Similarly, business process outsourcing
(BPO) opportunities affect education of women.
In randomly selected villages in India, three years of BPO recruiting services were
provided to women primarily to increase awareness and information about the employment
opportunities. Given that the intervention was at the level of the village, the study found large
effects—three years later, girls ages 5–15 in the villages that received the intervention were 3–5
percentage points more likely to be in school, had a higher body mass index (a measure of health), and were 10 percent more likely to be employed in wage work. Human capital investments for boys did not change. The intervention did not change either structures within the household (for instance, the bargaining power of the mother) or the way schools functioned.
Information about market returns alone suf-
ficed to increase female enrollment and improve
outcomes for girls