women in control villages and 2.4 percentage points more likely to work for pay outside the home. They were also 5.1 percentage points less likely to get married and 5.7 percentage points less likely to have given birth during the three-year period of the study, consistent with increased aspirations for a career. Beaman et al. (2012) also found that local female leadership improved girls’ aspirations relative to boys and parents’ aspirations for their daughters relative to those for their sons. The proportion of parents who believed that their daughter’s occupation should be determined by her in-laws fell 11 percentage points when the community had a female leader.

# **3.5 Safety and Mobility**

While the changes in social norms needed to reduce workplace sexual harassment may take a generation or more, interventions to promote gender awareness and safety in workplaces can make a difference in the short term. Unfortunately, there is close to no rigorous evidence on women’s safety in the workplace or on the way to work, nor on interventions that could improve safety and facilitate female labor force participation. The ILO’s Better Work Program has demonstrated success in improving worker conditions and productivity for the garment industry in Cambodia and expanded to seven other countries including 25,000 workers in Lesotho, though it does not target safety issues in particular. The program uses a multistakeholder approach and offers training and advisory services to promote behavioral change. Its primary function is ensuring compliance with national and international labor standards addressing safety, compensation, and discrimination. In Lesotho, both male and female workers report better welfare, lower stress, and improved occupational safety due to better factory policies, financial literacy classes, greater awareness, and improved communication (Pike and Godfrey, 2015; Kotikula et al., 2015). However, experimental methods have not been utilized, and the studies have not evaluated effects on a woman’s decision to work.

A recent World Bank survey of traders on the Rwanda-DRC border documented high reported rates of threats, harassment and violence such as beatings, stripping, and even rape among the predominantly female traders (Brenton et al., 2012). In response, the World Bank is facilitating a series of trainings for both border officials and adult female cross-border traders about their rights. Recent preliminary evidence from the project’s associated impact evaluation reveals reductions in sexual and gender-based violence with no increase in “unofficial” fees. Other interventions have formed associations of female traders to travel together when transporting goods (UN Women, 2012) or provided workshops for female workers on their rights as well as how to seek help in cases of violence (Fawole et al., 2003; Fawole et al., 2005), though rigorous evidence on the impact of these measures is lacking.

In order to address mobility constraints on the way to work, a number of programs in Mexico City, Cairo, Jakarta, Japan, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, and Moscow have attempted to address harassment on public transportation with sex-segregated transportation. However, the programs have not been evaluated (UN Habitat, 2013). Another intervention provided unemployed youth, who were willing to take a new job within the following two weeks, with non-fungible subsidies for transportation to the center of Addis Ababa for 12 weeks. A sample of more educated, active job searchers was far more likely to find secure employment, while a sample of those withdrawn from the formal labor market was more likely to be 25