4 An evaluation in South Africa showed that job seekers who went through a more deliberative written exercise, including setting realistic goals, thinking through obstacles, and envisioning how to overcome these obstacles, were more likely to both find employment and use more formal channels in the process (Abel et al, 2017). Female job seekers may need to engage in the job search process for longer showing greater persistence or “grit” to succeed (Duckworth, 2016). Goal setting can help here as well by both creating realistic targets, and as a reminder to follow through.

In 2016, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) laid out a strategy to accelerate and prioritize job creation in the private sector (Kurdistan Regional Government, 2016). This poses several challenges towards increasing female participation in the labor force. For example, one reason why increased educational attainment by women in the region has not translated into increased labor force participation is that the contraction of opportunities in the public sector has not been met by an increase in the formal private sector (Assaad et al, 2018). However, women still prefer to work in the public sector. While greater completion of tertiary education in the region is an influential factor, the favorable working conditions such as shorter working hours, job security and fringe benefits are also important reasons as to why women are more likely to prefer the public sector (Assaad and Barsoum, 2019). Wage discrepancies between men and women are also lower in the public sector (Said, 2014).

In KRI, while women’s participation in the private sector has increased incrementally, labor force and demographic surveys indicate these rates are still low. For example, labor force and demographic surveys indicate the participation rate was 20.1% in 2012, 14.9% in 2013, 20.6% in 2014, 24.2% in 2015, and 24.3% in 2017 (compared to about 55% for men in all of these surveys). More importantly, little is known as to what the social norms and personal beliefs of women and men are towards women’s work in the private sector. Recognizing these perceptions may be key to understanding labor supply decisions in the future.

Our paper contributes to current literature in several ways. It uses the latest research from behavioral science and unique primary data sets from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) to carefully investigate and discuss a number of social, cultural, and psychological barriers that women may face in their decision to join the labor force. Our research question asks which of these barriers do we see evidence of in KRI in the context of female labor force participation and which of these are most binding. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that attempts to systematically and quantitatively measure such psychological barriers in KRI with respect to FLFP at the individual, household, and societal levels.

The paper proceeds as follows. First, we comment on the current state of labor force participation across public and private sectors in KRI. Next, we discuss the systematic measurement of perceptions for both women and men including social norms and cultural beliefs of individuals and counterparts, towards women’s work in the private sector, as well as the labor force in general. Subsequently, we outline additional barriers to women working in KRI, including drawing on a related study of barriers to women persisting in their job search