Friendly workplaces for working mothers: do lactation rooms promote women's labor force participation and productivity?

This project studies a specific policy intended to make workplaces more supportive of women's needs, which in turn may increase women's labor force participation and performance on the job: the creation of lactation rooms in the workplace to allow women better combine work and breastfeeding. Kenya passed a law requiring employers all over the country to secure breastfeeding-friendly workplaces by establishing lactation rooms, but compliance with the law is anecdotally low. This project aims to i) test low-cost solutions to increase compliance with the law by giving symbolic mandates to committee-like groups of managers and/or employees created for the purpose, ii) compare top-down approaches that only involve the management to bottom-up approaches that involve employees in the establishment of women-friendly workplaces and iii) study the effect of lactation rooms on women's labor force participation, working hours, and productivity in the workplace.