Highlights The employment of female workers in Ethiopia’s garment industry has changed dramatically due to a sharp drop in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. In our sample, 41 percent of respondents employed in January 2020 were put on leave or terminated by the time of our survey a few months later. Migration appears to be a major coping mechanism, but many respondents report barriers. Most who have left the city desire to return if possible. Levels of food insecurity are high; rates are higher for those currently still in the city where garment industry jobs are located. Respondents are well informed about COVID-19; false beliefs or myths appear to be extremely uncommon.

We explore potential causes for the well-documented profit gap between male- and female-owned microenterprises in low-income countries. We use rich data from an ongoing field project in Ghana's garment making sector, and our study sample consists of all garment making firms in a midsize district capital. Even within the same industry, male-owned firms earn nearly twice as much profit as female-owned firms. Furthermore, we find the large and persistent gender difference in profits cannot be explained by our extensive firm- and owner-level characteristics. We conclude that factors outside of individual firm or firm-owner characteristics are likely to be at play.

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Entrepreneurs in developing countries report that unreliable electricity imposes a serious constraint, yet little evidence exists on how blackouts impact the micro-firms that account for the majority of employment. This article estimates the effects of outages on small firms using original firm-level panel data and finds evidence of differential effects by firm size. Firms without employees experience large reductions in revenues and profits. Outages have no measurable effect on the output of firms with employees, where worker hours increase, weekly wages paid decrease, and the analysis fails to reject the null hypothesis that blackouts have no effect on (average firm-level) worker hourly wages.

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