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Department of Economics

WiP Seminar: Alessandra Palomar Fuertes

Title: "At what cost can women have it all? A causal analysis of a reform on the labour conditions of domestic workers"

  • Date: 15 May 2025 from 13:00 to 14:00

  • Event location: Seminar Room - Piazza Scaravilli, 2 + Microsoft Teams Meeting

Abstract

Care work is one of the main drivers of gender gaps in the labour market in Western countries. Due to gender norms, women continue to be the main providers of unpaid care work, even when having a job on the labour market. Previous literature has studied how women outsource care work by hiring domestic workers, usually in the informal market at a very low cost. Recent efforts by the ILO to formalize care work could change these dynamics by altering the price, the supply and the characteristics of household services. In this project, we exploit a reform in Spain that formalizes household services and study its impact on the labour decisions of women with care work responsibilities.