this is confirmed by the available data figure which show that women are more likely to work informally than men in almost all countries although these differences are not large informal firms are typically less productive and provide workers with fewer opportunities for human capital accumulation la porta and shleifer this represents an additional drag on female earnings and on their opportunities for career advancement moreover recent oecd work shows that informal jobs are typically of lower quality than formal ones with detrimental effects on workers wellbeing it also shows that female workers find it more difficult than men to move into a formal job if they start their career in an informal job oecd b chapter