Journal Special Issue
Women’s Work
In recent decades, trends in female labour force participation rates have been very heterogeneous across developing countries, despite widespread economic growth, fertility decline, and narrowing gender gaps in education.However, globally, gender...
Research Brief
Are women’s labour force participation rates improving in sub-Saharan Africa?
Several sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have achieved substantial economic growth in the past 30 years. Likewise, access to education has considerably expanded, as reflected in rising enrolment rates for both men and women. Female labour force...
Journal Article
Female labor force participation in sub-Saharan Africa
Female labor force participation rates have been stagnating despite rising female education in sub-Saharan Africa since the turn of the millennium. Using representative and repeated census data from a heterogeneous sample of 13 sub-Saharan African...
Working Paper
Maternal employment and children’s outcomes
Is maternal employment beneficial or harmful for child development? Maternal employment generates income, which is needed to provide core inputs for children’s health and education. However, maternal employment comes at the cost of time spent with...
Blog
Persistent gender roles in South Africa deprive women of leisure time
by
Priyanka Harrichurran
March 2021
In most countries, traditional gender roles within the household are still common due to the prevalence and persistence of patriarchal systems. These...
Working Paper
The economic gains of closing the employment gender gap
The present paper sheds new light on the growth implications of gender inequalities in the Moroccan labour market. We confront two different approaches. The first one is based on firm data to estimate gender complementarity in production and uses...
Working Paper
Female labour force participation in sub-Saharan Africa
Female labour force participation rates have stagnated in sub-Saharan Africa since the turn of the millennium. This paper aims to explain this aggregate pattern by decomposing it into the labour supply behaviour of different birth cohorts and age...
Blog
Supply or demand? Exploring the mechanisms behind the rise of female labour force participation in Mexico
by
Sonia Bhalotra, Manuel Fernández
March 2021
At the global level, gender gaps in labour force participation have narrowed and over half a billion women have joined the workforce in the last 30...
Working Paper
Young women’s transitions from education to the labour market in Ethiopia
We investigate the causes of the gender disparity in labour market participation in Ethiopia using iterative quantitative and qualitative longitudinal analysis through the whole childhood of the individual into early adulthood, from age 8 up to age...
Policy Brief
The economic gains of reducing the employment gender gap in Morocco
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, including Morocco, currently record the lowest rates of female labour force participation (FLFP) in the world. These rates — between 20-30% in 2019 — appear substantially low in comparison to Western...
Working Paper
The gender employment gap: the effects of extended maternity leave policy in Viet Nam
This study seeks to determine the effect on the gender employment gap and women’s employment of the extension of maternity leave from four months to six months in Viet Nam’s 2012 Labor Code.To identify this effect, labour market outcomes of groups of...
Working Paper
Norms that matter
Based on primary data from India, this paper analyses the reasons underlying women’s low labour force participation. In developing countries, women engaged in unpaid economic work in family enterprises are often not counted as workers. Women are...
Working Paper
Gender identity and female labour supply in Brazil
Over the last half-century, the role of women in society has changed substantially. However, the gender income gap and the difference in labour force participation persist. Akerlof and Kranton introduce the concept of identity from sociology and...
Journal Article
Norms that matter
Part of Journal Special Issue
Women’s Work
Working Paper
Social norms as a barrier to women’s employment in developing countries
This paper discusses cultural barriers to women’s participation and success in the labor market in developing countries. I begin by describing how gender norms influence the relationship between economic development and female employment, as well as...