The Impact of Financial Crises on Female Labour

Abstract

This article focuses on the impact of financial crises on female labour participation and unemployment. After a review of the literature, we present new econometric results on the impact of past financial crises. We employ the random effects panel estimation method on a large set of countries for the period 1980–2005. The regressions include many control variables, and obtain also results on the severity of financial crises for economies at different levels of development and the persistence of the impact on female unemployment. For robustness checks and sensitivity analysis, alternative definitions of crises have been used. Although we are aware of the peculiarities of the last crisis – especially its global nature – we think that our results on past financial crises, together with key evidences on the last crisis, can favour a better definition of appropriate policy actions.