This paper provides a first step in understanding the linkages between firms’ discriminatory behavior in the presence of gender-based legal discriminations and labor market outcomes for women in a developing country setting. The paper focuses on the DRC and takes advantage of, to the best of our knowledge, previously unused data on firms’ behavior, which were collected through the 2013 World Bank Enterprise Surveys (ES) in the DRC. As documented by the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law (WBL), at the time of the 2013 ES, the DRC was characterized by the presence of several gender-based discriminatory provisions in areas such as family and inheritance laws, labor laws and land laws that could potentially limit women’s participation in economic activities. Several gender disparities were also present in the country. Although women accounted for almost 48 percent of the labor force, 80 percent of women were employed in agriculture, only 4 percent in industry, and 16 percent in services. Moreover, human capital accumulation was still lower for women than for men. About 28 percent of women had never gone to school in contrast to 14 percent for men (World Bank, 2013) and secondary and tertiary school enrollment was lower for girls than for boys. Finally, about 75 percent of women in the DRC indicate they have no say in household decisions (UN Women, 2011).

Development practitioners have encouraged and worked with governments to reform laws that hold women back from working and doing business. However, there is some concern that some of these laws suffer from lack of enforcement, especially in developing economies with weak institutions. The divergence between _de iure_ and _de facto_ situations may imply that even though there may be gender-based discrimination in the law, in practice women benefit from the same rights as men or, vice versa, that women may be still discriminated despite the presence of laws that protect them from gender-based discrimination. Such differences have been documented for the business environment regulations in general using firm-level data (Hallward-Driemeier and Pritchett, 2015), but not for gender-specific laws. Through the existence of a unique firm-level data set of 400 private-sector firms operating in the manufacturing and services sectors in the DRC, the paper can verify if employers discriminate in the presence of discriminatory laws, or if they discriminate despite the presence of laws that protect from gender discrimination. Furthermore, the study can explore whether employers’ discriminatory behavior has any correlation with women’s participation in the private sector either in positions of power, like a firm’s top manager or owner, or in the general workforce. As the data are characterized by good geographical coverage, the analysis can also explore to what extent restrictions from discriminatory behaviors apply to women living and working in the capital city as compared to those who live and work outside the capital city, offering some interesting insights on the possible roles of culture and law enforcement.

We find mixed evidence in terms of enforcement of laws – whether or not some forms of discriminatory laws exist does not result in uniform firm behavior, calling into question whether these laws are known, or 3