Women in Malawi can't adjust their schedules like men can. This limits their job options.

Researchers developed a new way to measure how much control people have over their own time. In Malawi, they found women report being unable to adjust their schedules 20 percentage points more often than men. This inflexibility makes it harder for women to seek paid work.

For decades, development work assumed that giving people tools, like smartphones, would automatically help them improve their lives. This study shows that for women, the structure of their daily lives, particularly unpaid work, creates rigid constraints. This means simply providing access to technology or training might not be enough to close gender gaps in economic opportunity. Development agencies will now probably need to focus on changing the underlying time demands on women, not just offering new options.