Female Labour Market Participation Research Articles

Economic Growth and Female Participation in the Labour Market: Gender Disaggregated Data

The study aims to examine the impact of economic growth on female labour market participation in Kenya with data spanning between 1991 and 2022. Labour-force data disaggregated by gender are important to monitor the dynamic of gender inequalities in the labour market. The secondary data used to construct the time series was obtained from the World Bank and the International Labour Organization sources. The research was informed by the Feminisation U hypothesis, which describes the tendency of female labour force participation to first decline and then rise in the process of economic growth. The study used a fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) and Granger causality test to analyse the long-run effect of economic growth on women's participation in the labour market. The study results indicate that economic growth positively and significantly contributes to women’s participation in the labour market in the long run. Furthermore, the results of the control variables suggest that education has a beneficial effect on women's workforce, while women’s access to the workforce is hampered by male labour market participation, fertility rate, female self-employment and rate of urbanization. The study suggests to policymakers that the strategy to success is to facilitate education, vocational training, and social change that enable women to play the same role as men in the labour market. Finally, women must be in productive sectors and government should remove barriers to ownership of factors of production to encourage them to participate in economic activities and the labour market.

공통요인 효과를 고려한 아태지역 국가의 합계출산율 결정요인 분석

Purpose - This study examines the impact on total fertility rate in 30 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on female labor market participation and labor market instability. Design/Methodology/Approach - There is a common factors effect of cross-sectional dependence on the total fertility rate, explanatory variables, and residuals. Therefore, it was estimated using the CS-ARDL (Cross-Sectionally augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lags) model that considers the dynamics of total fertility rate, common factors effect, and heterogeneity by country. Findings - Female labor market participation and labor market instability have a negative (-) effect on the total fertility rate, but the coefficient of the interaction term is estimated to have a positive (+) sign, so it should be considered in the impact of the labor force participation rate and unemployment rate. Research Implications - A low female labor force participation rate and unemployment rate drive a high total fertility rate, but countries with a high labor force participation rate should have a high unemployment rate, and countries with a high unemployment rate should have a high labor force participation rate. Therefore, policies are needed to enable women to balance work and family life, and facilitate entry into the labor market.

Institutional ownership and women representation on boards in three different institutional settings

AbstractThis study aims to investigate the moderating effect of country level institutional variables on the relationship between institutional ownership and board gender diversity. Using firm and country level data of three different cultural environments (Gulf Cooperation Council countries, UK, and France) for the years 2018–2019, this study concludes that institutional elements related to women (Women Tertiary education levels; legal support, Economic Participation and culture) create isomorphic pressure on firms that enhance the role of institutional owners in increasing women representation on board of directors. Other governance elements, such as ownership concentration, board independence and board size may indicate governance levels better than board gender diversity in certain institutional environments. The study recommended that board gender diversity should not be a priority for investors and portfolio managers in financial markets where reduced female labor market participation exists. Moreover, quotas may be a good tool for enhancing female representation among boards in contexts that have reduced female labor market participation and high levels of tertiary education attainment to maintain corporate sustainability.

Do residential patterns affect women's labor market performance? An empirical study based on CHFS data.

Based on China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) data from 2019, this paper explores the impact of the residential pattern of coresidence with parents on the labor market performance of women in married families with minor children. The study finds that coresidence with parents significantly increases the possibility of female labor market participation and positively impacts women's employment income. To overcome the potential endogeneity problem of residential patterns, this paper uses the Heckman two-step method and the conditional mixed process estimation method (CMP method) for regression, and the conclusions remain robust. The mechanism analysis shows that coresidence with parents has both grandchild care and elderly care factors, which have a spillover effect and a crowding-out effect on female labor market performance, respectively. Since the spillover effect is more significant than the crowding-out effect, coresidence with parents positively impacts women's labor market performance. The heterogeneity analysis shows that in terms of labor force participation rate, coresidence with parents has a more significant impact on women in families with children aged 0-6, women in families without boys, and women in families with employed husbands. In terms of income, coresidence with parents has a more significant impact on women in families with employed husbands. This study provides a new perspective for promoting female labor market performance and can serve as a reference for future policy formulation.

A Man’s World? The Policy Representation of Women and Men in a Comparative Perspective

Are the preferences of women and men unequally represented in public policies? This simple yet fundamental question has remained largely unexplored in the fast-growing fields of women’s representation and inequality in the opinion-policy link. Our study analyzes gender biases in policy representation using an original dataset covering 43 countries and four decades, with citizens’ preferences regarding more than 4,000 country-year policies linked to information about actual policy change. Our analysis reveals clear and robust evidence that women’s policy preferences are underrepresented compared to those of men. While this skew is fairly modest in terms of congruence, women’s representation is driven mostly by the high correlation of preferences with men. When there is disagreement, policy is more likely to align with men’s preferences. Our analyses further suggest that women’s substantive underrepresentation is mitigated in contexts with high levels of female descriptive representation and labor market participation. In sum, our study shows that gender inequality extends to the important realm of policy representation, but there is also meaningful variation in unequal representation across contexts.

Economic cycle, labour market and pro-environmental behaviours. The case of separate waste collection in Italy

Pro-environmental behaviours have been studied extensively in the economic literature, with particular regard to the effects induced by unemployment. A key element that was little investigated in previous contributions consists in intrahousehold dynamics. This work provides a novel microeconomic framework describing the interaction between economic cycle and intrahousehold time allocation that is ultimately responsible for the adoption of pro-environmental behaviours. Intrahousehold differences in productivity represent a key assumption in this framework. The theoretical model is then tested empirically on recent Italian observations using Data Envelopment Analysis. Our results indicate that the most efficient allocations are attained in periods when joint drops in unemployment and female labour market participation (added worker effect) lead to intrahousehold specialisation.

The ambivalent trajectory of the German gender regime: Are female breadwinner families an indicator of a shift towards a public gender regime?

There seems to be some evidence that Germany is turning from being a ‘domestic’ to a ‘public’ gender regime. The extension of public childcare, increasing female labour market participation rates and the introduction of gender quotas, among other changes, point to this development. However, a detailed analysis reveals an ambivalent and even contradictory trajectory. This development can only be understood by applying an intersectional perspective and looking at families with different socioeconomic backgrounds, class, and gender. By focusing on family households in which women are the main earners, this paper illustrates changes and stability in different domains and contributes to the understanding of the German gender regime's trajectory. On the basis of a qualitative study conducted in West and East Germany, the article shows that many women who are the main breadwinners in their families are in this position not because of modernised gender relations and by their own choice, but ‘involuntarily’, because of their partners' weak labour market position and increasing pressure within the German welfare state to earn their own living and contribute to covering the needs of the household through gainful employment. Many female-breadwinner families do not live reversed, modernised gender roles, but face an above-average risk for poverty and have little room for manoeuvre. Political and economic factors, as well as norms (in the domains of polity, economy and civil society), help to explain these findings. We see mainly neoliberal, activation policies directed at households with low resources, whereas the institutional framework for households with higher incomes has remained relatively stable. The results of the study show that dual-earner households are not necessarily progressive and dual earning is a poor indicator of a gender regime change.

Do women's empowerment and self-expression values change adolescents' gendered occupational expectations? Longitudinal evidence against the gender-equality paradox from 26 European countries.

Despite the increases in women's educational attainment in recent decades, female labor market participation and labor market returns are still lower than those of their male counterparts. Among the main factors explaining this persistence of economic inequality is the persistently gendered nature of occupational expectations, which results in gender segregation of labor. In this paper, we describe how gender-specific adolescents' occupational expectations change over time (2006-2018) and how women's empowerment and cultural norms might influence gender-specific occupational expectations. Against the backdrop of the research on the gender-equality paradox and from a comparative perspective, we focus on national and institutional characteristics to investigate how individual and national factors explain gendered occupational expectations. We answer our research questions by applying a two-step multilevel model with fixed effects. For this, we used PISA data and merged them with state-level information from 26 European countries. We add to existing research by making three contributions. First, we describe the changes in occupational expectations over time within European countries by looking at the gender composition of the desired occupation and distinguishing three categories (gender-typical, gender-balanced, and gender-atypical). Second, we investigate the relationship between national characteristics and the evolution of gendered occupational expectations separately by gender to reveal gender-specific mechanisms. Third, by using data from two-time points, we explore which national-level changes lead to changes in students' occupational expectations. Our first descriptive results show that the patterns of how students' occupational expectations change over time differ remarkably between countries. In 2018 in some countries, students' occupational expectations became more segregated while in others the number of students with gender-balanced or gender-atypical expectations increased. Our fixed effects models show that women's empowerment and self-expression value explained variance over time. For example, women's empowerment measured via an increase in women's employment and participation in parliament led to less gender-typical occupational expectations among girls and boys. Similarly, a rise in self-expression values led to less gender-typical occupational expectations, again for both boys and girls. Remarkably, our results do not verify the gender-equality paradox for occupational expectations, as is the case in previous cross-sectional analyses.

China Shock and Female Labor Market Participation in Brazil

Brazil was a successful case of economic growth based on import substitution. Recently, with the China shock, the country’s economy has been exposed to greater competition. In a similar period, an increase of 12 percent in the proportion of formalized female workerstook place in the Brazilian labor market. This paper explores the variation of China Shock between Brazilian local labor markets (or microregions) to identify whether the expansion of Chinese participation in international trade was able to improve the women’s conditions in the Brazilian labor market between 2000 and 2013 measured by the proportion of women formalized, and the wage ratio of female to male workers. It is the first study to assess how the two channels of China shock, the influx of Chinese imports in Brazil, and the increase in Chinese demand for Brazilian exports, affected the outcomes of formal Brazilian women, with data from the Brazilian labor market (RAIS and Census) and information on trade flows between Brazil and China (BACI database).

DS-HECK: double-lasso estimation of Heckman selection model

We extend the Heckman (1979) sample selection model by allowing for a large number of controls that are selected using lasso under a sparsity scenario. The standard lasso estimation is known to under-select causing an omitted variable bias in addition to the sample selection bias. We outline the required adjustments needed to restore consistency of lasso-based estimation and inference for vector-valued parameters of interest in such models. The adjustments include double lasso for both the selection equation and main equation and a correction of the variance matrix. We also connect the estimator with results on redundancy of moment conditions. We demonstrate the effect of the adjustments using simulations and we investigate the determinants of female labor market participation and earnings in the US using the new approach. The paper comes with dsheckman, a dedicated Stata command for estimating double-selection Heckman models.

Occupation–Education Mismatch of Immigrant Women in Europe

Against the background of continuing gains in female education and labour market participation and rising migration, we investigate whether women work in occupations which match their educational qualifications and whether migrant women face double penalty in being overqualified for their jobs. Using the data from the European Social Survey covering 2002–2020 with detailed information about occupation and educational attainment, we show that migrant women are significantly more likely to be overqualified in their jobs relative to native women. We explore the role of individual, institutional and workplace factors, as well as attitudes, to explain the overeducation of foreign-born women compared to native-born women. While parental education, workplace and destination country characteristics are all important factors in women’s overqualification, they do not explain the immigrant women’s disadvantage. The overqualification of migrant women is particularly notable amongst low and medium skill groups and in middle income households. These results inform the policy efforts to mitigate the skills waste of migrant women by documenting the gaps, identifying the target groups and suggesting potential channels.

Religiosity, gender attitudes and women's labor market participation

Purpose: This study examines the impact of religion on female labor market participation and tests the hypothesis that under a specific belief pattern, female time allocation to labor market participation should vary systematically with the change in religiosity level.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: The study uses a primary data set of 320 female respondents. The binominal logit model is used to estimate a categorical dependent variable. 
 Findings: The results suggest that religious women are less willing to participate in the labor market.
 Conclusion: There are three different outcomes from the analysis scheme. First, the composite index of female religiosity signifies its negative impact on their labor market participation. Second, the findings of the study reveal that females with relatively higher religious education are less willing to participate in the labor market. Third, females are less willing to participate in the labor market when the head of the household is more religious.
 Research limitations: A larger sample is believed to help in better generalization.
 Practical implications: Religion shapes human behavior which subsequently influences their economic decisions. Our findings reveal a positive association between females’ formal education level and their labor market participation. This entails a government policy to facilitate women in enhancing their education level. Moreover, mainstreaming the religious educational institutes and their curriculum will resolve the misconceptions.

Heterogeneous impact of internet availability on female labor market outcomes in an emerging economy: Evidence from Indonesia

Greater female labor market participation benefits not only women's empowerment and the well-being of their families, but also the economy as a whole. Yet the labor force participation of women in developing countries is relatively stagnant, even with higher levels of economic development and better educational attainment. Women are also more likely to work in the informal sector and unskilled jobs. The arrival of the internet and the subsequent creation of internet-based jobs may positively affect women's labor market outcomes. In this paper, we examine the effect of internet availability on five dimensions of women's labor market outcomes in Indonesia, focusing on the heterogeneity in the impact of internet availability on female labor market outcomes. We construct a balanced pseudo panel covering all districts in the country for 2008 – 2018. We find that internet availability has a small positive effect on the labor force participation and full-time employment of younger or low-educated women. We find a small negative effect on the likelihood of holding skilled jobs for these groups of women. We also find a small negative effect on job formality. These effects are concentrated among low-educated women. The findings are mainly explained by the kind of internet-based jobs that were created in the country. On balance, we do not find evidence that the internet significantly improves women's labor market outcomes.

Next Stop: Europe? Aspirations for Secondary Migration Among Syrian Refugees in Jordan

Refugees who seek protection in neighboring countries (first safe countries of refuge) often have weak economic ties to their current place of residence. Refugees in these first safe countries also often have much to gain economically if they move on to Europe or other wealthier countries, as their refugee status opens doors that are closed to many other migrant groups. Still, far from all refugees in first safe countries aspire to move on to other locations. This article examines migration aspirations among Syrian refugees in Jordan and asks what characterizes refugees who aspire to move on to Europe. Building on theories of migration aspirations originally developed to study labor migration, it draws on a representative survey of 7,632 Syrian refugees in Jordan, conducted during the winter of 2017/2018. We show that religious and cultural preferences (preferences for living in a Muslim country and attitudes toward female labor market participation), as well as perceptions of when return to Syria will be possible, were more important in explaining variance in migration aspirations among Syrian refugees in Jordan than economic factors such as poverty or lack of jobs. These findings suggest that selection effects shape Syrian refugee migration to Europe and that refugees who go to Europe differ from those who remain in that they put less value on traditional gender roles and on living in Muslim societies. As such, the article contributes to the literature on how cultural ties and value preferences shape migration aspirations and influence the composition of migrant populations.

The Influence of National Fertility Policy Adjustment on the Change of Female Labor Market Participation Rate

The population issue has always been the hot spot of our society. A series of population problems, such as aging population and insufficient labor force, force the country to constantly adjust the birth policy to improve the population structure and alleviate the pressure brought by the population problem to the country. In this context, the rate of female labor market participation has also changed significantly. This paper sorts out the relevant theoretical research on national maternity policy adjustment and affecting the participation of female labor market, analyzes the restriction factors of maternity policy adjustment on female labor market participation, studies the influence mechanism of maternity policy adjustment on female labor market participation, and puts forward targeted policy opinions.

Female Solo Self-Employment in Germany: The Role of Transitions and Learning From a Life Course Perspective

Based on a qualitative analysis of 12 solo self-employed women’s work biographies, this article investigates the (re)structuring effects of solo self-employment on the professional and private lives of women in Germany in their mid- and late-career stages. While solo self-employment has been gaining significance in the German labour market in the last two decades, it is largely an underresearched subject from the perspective of female labour market participation. Our study shows that the transition to working solo self-employed constitutes a marked break in female work biographies with lasting restructuring effects on their life courses. Constituting a deviation from the female standard life course, this move can be understood as a coping strategy of biographical discontinuities, which translates into specific patterns against the background that women (still) assume most of the care and housework responsibilities. How the transition to solo self-employment is being prepared and managed and what role learning and risk management play in the transition process is the focus of our article. Our aim is to better understand the underlining rationalisation logics of female solo self-employment in terms of labour market participation, reconciling work and family life, and professional self-realisation. While in the German welfare system solo self-employed bear higher risks of precarity and financial old age insecurity, solo self-employment is functional as an individual strategy for action, giving women the opportunity to do justice to their (mid) life courses and intrinsic needs to pursue both professional work and freedom of choice when and how to work. This may act as a corrective for gender inequalities in the world of work, especially when it comes to working in a self-determined way.

Inequality Interactions: The Dynamics of Multidimensional Inequalities

ABSTRACTThis article offers a multidimensional, interdisciplinary and dynamic framework for understanding socio‐economic inequalities. It uses the tools of economic inequality measurement to demonstrate the link between interpersonal and categorical inequalities and to show the effect of progressive redistribution on both. It then presents two new concepts for analysing interactions between varieties of inequality:inequality re‐orderingis defined as a reduction in categorical or group inequalities that leaves interpersonal inequality unchanged, andinequality diversionis defined as a reduction in one form of inequality that increases another form of inequality. The argument that inequality diversion arises across economic and social dimensions is illuminated through two case studies: the transition to increasing meritocracy, and the relationship between professional female labour market participation and domestic service. Exploring these relationships is essential to a joined‐up approach to inequality reduction, enabling us to understand trade‐offs and complementarities in tackling inequalities, and to identify policies required to reduce them.

Towards Gender Equality in The Cambodian Labor Market – Gender Gaps Prevent Females from Stable Income Generation

Cambodia has enjoyed a decade of macroeconomic stability and growth and is increasingly integrating with the region. Nevertheless, a few topics remain challenging as Cambodia strives for middle-income status by 2030. One of these is gender disparity in the labor market. While Cambodia has one of the highest female labor market participation rates in Asia, most women still face horizontal and vertical gender inequality. Such gender disparities in the labor market negatively affect the macroeconomic efficiencies of developing countries as well as stable income generation of females. As the social development of modern civilizations is based highly on gender equality, gender stereotypes are likely to prevent Cambodia from transforming into a society of equal opportunity. While a previous World Bank quantitative research report provided statistical insights into gender-related inequality in Cambodia (Gavalyugova & Cunningham 2019), many constraints underlying gender inequality in the labor market remained largely unclear. In order to develop new programs concentrating on increasing female involvement in the labor market, it is necessary to investigate the problems and challenges women face when entering the labor market in Cambodia. To contribute to filling this knowledge gap, this study collected and analyzed qualitative data. Qualitative focus group discussions and key informant interviews were held to gain a deeper understanding of mechanisms underlying gender disparities in the Cambodian labor market.

Feminization of Resistance: Reclaiming the Affective and the Indefinite as Counter-Strategy in Academic Labor Activism

‘Feminization’ is used either quantitatively to indicate an increased female labor market participation or qualitatively to refer to labor devaluation and to types of work that supposedly require “feminine” skillsets. This article cautiously hews to the qualitative interpretations but suggests an affirmative reconstruction of the concept in the context of collective action. It argues that contemporary grassroots academic labor movements rely more explicitly on collective emotions and aim at building long-term bases of solidarity, instead of performative activism and mass mobilizations. This ‘affective turn’ in academic labor activism is argued to signal a “feminization of resistance”, characterized by a pronounced propensity for affective and relational groundwork. This argument is substantiated in view of the Network for Decent Work in Academia (NGAWiss), a nation-wide precarious researchers’ network in Germany, and the New Faculty Majority (NFM), an adjunct advocacy group in the US. The aim is twofold: first, the article contributes to a better understanding of contemporary labor activism by elucidating the precarious collective’s incremental achievements, often ignored by the outcome-oriented labor movement literature. Second, by reframing it as a mode of affective resistance, the article extends the analytical scope of the term “feminization”.

Childcare Infrastructure in the Nordic Countries as a Way of Enabling Female Labor Market Participation

This paper provides a legal analysis of how barriers for increased gender equality in the labor market can be mitigated through the inclusion of childcare infrastructure, primarily paid parental leave, regulation of maternal and paternal leave, and universal childcare. The five Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland are used as case studies.