From Digital Divide to Employment Equity: How Digitalization Affects Women's Involvement in the Workforce in OECD Countries

Sustainable economic growth at national and global level depends on the significant participation of women in the labor force. Because women compose half of the world population in terms of human capital and labor. Despite the developments in recent years, there is still gender inequality in labor markets around the world and labor force participation rate of women is lower than men. There are many factors affecting the participation of women in the labor force in all developed and developing countries. The effect levels of these factors on the participation rate differ depending on the development levels of the countries. In this context, the role of women's education and labor force participation on development is an important issue especially for all developing country. Therefore, the aim of the study is to examine the relationship between women's labor force participation rates and economic growth in transition economies. For this purpose, the generalized method of moments, which is a dynamic panel data analysis technique, is applied in the study using data between 1995-2019. Analysis findings reveal that there is a U-shaped relationship between women's labor force participation rate and economic growth in transition economies competible with the literature. As a result, reducing gender inequality and increasing women's labor force participation rates positively affect economic growth, income inequality and social welfare, so it is great importance that policy practitioners create a comprehensive women's employment policy and ensure that women play an active role in the labor force.

UN and World Bank data on developing countries were used to examine variations across countries in child mortality and fertility patterns and to determine the impact of literacy and schooling, labor force participation of women, contraceptive use, availability of health services, and households headed by women on fertility rates and child mortality. The Schultz-Becker theoretical framework formed the basis of the analysis with ordinary least squares methods and extreme bounds analysis (EBA) used to test for robustness. The findings were that fertility was decreased due to women's human capital, women's labor force participation, and married women's use of contraception. The most powerful effect on fertility was contraceptive use, followed by women's labor force participation. Without contraceptive use in the model, women's literacy and school enrollments were negative and statistically significant. 66-81% of the variation in fertility rates was explained. EBA results showed the main variables as stable and consistent and, consequently, robust. Child mortality was strongly affected by women's schooling and labor force participation. Child mortality was negatively affected by availability of trained health services personnel at birth. Households headed by women had higher child mortality, but the association was weak. The main variables explained 84-89% of the variation in child mortality, and EBA results confirmed robustness. Socioeconomic improvement without attention to the health and educational needs of women would be counterproductive. Unfortunately, the structural adjustment program has resulted in the decline in health and educational services in developing countries, which severely affects low income women and households headed by women.

The asymmetric role of crime in women's and men's labour force participation: Evidence from India

This study examines whether living with other adults enables married and single mothers in New York City to enter the labor market. Multivariate analyses of data on over 8,000 households revealed that living with coresident adults increased the participation of Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Asian single mothers, and enabled all mothers of young children and all foreign-born mothers to enter the labor market. In a separate analysis of extended households, the proportions of elderly and employed coresident adults increased women 's labor force participation, while the proportion of coresident adults who reported child care/family responsibilities as their reason for not being in the labor force decreased women's paid labor activity. Our findings suggest that coresident adults serve different functions within the household, which in turn influence women's labor force decisions in various ways. In recent years attention has focused on the various ways in which families manage social and economic difficulties. One strategy that has received considerable research attention is household extension, or the incorporation of adults other than the husband and wife into the household. Incorporating other adults may benefit the household in a number of ways. Co-resident adults may contribute to the household's pool of financial resources, thereby potentially increasing the economic well-being of household members. Or they may provide domestic labor, which might enable the wife or female householder to devote more time to paid employment. Angel and Tienda (1982) argued that household extension may be an important adaptive strategy for minority families, in that additional income contributions may compensate for low earnings or sporadic unemployment. In this article we analyze the relationship between household extension and mothers' labor force participation among six racial and ethnic groups in New York City. In so doing, we largely replicate an earlier analysis by Tienda and Glass (1985) using current data from one of the nation's most diverse cities. However, we expand upon the earlier analysis in three ways: by including an indicator of the supply of child care in the household, by examining a broader array of racial/ethnic groups, and by analyzing the role that birthplace plays in influencing women's labor market behavior. DETERMINANTS OF WOMEN'S LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION Family structure has long been recognized as an important determinant of women's labor force participation. Typically, family characteristics--such as marital status, the presence of young children, and the presence of coresident adults--affect the amount of time women can spend in domestic and market activities. Including other adults in the household may ease the strain of balancing domestic and market responsibilities, especially for single mothers and mothers of young children who may have the least flexibility in devoting time to the labor market. Prior research has shown that women who live in extended households are more likely than women who do not live with coresident adults to be in the labor force, yet this relationship varies by race/ethnicity (Barry Figueroa & Melendez, 1993; Stier, 1991; Stier & Tienda, 1992; Tienda & Glass, 1985). Moreover, women's labor force behavior appears to be influenced by the specific characteristics of coresident adults. For example, as the number of coresident adults increases, married mothers' participation decreases, suggesting greater domestic burdens; by contrast, as the proportion of female coresident adults increases so does single mothers' participation, suggesting that coresident women function as surrogate domestic workers (Tienda & Glass, 1985). Living with coresident employed adults increases labor force participation among young mothers, while living with coresident nonworking adults--presumably a source of child care--depresses paid labor activity (Parish, Hao, & Hogan, 1991). …

We address several key hypotheses about the effects of socioeconomic development on women's labour force participation during the transition from agriculture to industrialism. To this end, we explore differences in women's labour force participation in Brazil by education, marital status, age, and urban or rural residence. We also show how socioeconomic development affects the overall level of women's participation and the differentials by education, etc. Our data are drawn from a large 1973 PNAD (Pequisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicilos) survey conducted by the Brazilian census bureau. Socioeconomic development in different parts of Brazil ranges from pre-industrial agriculture to heavy industry. Using logistic regression, we show that the general level of women's labour force participation does not change with the level of development. Highly educated women are much more likely than the less educated to be in the labour force (net of other influences); this difference is substantially greater than in post-industrial societies. Somewhat surprisingly, the influence of education is the same across the range of development levels in Brazil. Single women are more likely to be in the labour force than married women, and the difference grows during development. Age has a curvilinear relationship to labour force participation, and the old are much less likely to participate in more developed places. Rural women are slightly more likely to be in the labour force at all levels of development.

Background: In the last few decades, there has been a significant increase in women's participation in gainful employment in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This scooping review has primarily aimed at assessing the key determinants and effects of women's involvement in the labor force in SSA.
 Methods: The authors did the review based on 19 articles selected from PubMed and goggle search. The selection considered only those published in the last 15 years, conducted based on large sample from Sub-Saharan African countries, and those exclusively related to women’s Labor Force Participation (LFP). More than 80% of the reviewed studies (16 of the 19) employed a cross-sectional study design with quantitative approaches.
 Results: The review witnessed that women's labor force participation in SSA is determined by various individual, household, and community characteristics. Women with lower fertility, living in poor economic condition (low wealth quantiles), and those with above primary education were more likely to participate in gainful employment. Other demographic factors explaining why some women participate in the labor force more often than others include women's age, marital status, number of under-five children, household size, and headship. Among the community variables, living in areas with better infrastructure (transport and communication) increased the likelihood of women’s participation in gainful employment. Nearly all studies showed significant positive impacts of women's labor force participation on several domains of women's life and household well-being, such as on women's nutrition, childcare, and health service utilization.
 Conclusion: The review implies that despite concerns about some adverse impacts of women's participation in gainful employment (such as on childcare), most of the studies indicated positive effects of LFP on women's and children's health, nutrition, and overall household well-being in SSA.

Housing cost and married women's labor force participation in 1980

A strong and negative Correlation between married women's labor force participation and fertility has been witnessed in Japan in past decades.Relative to empirical studies of a traditional single equation on female labor supply, there exist few econometric studies dealing explicitly with a possible interdependency between married women's labor supply and fertility behaviors in urban Japan.Using the recently published 1980 Population Census of Japan, we have estimated a simultaneous_equation model of married women's labor force participation and fertility in urban Japan.Our model shows very satisfactory results to explain the negative correlation between those variables based on a method of 2SLS.Estimated labor supply elasticities for married women with respect to their fertility rates, wife's labor earnings, and male labor earnings are -0.67,0.23, and -1.76 at the sample means, respectively.On the other hand, estimated elasticities of fertility with respect to married women's labor force participation and family income are -0.31 and 0.23, respectively.We find some of these elasticities for Japanese married women very comparable to those of married women in the United States.

CONTENTS List of Tables and Figures xxx Acknowledgments xxxs Chapter One Gender Inequality and Social Change in Japan and Taiwan 1 Chapter Two The Development of Women's Labor Market Experiences 000 Chapter Three Comparing Labor Market Structures and Workplace Dynamics 000 Chapter Four Patterns of Labor Exits among Women 000 Chapter Five Challenges from the Home Front 000 Chapter Six Returning to the Labor Force 000 Chapter Seven Higher Education and Gender Inequality 000 Chapter Eight Conclusion 000 Appendix A Description of the Data Sources 000 Appendix B Supplementary Tables 000 Notes 000 Bibliography 000 Index 000 [[starts on page vii]] TABLES AND FIGURES Tables 1.1. Comparison of Japan and Taiwan 000 2.1. Average number of jobs experienced throughout men's and women's employment careers 000 2.2. Distributions of current labor market locations by gender and frequency of employer changes 3.1. Occupational Distributions of the Female Labor Force in Japan and Taiwan 6.1. Description of Work Trajectories of Homemaking Women, Ages 25-60 B.1. Descriptive Statistics of the SSM and TSC Samples by Gender B.2. Ordinary Least Squares Regression Analysis of Log Annual Earnings B.3. Discrete-Time Event History Models Predicting Labor Force Exits at Any Point of Time B.4. Discrete-Time Event History Models Predicting Labor Force Exit upon Marriage B.5. Discrete-Time Event History Models Predicting Labor Force Exit around First Childbirth B.6. Discrete-Time Event History Models Predicting Labor Force Reentry B.7. Multinomial Logit Models Predicting Married Women's Current Work Status in Japan B.8. Multinomial Logit Models Predicting Women's Current Occupational Status B.9. Multinomial Logit Models Predicting Women's Current Organizational Locations B.10. Multinomial Logit Models Predicting Women's Current Employment Status Figures Annual economic growth rates in Japan and Taiwan, 1956-2005 000 Women's Labor Force Participation and Number of Children by Age Group Age Distributions of Brides and Mothers Giving Live Birth in 2004/2005 Attitudes Regarding Gender Roles in Japan and Taiwan Trends in Female Labor Force Participation During the Life Course Distributions of Women's Careers in Japan and Taiwan Proportion of Ever-Married Women Returning to the Labor Force by Various Ages Percentage of Workers with Experience of Within-Organizational Job Shifting by Current Occupation Job Mobility and Percent Changes in Annual Earnings Predicted Annual Earnings by Gender, Country, and Employment Status 3.1. Distribution of the Labor Force by Industry, 1951-2000 3.2. Unemployment and Nonfarm Labor Force Growth Rates, 1950-2000 3.3. Annual Increases in the Male Population of Working Age, 1950-2000 3.4. Comparisons of the Labor Force by Firm Size in Japan and Taiwan 4.1. Explanatory Framework 4.2. Occupational Effects on Ever-Married Women's Labor Force Exits at Various Times 4.3. Effects of Firm Size on Ever-Married Women's Labor Force Exits at Various Times 4.4. Relative Odds of Labor Force Exit of Public- to Private-Sector Employees 4.5. Effects of Individual Characteristics on the Likelihood of Exiting the Labor Force 4.6. Predicted Probabilities for Labor Force Exit in the Marriage Year 5.1. Percentage of Japanese Men at Home by Eight O'Clock on Weekdays 5.2. Percent Approval of Working Mothers with Young Children among Taiwanese Women, by Education 5.3. Trends of Male-Wage-to-Household-Spending Ratio and Family Size, 1965-2000 6.1. Labor Force Participation Rates of Seven Birth Cohorts at Various Ages 6.2. Estimated Probability of Labor Force Reentry, Hypothetical Cases 6.3. Comparison of Occupations before and after a Work Interruption 6.4. Comparison of Firm Size between the Female Labor Force and Women Reentrants 6.5. Comparison of Employment Status between the Female Labor Force and Women Reentrants 6.6. Effects of Postmarital Entry on Women's Current Work Status in Japan 7.1. School Systems in Japan and Taiwan 7.2. Estimated Advancement Rates to Various Educational Institutions among Taiwanese Middle- School Graduates, 1950-1998 7.3. Trends in Percent Female among Students in Tertiary Institutions 7.4. Trends in Percent Female Students Admitted to the University of Tokyo and National Taiwan University 7.5. Percentage of Students in Applied Science Programs by Educational Level in Taiwan 7.6. Percent Female Students in Four-Year Universities by University Ownership 8.1. Likelihood of Job Locations of Married versus Single Women 8.2. Comparisons of Japanese Women's Occupational Distributions 8.3. Percentage of Ever-Married, Working-Age Taiwanese Women in the Labor Force by Their First Occupation 8.4. Job Growth Rates by Gender and Employment Status in Japan, 1996-2007

Some previous studies of the relationship between women's labor force participation and household income inequality indicate that the promotion of the former has an equalizing effect on the latter; other studies insist that the promotion of women's labor force participation has a widening effect on household income inequality by way of the tendency toward assortative marriage. Hence, the relationship between women's labor force participation and household income inequality is unclear in the literature. This study aims to clarify the mechanism through which the interaction between household income and marriage produces social inequality by using mathematical and simulation-based approaches. The presented findings suggest that the promotion of women's labor force participation has a temporary widening effect on household income inequality, but an attenuating effect in the long run. They also state that assortative marriage itself has no widening effect on household income inequality, but rather an accelerating effect on widening inequality. Finally, by applying the model of that mechanism to Japan, I examine changes in household income inequality in that country.

The objective of this study was to identify differences in child care availability by rural-urban location for all counties in Wisconsin, and describe implications for recruitment and retention of health care workforce. We used data on licensed child care slots for young children (age <5), socio-demographic characteristics, women's and men's labor force participation, and household structure for all counties in Wisconsin in 2013 (n=72). Data came from KIDS COUNT, County Health Rankings, and the American Community Survey. We used t tests to analyze bivariate differences in child care availability and community characteristics by metropolitan, micropolitan, and non-core rural location. We then used ordinary least squares regression to analyze the relationship between geographic location and child care slots, adjusting for labor force participation and household structure. Rural counties had significantly fewer licensed child care slots per child than metropolitan and micropolitan counties. These counties also had, on average, higher rates of poverty and higher unemployment than micropolitan and metropolitan counties. The association between geographic location and child care availability remained, even after adjusting for household structure and labor force participation. The number of hours men worked and the percentage of men not working were both negatively associated with available child care slots, whereas there was not a significant relationship between women's labor force participation and child care availability. Rural areas face health care workforce shortages. Recruitment strategies to overcome shortages must move beyond individual-level incentives to focus on community context and family support, including availability of child care in rural counties.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2023 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Claudia Goldin “for having advanced our understanding of women's labour market outcomes”. This paper surveys Goldin's contributions, analysing women's labour force participation from the late 1700s through to the present. To document women's participation in the workforce, Goldin uncovered rich data from varied sources, from government reports and city directories to health surveys and university registration cards. She combined these data with economic theory to identify the factors affecting women's employment and to explore how we might achieve gender equity today. Her work has had an immense influence on how we understand the labour market, household decision‐making, and gender inequality.

This paper reexamines the evolution of women's labor force participation (LFP) and employment in Iran in light of five decades of census data from 1956 to 2006. We show that changes in schooling and economic structure have fundamentally transformed the nature of female LFP and employment in the country. Although women's overall LFP rate was slow to recover following a sharp drop in the aftermath of the 1979 Revolution, it has gathered momentum in recent years. More importantly, an increasingly larger proportion of educated women aged 20-50 years are employed in the private sector in professional positions in urban areas. This is quite different from the expansion of female employment before the Revolution, which predominantly consisted of jobs for very young, uneducated women in rural areas mostly as unpaid family workers in producing carpets and handicraft. We argue that economic and political factors after the Revolution have played central roles in shaping the new trends and show that they are likely to have played a far more important part than ideological ones, particularly Islamization, did in reducing female LFP and employment during the first decade of the Revolution. The reduction in female employment during that decade was essentially due to declines of private sector jobs, particularly low skill ones in rural handicrafts, closely connected with the disruption of production and trade in the aftermath of Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. In recent years, however, it is unemployment among educated women that has risen sharply because their entry into the labor force has significantly outpaced their ability of find jobs. Still, this problem may be temporary because the service sector where female employment is most common and where the value added per worker is greater than in the rest of the economy is growing faster than other sectors.

We examine the effect of California Paid Family Leave (CPFL) on young women's (less than 42 years of age) labor force participation and unemployment. CPFL enables workers to take at most six weeks of paid leave over a 12 month period in order to bond with new born or adopted children, or to care for sick family members or ailing parents. The policy benefits women, especially young women, since they are more prone to take such a leave. However, the effect of the policy on labor market outcomes is less clear. We apply difference-in-difference techniques to identify the effects of the CPFL legislation on young women's labor force participation and unemployment.We find that the labor force participation rate, the unemployment rate, and the duration of unemployment among young women rose in California compared to states that did not adopt paid family leave. The latter two findings regarding higher young women's unemployment and unemployment duration are unanticipated effects of the CPFL program. We utilize a unique placebo test to validate the robustness of these results.

Militarization, women's labor force participation, and gender inequality: Evidence from global data