Effect of electricity access on the value of women’s labour and time in Ghana

Abstract

Despite the numerous policies targeting women, little improvement has been realised in the value of women’s labour and time in Ghana. Though, access to electricity has improved significantly, its potential to improve women’s labour and time value has not been appreciatively considered in the Ghanaian literature. Thus, this paper seeks to analyse the effect of electricity access on women’s labour and time value as well as the time-saving transmission channels. The 2015 labour force survey was used and the Lewbel two-stage least-squares instrumental variable and special regressor estimators were employed. We find that electricity access has an insignificant effect on the labour value of farm women while the effect on their non-farm value is significant at the national and rural levels.We further find that electricity access reduces the number of unpaid hours expended by women and generates surplus hours. Finally, our findings reveal that electrified women are more likely to own time-saving electric technologies relative to those without electricity. We suggest policy makers expand electricity access, create more rural non-farm enterprises, and subsidise the cost of electrical appliances to improve Ghanaian women’s labour and time value.