Occupational Choice in the Urban Labor Market in Congo (DRC): Can Gender Disparities Be Identified?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to quantify the disparities between men and women in occupational choice and particularly in the choice of employment status and to identify the factors that contribute to explaining them. The results thus found confirm the general consensus on the importance of the three groups of explanatory factors (individual characteristics, household characteristics and those of the state of the labor market) of the choice of self-employment status. The decomposition analysis shows that the estimated average probabilities of self-employment are 73.51% for women and 38.46% for men and the total gender gap in self-employment is 35.05 percentage points. It emerges that this difference is explained at 48.76% by the differences between men and women in the endowments. Taking into account the different characteristics shows that the differences in human capital endowments (Eduction) represent 1.428% to 4.190% of the gender gap in access to salaried employment and that other characteristics such as those related to the social as well as those of the state of the labor market would contribute to accentuate the gender gap in the occupational choice. However, the very high nature of the gender gap unexplained by unobservable factors would intuitively imply that other factors not taken into account in the equations could have substantially explained this gap in self-employment.