Search results

The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

Three empirical regularities characterize markets for married workers: (1) productivity and leadership potential are predicted by intelligence; (2) assortative mating based on intelligence characterizes marriages; and (3) labor force participation declines with spouse income more rapidly for married women than for married men. Taken together these characteristics imply that labor force participation will decline for women relative to their husbands as intelligence rises. These three observations suggest a nondiscriminatory explanation for the alleged under-representation of females among corporate leaders. They imply that the women who might be predicted to win the tournament for these positions often do not enter this competition. Instead they choose employment in full time household production. Both the three regularities and the implication concerning labor force participation are empirically examined. The findings of these tests are supportive on all counts.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the factors that influence the decision of married women (in the age group of 16‐60 years) to participate in labor force activities.

This is an empirical study employing the non‐linear maximum likelihood probability (probit) function on primary data (3,911 observations).

Besides other variables it has been observed that poverty remains an important determinant of female labor participation.

On the basis of this paper, a socio‐economic policy can be formulated for a developing country like Pakistan.

A development policy (especially considering the gender aspects) can be formulated on the basis of this research for the enhancement of human resource development for a developing and an orthodox economy like Pakistan.

This paper is beneficial to researchers, policy makers, and social scientists for the enhancement of the level of social welfare and equity through its findings.

Antecedents The development of labour supply over the next fifteen years has its roots firmly implanted in the past. This dynamic characteristic of labour supply changes extends to labour force participation rates as well as to changes in labour supply attributable to purely demographic changes, so we shall initially examine both of these components of labour force change over the post‐war period. Changes in the size of the labour force which would occur as a result of changes in the age/sex structure of the population and the propensity of women to many if age/sex/marital status‐specific labour force participation rates were constant is denoted as demographic, and Table I shows its contribution to labour force growth in the post‐war period. The primary force behind the demographically‐induced change in the male labour supply is earlier movements in fertility, but both past fertility and contemporary marriage behaviour affect the magnitude of the demographically‐induced change in the female labour supply. In particular, up to the early 1970s the increase in the proportion of women under the age of 70 who are married restrained labour force growth because of the generally higher labour force participation rates of unmarried women; the size of this negative impact did, however, decline over time.

Several studies have provided empirical evidence that female labor force participation rate exhibits a U‐shape during the process of economic development. The purpose of this paper is to explore the existence of U‐shape relationship in the case of Pakistan and if it does exist, what factors determine this U‐shape relationship?

For the estimation purpose data according to provinces and regions are pooled for three years. The model is estimated using a simple fixed effect test.

The results affirm the existence of U‐shaped relationship. Estimation of the pooled data attributed this U‐shape relationship with female education attainment, sectoral employment share, unemployment rate, wages and marital status. Results confirm that high rate of economic development is encouraging the female participation in the labor force by increasing the work opportunities for females. The females are taking full advantage of these increased opportunities by increasing their level of education attainment. Research limitations/implications – In testing the U‐shape hypothesis, household expenditure on fuel consumption representing level of economic development in the country is used as the data on GDP are not available at the provincial level.

This paper recommends that skill‐based education programmes should be promoted so that females could be absorbed in the formal labor market. It also recommends measures to decrease unemployment rates and improve labor market conditions.

The paper is first of its kind as it applied pooled data technique for the estimation of U‐shape relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of females' likelihood to work in a Muslim society, Azerbaijan.

To obtain more precise results, the authors analyze the relationships of interest in three different contexts: single (unmarried) females (n = 407, M = 0.779, Std. = 0.416), married female (n = 398, M = 0.706, SD = 0.456) and married male (n = 381, M = 0.378, Std. = 0.485). Linear probabilistic models and logistic regression techniques are employed to estimate regression parameters.

The results altogether display a strong positive impact of the educational attainment of both females and married males. Between the income of married males' and females' employment likelihood, nonlinear – inverse U-shaped association is found. The findings indicate that conservatism towards females' employment is not religiously opinionated, mostly due to insufficient educational attainment.

Based on the research findings, inspiring individuals are recommended to attain degree level qualifications. Simultaneously, the government should engage in mass media to increase awareness of the public about the non-monetary benefits of female employment.

The research results are highly useful for policy practices and fill the huge gap in the studies and research made on the Azerbaijan labor market.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2019-0557.

The purpose of this paper is to examine female labour force participation (FLFP) and their employment choice between the formal and informal sectors after several institutional and social reforms such as Millennium Development Goal 3 aimed at promoting gender equality and empowerment of women by 2015, using data from Ghana’s 2010 Population and Housing Census.

In this paper, logit regression and multinomial logit techniques were employed.

The results show that FLFP has declined marginally from the 2005 figures; education remains the important factor in determining women’s participation in the formal sector. Strikingly 91 per cent of the FLFP is engaged in the informal sector of the Ghanaian economy, a sector with a very low contribution per head.

Interventions such as encouraging female education and retraining of self-employed females to improve upon their efficiency ought to be pursued vigorously; whiles developing rural areas for females to get equal labour opportunities and many others aimed at enhancing the efficiency and by inference earning per head of the informal sector is highly recommended.

The literature on the FLFP is thin in Ghana. The current study uses a census data unlike the previous studies and as such employed a huge sample size that reflects the reality in Ghana. The study contributed immensely to policy having established that 91 per cent of the female labour force is engaged in the informal sectors of the economy, and therefore any intervention targeting at reducing poverty and meeting the MDG 3 should be targeted at the informal sector of the Ghanaian economy.

The purpose of this study is to determine why female labor force participation in Iran has been less than 20 percent.

The authors estimate a structural dynamic matching model of female participation using individual panel data in Iran. The study incorporates many factors such as wage, child cost, education, spouse employment and job market search parameters.

The study finds that gender discrimination in job finding has the biggest effect in reducing the rate of women's participation. If all market differences disappear, the female participation rate will increase by 12 percentage points to almost 27 percent, which is still much lower than that of developed countries with the average of 60 percent.

This study provides the first structural search model using a developing country's microdata to study female labor participation.

This paper addresses revolutionary changes in the education, fertility and market work of U.S. families formed in the 1870s–1920s: Fertility fell from 5.3 to 2.6; the graduation rate of their children increased from 7% to 50%; and the fraction of adulthood wives devoted to market-oriented work increased from 7% to 23% (by one measure).

These trends are addressed within a unified framework to examine the ability of several proposed mechanisms to quantitatively replicate these changes. Based on careful calibration, the choices of successive generations of representative husband-and-wife households over the quantity and quality of their children, household production, and the extent of mother’s involvement in market-oriented production are simulated.

Rising wages, declining mortality, a declining gender wage gap, and increased efficiency and public provision of schooling cannot, individually or in combination, reduce fertility or increase stocks of human capital to levels seen in the data. The best fit of the model to the data also involves: (1) a decreased tendency among parents to view potential earnings of children as the property of parents and (2) rising consumption shares per dependent child.

Greater attention should be given the determinants of parental control of the work and earnings of children for this period.

One contribution is the gathering of information and strategies necessary to establish an initial baseline, and the time paths for parameters and targets for this period beset with data limitations. A second contribution is identifying the contributions of various mechanisms toward reaching those calibration targets.

This paper uses newly compiled data from two surveys of female home workers undertaken by the Women’s Industrial Council in London in 1897 and 1907 to investigate various issues related to their work and wages. The reports detail the occupations, average weekly earnings and hours, marital status, and household size, composition, and total income of approximately 850 female home workers, offering a unique, and as yet unused, opportunity to explore the labor market characteristics of the lowest-paid workers in the early twentieth century. Analysis of the data reveals that the female home workers who were surveyed were drawn overwhelmingly from poor households. Home workers were older than female factory workers, most were married or widowed, and the majority of married workers reported that their husbands were out of work, sick, disabled, or in casual or irregular work. Weekly wages and hours of work varied considerably by industry, but averaged about 7–9s. and 40–45 hours per week, with many workers reporting the desire for more work. The relationship between hours of work (daily and weekly) and hourly wages was negative, and the wives and daughters of men who were out of the labor force due to unemployment or illness tended to work longer hours at lower wages, as did women who lived in households where some health issue was present. These findings lend support to contemporary perceptions that women driven into the labor force by immediate household need were forced to take the lowest-paid work, whether because they lacked skill and experience or bargaining power in the labor market.