Digital Technology, Gender, and Structural Transformation : Evidence from the Mashreq

Overview & Synopsis

Technological change has historically widened or preserved gender gaps in labor market outcomes in favor of men. The World Bank’s Digital Transformation and Its Role in Expanding Women’s Economic Opportunities in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon provided a comprehensive diagnostic of the digital landscape facing women in the Mashreq. The study documented large gender gaps in access, skills, and use; identified infrastructure, regulatory, and social constraints; and outlined policy priorities to make digitalization more inclusive. This paper builds directly on that foundation by developing a formal framework that treats digital technology as potentially gender-biased technical change, and by empirically testing whether digital adoption is differentially associated with women’s labor market outcomes. Using latent indexes of digital skills and digital use constructed from the flagship survey data, the paper shows that digital technology is more strongly associated with women’s labor force participation, sector-specific earnings, and key mediating factors—such as productive internet use, online safety behavior, and the easing of care-related constraints—than with corresponding outcomes for men. By linking these patterns to a dual-economy perspective on structural transformation, the paper reframes digitalization not merely as a tool for inclusion, but as a mechanism that may shift both labor demand and labor supply in ways that favor women in low-participation settings such as the Mashreq.