E-commerce development, time allocation and the gender division of labour: evidence from rural China

E-commerce is critical to rural women's career development. From the perspective of labour supply, this study investigates the impact of e-commerce development in rural areas on individuals' time allocation and households' gender labour division. Based on the quasi-natural experiment of the Rural E-Commerce Demonstration County Program in China, we use the data of a large-scale survey from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), and construct a difference-in-difference model to obtain the policy impact. Empirical evidence shows that e-commerce development promotes rural women's part-time employment by crowding out their leisure time, while has no impact on the time allocation of rural men. Besides, e-commerce development fails to increase women's entrepreneurship or modify the traditional gender division of labour in the household. The results demonstrate the benefits and shortcomings of e-commerce for rural women empowerment from a new perspective, indicating that more favourable policies should be introduced to support women's digital skill improvement and entrepreneurial activities.