Low Female Employment Research Articles

Gender and Beyond: Employment Patterns during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy

This paper investigates employment changes during the COVID-19 pandemic for women and men in a country characterized by notoriously low female employment: Italy. The paper explores to what extent previously existing inequalities in employment were further exacerbated during the pandemic. Using data from the Italian Labor Force Surveys from 2018 to 2020, we find evidence of a limited decline in employment, but a steep increase in the number of individuals working zero hours during the lockdown periods. This result holds for both men and women. The pandemic highlighted how gender inequalities in employment intersect with other socioeconomic disadvantages: single mothers and lower-educated women were more affected than their male counterparts, while single men without children and foreign men were hit stronger than women with the same characteristics in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. The pandemic thus came with differentiated consequences, generally affecting those already in less advantaged situations harder. At the same time, the results support the idea that women’s employment was crucial to counteract job loss in the family, and some became the only breadwinner for their families. This also exposed them to risks by working during the pandemic. Overall, the pandemic greatly accentuated preexisting social inequalities in the Italian labor market, yet with an apparently transitory effect at least regarding employment participation.

Low female employment rates in South Korea are linked to the gender-specific burden of childrearing

Female employment rates in South Korea are far below those of other countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Despite multiple government policies committed to encouraging continuous employment, only 53% of women in their 30s participated in the labor force in South Korea compared to 72% of women in the U.S. in 2022. Therefore, examining the underlying reasons for lower female employment in Korea is critical. We assessed job satisfaction, job retention, and the underlying factors that impact these variables for both genders and various ages through a survey. Among 291 adult participants (161 women, 130 men) aged 20 to 59, working in various fields, 95% of responders were college graduates. Females tended to be less satisfied with their salaries and benefits than males. Notably, 84% of female responders had considered leaving their companies or transferring to others, while 59% of male responders had considered leaving their companies or transferring to others. Female responders noted childrearing as the most significant (p<0.001) reason they considered leaving their jobs, while male responders noted job dissatisfaction. Interestingly, female participants noted childrearing as a significant reason for leaving their jobs despite the implementation of childcare benefits in 51% and flexible work hour options in 90% of participants’ companies. These results suggest that even highly educated women feel more pressure from an innate sense of responsibility and societal perception to care for children than men.

Children and female employment in Mongolia

Although a large body of literature has argued that motherhood has a profound and long-lasting negative effect on the employment and earnings of women, there is little evidence focusing on the post-communist region. This paper exploits the latest rounds of the EBRD-World Bank Life in Transition Survey (LiTS) and the Mongolian National Statistics Office Household Socio-Economic Survey (HSES) to examine the correlation between the presence of children of different age categories in a family and female employment in Mongolia in 2016. We examine the availability of childcare, social norms and attitudes towards women, as well as household decision-making as potential explanations. We find that small children decrease the probability of female employment relative to women with no small children. In particular, women with two children aged one to six years are 21.5 percentage points less likely to be employed. Our results also suggest that cultural biases against women may be at least partially responsible for the low female employment levels we uncovered. These results are unlikely to be driven by omitted variable bias.

Labor market in the UK in digital era: The gender dimension

The article considers gender discrimination in the field of labor relations in the United Kingdom (UK) in the pre-covid period. In the past decades, the Western European countries have made the most significant progress in achieving gender equality in various fields, including labor relations, and became the world leader in this area. However, despite all the efforts of the international community, no country has achieved a full gender equality, and Great Britain is no exception. The authors argue that the British anti-discrimination legislation (before leaving the European Union) was based on international acts and conventions. For a long time, there were acts and laws prohibiting discrimination in the labor market, which seriously hindered the implementation of an effective anti-discrimination policy in the sphere of labor relations. It was not until 2010 that the law on equality was passed to replace all previous laws and regulations and to provide an exhaustive list of criteria for prohibiting discrimination. As a result, Great Britain began to develop a rather strict national anti-discrimination legislation in the field of labor relations. Thus, in the past decades, the UK has been achieving gender equality in the economic sphere at a faster pace than the average European Union country. The study shows a steady decline in the gender wage gap in the UK over the past two decades, which may be considered one of the countrys most significant achievements in fighting gender discrimination in the labor market. However, there is still a number of serious challenges: a relatively low female labor force participation and employment rate, a gender wage gap and income gap, horizontal and vertical segregation, a gender gap in postgraduate education, and a significant gender gap in time spent on family responsibilities. Age discrimination presents a special problem in the sphere of labor relations in Great Britain. In the European Union, the first laws prohibiting age discrimination were adopted only in the 2000s, and in the UK - in 2006. This problem still remains extremely acute for the labor market, since age discrimination in the UK ranks third among the most common grounds for discrimination - after gender and disability.

An Evidence Review of Ageing, Long-Term Care Provision and Funding Mechanisms in Turkey: Using Existing Evidence to Estimate Long-Term Care Cost

Turkey is transitioning from an ageing to aged population at a fast pace. This process requires immediate policy and practice planning and actionable strategies. Formulating and implementing such policies needs to acknowledge parallel demographic and socio-economic changes to ensure adequate resources and appropriate services are developed to enhance the growing older population’s quality of life and wellbeing. Limited long-term care (LTC) provision, funding mechanisms and reliance on informal support primarily provided by women pose considerable challenges to all stakeholders, including the state, families and older people. This paper provides an evidence review on older people's status and their health and care needs, current LTC policies, provision and funding mechanisms in Turkey. It employs a mixed review methodology, making use of published statistics, indicators and literature. The study also adapts existing LTC funding estimation models to predict LTC cost for Turkey. The review highlights the increasing share of older people in Turkey, the fast pace of population ageing, and escalating health and LTC unmet needs. Older people are reported to have high levels of depression, loneliness and co-morbidity with regional, gender and educational differentials. The Turkish LTC and welfare models rely on the family, particularly women, in meeting increased demand. A hierarchical model with random intercept was implemented and estimated the LTC cost in Turkey to be 0.02% of GDP, acknowledging the high proportion of people at labour participation age range and low female employment levels.

Paid Family Leave and Corporate Innovation

I investigate the effect of labor market frictions for female employees on corporate innovation. Following the implementation of state-level paid family leave acts, which exogenously increase female talent allocation by facilitating labor market participation of female inventors, firms headquartered in affected states show significant increases in their innovation relative to unaffected firms. This effect is stronger for firms in innovative industries, for firms with a skilled workforce, for firms in industries with lower labor mobility, for firms in less competitive local labor markets, and for firms with lower female employment. Overall, my results imply that labor market frictions for working mothers inhibit corporate innovation.

The Dynamics of Family Formation and Women’s Work: What Facilitates and Hinders Female Employment in the Middle East and North Africa?

Despite increases in educational attainment, women’s employment rates remain very low in the Middle East and North Africa. Difficulties reconciling work and family formation have been identified as an important but under-researched factor in low female employment rates. This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between family formation and women’s employment. The paper studies Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, leveraging unique retrospective data on work, marriage, childbearing, and child rearing. The data allow us to estimate discrete time hazard models for the duration of different labor market statuses. This paper examines three sets of outcomes: (1) duration in employment, (2) duration in non-employment, and (3) duration in different labor market states and specific types of work. We explore the different roles of getting married, being married, expecting children, having children, or having young children as constraints to employment. Findings show that anticipating marriage and getting married are strongly associated with women’s employment outcomes. Non-employment is an absorbing state, particularly after marriage.

Determinants of Turkish female labour force participation: an analysis with manufacturing firm-level data

ABSTRACT Compared to other developing countries, Turkey has a very low female labour participation rate. Previous studies usually focus on the labour supply side of female employment. Unlike the previous literature, this paper investigates firm-level determinants of female employment in manufacturing firms using a unique micro data set constructed using different sources. After controlling for geographical variation, firm, and industry-specific factors, our results show that larger firms, exporter firms, firms with higher part-time worker ratio, and foreign-owned firms have higher female employment rate whereas younger firms, firms with higher labour productivity, and firms with long working hours have lower female employment rate.

Analyzing Female Employment Trends in South Asia

This paper studies employment patterns and trends in South Asia to shed light on determinants of extremely low female employment rates in the region. After a comprehensive literature review, the authors use employment data from about one hundred censuses and surveys from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to compare employment trends across countries over time. They work through data inconsistencies to standardize definitions of variables to compare demographic and labor market determinants: age, sector, contract type, location, and education. The paper finds that (i) overall since 2001, women's employment participation across South Asian countries has been low and broadly unchanged; (ii) the gender employment gap emerges more clearly in middle age brackets; (iii) rural female employment is higher than urban; (iv) agriculture is the economic sector accounting for the greatest share of female employment, although this is slowly changing in some countries, and; (v) women with mid-level education tend to have lower employment rates than those with both lower and higher education.

Female Labor in Jordan: A Systematic Approach to the Exclusion Puzzle

Women in Jordan are excluded from labor market opportunities at among the highest rates in the world. Previous efforts to explain this outcome have focused on specific, isolated aspects of the problem and have not exploited available datasets to test across causal explanations. We develop a comprehensive framework to analyze the drivers of low female employment rates in Jordan and systematically test their validity, using micro-level data from Employment and Unemployment Surveys (2008-2018) and the Jordanian Labor Market Panel Survey (2010-2016). We find that the nature of low female inclusion in Jordan’s labor market varies significantly with educational attainment, and identify evidence for different factors affecting different educational groups. Among women with high school education or less, we observe extremely low participation levels and find the strongest evidence for this phenomenon tracing to traditional social norms and poor public transportation. On the higher end of the education spectrum – university graduates and above – we find that the problem is not one of participation, but rather of unemployment, which we attribute to a small and undiversified private sector that is unable to accommodate women’s needs for work and work-family balance.

Product market competition and gender discrimination

This paper presents novel empirical evidence for the prediction from Becker’s (1957) classical theory, that competition drives discrimination out of the market. We use a comprehensive business registration reform in Portugal as a quasi-natural experiment to study the effect of increased product market competition on gender discrimination. We use employer-employee data for the universe of private sector firms and workers, and exploit the staggered implementation of the reform across municipalities for identification. Increased competition following the reform increases growth of the female employment share and reduces the gender pay gap for middle-managers and for medium- and high-skilled workers but not for top-managers or the unskilled. We also find that discriminatory employers, approximated by a low female employment share, are more likely to exit and those that survive reduce overall employment growth following the reform, while non-discriminatory employers grow faster. Existing evidence has shown that gender discrimination reduces output; our findings suggest that entry deregulation can contribute to reduce inefficiencies arising from gender discrimination.

The Roots of Gender Inequality in Developing Countries

Is the high degree of gender inequality in developing countries—in education, personal autonomy, and more—explained by underdevelopment itself? Or do the societies that are poor today hold certain cultural views that lead to gender inequality? This article discusses several mechanisms through which gender gaps narrow as countries grow. I argue that although much of the GDP/gender-inequality relationship can be explained by the process of development, society-specific factors are also at play: Many countries that are poor today have cultural norms that exacerbate favoritism toward males. Norms such as patrilocality and concern for women’s “purity” help explain the male-skewed sex ratio in India and China and low female employment in India, the Middle East, and North Africa, for example. I also discuss why the sex ratio has become more male-skewed with development. Finally, I lay out some policy approaches to address gender inequality.

Yours, Mine, and Ours: Do Divorce Laws Affect the Intertemporal Behavior of Married Couples?

This paper examines how divorce laws affect couples' intertemporal choices and well-being. Exploiting panel variation in US laws, I estimate the parameters of a model of household decision-making. Household survey data indicate that the introduction of unilateral divorce in states that imposed an equal division of property is associated with higher household savings and lower female employment, implying a distortion in household assets accumulation and a transfer toward wives whose share in household resources is smaller than the one of their husband. When spouses share consumption equally, separate property or prenuptial agreements can reduce distortions and increase equity. (JEL D13, D14, D91, J12, J16, K36)

Why the Social Investment Approach is Not Enough – The Female Labour Market and Family Policy in the Republic of Korea

AbstractDespite the gradual increase in the female labour market activity rate in most of the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, the rate has been stagnant in the Republic of Korea. The low female employment rate in Korea also reflects the withdrawal of a majority of women at the time of marriage or childbirth, resulting in an M‐shaped pattern. The discourse on social investment attracted much attention from the Kim Dae‐Jung Government (1998–2003) and was more facilitated from the mid‐2000s towards the later period of the Roh Moo‐Hyun Government (2003–08). Against this background and along with a frantic focus on the low fertility rate from the mid‐2000s, the government has expanded expenditure on family policy. In this article, we analyze social investment policies related to female employment and discuss their effect on promoting Korean women to work. We first closely examine the Korean female labour market in three aspects: precarious employment pattern; career breaks; and under‐employment. Based on our policy analysis, we suggest that there is a mismatch in implemented policy and policy preference. Lastly, this article questions how effective social investment policies can be without a consideration of changes in job quality in the Korean female labour market.

Trade liberalization, industry concentration and female workers: the case of Egypt

Abstract The gender wage gap increased significantly in Egypt over the last two decades, while female labor force participation rates have steadily declined. This study investigates the relationship between women’s labor market outcomes in the manufacturing sector, the degree of industry concentration, and the trade reforms that took place simultaneously. Results indicate that industry concentration is detrimental to women in the labor market and that the impact of trade liberalization differs depending on the degree of concentration and the nature of the international competition. In initially competitive industries, increased import competition is associated with higher gender wage gaps and lower female employment. Increased export intensity on the other hand is associated with a lower gender wage gap, but lower female employment. Conversely, opening up to increased international import competition in initially concentrated industries is associated with falling gender wage gaps and rising female employment, while increased exports in these industries is associated with higher female employment as well. These findings have important implications for policy makers attempting to create more equitable labor market conditions in post-revolutionary Egypt. JEL classifications F1, F6, J7, J3

Financial support for families with children and its trade-offs: balancing redistribution and parental work incentives

Financial support for families with children implies inherent trade-offs some of which are less obvious than others. In the end these trade-offs determine the effectiveness of policy with respect to the material situation of families and employment of their parents. We analyse several kinds of trade-offs involved using a careful selection of potential changes to the system of financial support for families with children. We focus on: 1) the trade-off between redistribution of income to poorer households and improving work incentives, 2) the trade-off between improving work incentives for first and for second earners in couples, 3) the tradeoff between improving work incentives for those facing strong and weak incentives in the baseline system. The exercise is conducted on data from Poland, a country characterized by high levels of child poverty, low female employment and one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. We demonstrate the complexity of potential consequences of family support policy and stress the need for well-defined policy goals and careful analysis ahead of any reform.

Financial Support for Families with Children and its Trade-Offs: Balancing Redistribution and Parental Work Incentives

Financial support for families with children implies inherent trade-offs some of which are less obvious than others. In the end these trade-offs determine the effectiveness of policy with respect to the material situation of families and employment of their parents. We analyse several kinds of trade-offs involved using a careful selection of potential changes to the system of financial support for families with children. We focus on: 1) the trade-off between redistribution of income to poorer households and improving work incentives, 2) the trade-off between improving work incentives for first and for second earners in couples, 3) the trade-off between improving work incentives for those facing strong and weak incentives in the baseline system. The exercise is conducted on data from Poland, a country characterized by high levels of child poverty, low female employment and one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. We demonstrate the complexity of potential consequences of family support policy and stress the need for well-defined policy goals and careful analysis ahead of any reform.

Financial Support for Families with Children and Its Trade-Offs: Balancing Redistribution and Parental Work Incentives

Financial support for families with children implies inherent trade-offs some of which are less obvious than others. In the end these trade-offs determine the effectiveness of policy with respect to the material situation of families and employment of their parents. We analyse several kinds of trade-offs involved using a careful selection of potential changes to the system of financial support for families with children. We focus on: 1) the trade-off between redistribution of income to poorer households and improving work incentives, 2) the trade-off between improving work incentives for first and for second earners in couples, 3) the trade-off between improving work incentives for those facing strong and weak incentives in the baseline system. The exercise is conducted on data from Poland, a country characterized by high levels of child poverty, low female employment and one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. We demonstrate the complexity of potential consequences of family support policy and stress the need for well-defined policy goals and careful analysis ahead of any reform.

For Some Mothers More than Others: How Children Matter for Labour Market Outcomes When Both Fertility and Female Employment are Low

We estimate the causal relationship between family size and labour market outcomes for families in low fertility and low female employment regime. Family size is instrumented using twinning and gender composition of the first two children. Among families with at least one child we identify the average causal effect of an additional child on mother's employment to be -7.1 percentage points. However, we find no effect of additional children on female employment among families with two or more kids. Heterogeneity analysis suggests no causal effects of fertility on female employment among mothers with less than college education and older mothers (born before 1978). Furthermore, we find evidence for the interaction of family size with maternal education and age. An unintuitive feature of our finding is that we identify a positive bias of OLS estimates for highly educated mothers and for mothers born after 1977.

Green jobs e occupazione femminile. Una ricerca in corso

The research program builds on the environmental labour market from the gender point of view, to ask whether and how the development of the green economy, and related green jobs and green skills, can represent an opportunity to increase female employment. If you stop at the obvious response that the already low female employment is still lower in most environmental sectors and professions that deal with environment, you do two wrong things; the first consists in considering as given and unchangeable, a situation of sex-typing work and training that has produced and continues to produce occupational segregation, both horizontal and vertical. The second wrong thing is based on the stereotype that green economy and subsequent occupation will relate mainly to the exercise of purely technical skills.