intervention, at the onset of the first nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, treated students were 4.7 percentage points more likely to be working. Evidence suggests this may have been driven by students stressed about loss of household income due to the lockdown.