“One Belt One Road” and women development

Abstract

Women have become “the source of prosperity and vitality” through their active participation in national economic development. This paper provides the first study to explore the impact of the “One Belt One Road” initiative (Belt and Road Initiative [BRI]) on women's development, which is mainly indicated by gender inequality index (GII). We adopt the difference-in-difference method for Asia–Europe regions from 2010 to 2019, and the propensity score matching method is further supplemented for refining the control group. The result suggests a robust negative effect of the BRI on gender inequality, and the decrease in GII caused by the BRI accounts for 33.01%. In addition, a deeper analysis is performed on subindices from multiple dimensions. We find that there has been a significant decrease in maternal mortality due to the policy. Besides, the female population has a larger increase in secondary education compared with men. Moreover, a clear labour shift has been found from family and agricultural labour to high-value-added industries and services. The BRI also helps improve the unfavourable condition in backward countries, which is conducive to narrowing the gap in women's development among countries along the route.