Overall, the data reveal important target areas from a gender perspective (for example, younger women and the prominence of market-related constraints) that policy could be targeted towards — but more refined data in this category of constraints would be useful. Specifically, looking more carefully within market access issues related to distance and cost — for example, commuting times, how often individuals can reach markets, infrastructure quality and modes of transport for products — would better inform how policy might be directed, particularly since distance/cost affect marketing of products as well.

In surveys with a community module like the LSMS, better data on access to child care and caregiving arrangements can also help in understanding women’s labor underutilization amid rural economic transitions. This could include, for example, community-level data on care centers along with existing data collection on local schools — including how long schools and centers are open — as well as other questions on informal caregiving arrangements among family members or other individuals within the community, which could be more relevant for poorer, rural contexts.

## Summary and ways forward

There are large survey data gaps in understanding how rural economic transition is associated with changes in individual employment outcomes. Data on constraints faced by rural women in seeking better economic opportunities or improving productivity are also very important for policy targeting (for example, in technology adoption programs). Box 7 summarizes these issues and priorities for survey data collection going forward.

Box 7. Features of work amid rural transition, and barriers to economic mobility

- Consistent individual-level data on work-related migration across surveys is needed (including data on individuals from the household that have migrated for work, place of migration, sector of work, and remittances) to understand how rural-urban migration has affected rural women left behind.

- Survey questions on skills acquired (or needed), as well as questions on economic mobility (including, relevant to women, information on respondents looking to move to paid work in the formal sector, and those transitioning from home and subsistence production into market work), are still rare and need further exploration in socioeconomic surveys.

- In addition to asking about desire to work, to better inform programs to improve economic mobility in rural areas, questions on constraints to seeking economic opportunities —  questions relevant to both wage and self-employment, across safety, market access, and time-related constraints —should be included regularly in surveys. These outcomes are also tied to non-cognitive factors affecting employment, an important area to examine as well.   As with constraints to seeking economic opportunities, understanding constraints to using technology are also important, given inequalities faced by women in areas such as mobile phone ownership and access to improved agricultural inputs and extension services.

# VI.   Conclusions

Policies can be better targeted with more accurate counting of rural women’s employment, as well as other important factors that affect their decisions to work and seek better economic opportunities. Shifts in international standards for data collection and measurement have also brought many work- and employment-related issues faced by rural women to the forefront — including underreporting of their 22