Integration in the global value chain, structural change, and the widening gender employment gap in China

Abstract

Despite the structural change toward services that are generally beneficial for female employment, China's gender employment gap (GEG) has widened by 9.64% in the past two decades, 2000–2020, indicated by the labor force participation rate (LFP) of males minus that of females. This study distinguishes domestic demand and different types of global value chain (GVC) related demand under the inter-country input–output framework, and propose a new gender gap decomposition model to explore the evolution of China's GEG from a demand-side perspective. Our results show that GVC-related activities contributed to the widening of China's GEG by less than 0.60% between 2000 and 2020. In contrast, increasing gender discrimination toward females and technological progress with a rapid decrease in employment when producing the same amount of output in most female-intensive sectors are the dominant reasons behind the widening of China's GEG. This study provides some implications for promoting high-quality employment development in China.