Laws meant to 'protect' women from tough jobs are actually just making them more stressed and way poorer.
In China, workplace protection policies meant to safeguard women ended up backfiring by making them more expensive to hire. Instead of being protected, women saw their wages drop and their mental health decline as they were pushed out of the workforce.
Labor Market Regulation and Gender Wage Gap: Unintended Consequences of Female-Targeted Workplace Protection in China
SSRN · 6543070
Gender-specific workplace safety and health policies are widely implemented, yet rigorous evidence on their labor market effects remains limited. This paper examines the impact of China’s 2012 workplace protection policy, which restricts women’s engagement in hazardous activities due to reproductive health considerations. Using nationally representative household survey data and a difference-in-difference-in-differences estimation strategy that exploits cross-industry variations in policy exposu