Heterogeneous impact of internet availability on female labor market outcomes in an emerging economy: Evidence from Indonesia.

• We estimated the impact of internet availability on five aspects of female labour market outcomes in Indonesia. • Our study shows that internet availability has a positive, but small, impact on young or low educated women's probability to have a full-time job. • We observe a negative but small effect on women's chance of holding a formal job and a skilled job. • We do not find evidence that this is caused by women being pushed into these jobs. Instead, the majority of jobs that were created by the arrival of internet are unskilled and informal. • The study finds that while positive, internet by itself may not be sufficient to bring about a large and positive benefit on women's labor market outcomes. Greater female labor market participation benefits not only women's empowerment and the well-being of their families, but also the economy as a whole. Yet the labor force participation of women in developing countries is relatively stagnant, even with higher levels of economic development and better educational attainment. Women are also more likely to work in the informal sector and unskilled jobs. The arrival of the internet and the subsequent creation of internet-based jobs may positively affect women's labor market outcomes. In this paper, we examine the effect of internet availability on five dimensions of women's labor market outcomes in Indonesia, focusing on the heterogeneity in the impact of internet availability on female labor market outcomes. We construct a balanced pseudo panel covering all districts in the country for 2008 – 2018. We find that internet availability has a small positive effect on the labor force participation and full-time employment of younger or low-educated women. We find a small negative effect on the likelihood of holding skilled jobs for these groups of women. We also find a small negative effect on job formality. These effects are concentrated among low-educated women. The findings are mainly explained by the kind of internet-based jobs that were created in the country. On balance, we do not find evidence that the internet significantly improves women's labor market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]