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Economies and societies are not digitally isolated. Digital technologies are widely recognised as key drivers of information dissemination, knowledge sharing, income and employment. Digital technologies also influence the interlinkages of digitalisation, gender and labour market outcomes. Digital technologies impact every sphere of day-to-day life. It impacts ways of communication, trade and business; influences networking abilities; shapes societal norms, attitudes and behaviours. It is hence argued that digital technologies may have crucial implications for women's participation in the workforce.

Gender equality and increasing women's workforce participation is an important goal under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Research indicates that women are mainly involved in agricultural work, blue-collar formal work, while collar formal work, and entrepreneurship. Digital technologies significantly impact the ways of working in all these sectors. Consequently, it is argued that digital technologies influence women's participation across all such types of work.

This chapter aims at unravelling the linkages between digital technologies and women's workforce participation. To this end, the influences of digital technologies on women's participation in agricultural work, blue-collar formal work, white-collar formal work and entrepreneurship are discussed. The implications and impacts of the use of broadband, internet and mobile technologies are also discussed. This chapter also includes important theories of women's workforce participation and discusses them in light of digitalisation.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the challenges facing Iranian women in the workforce. While Iranian women's participation in higher education is exceptionally high, their participation in the workforce, especially the public sector, is low.

The paper compares the bureaucratic structures in public organizations with the “ideal” type of bureaucracy as defined by Weber (1922). Moreover, occupational segregation, which limits women's choices, is examined as another barrier for Iranian women's participation in the workforce.

The paper argues that the main reason for the low participation of women in public organizations is the ill-structured bureaucracies in these organizations. Also, occupational segregation limits the career choices of Iranian women. Some of the challenges caused by these two factors are the result of discriminative rules and regulations.

The paper contributes to the limited knowledge concerning the issues faced by Iranian women attempting to enter and progress in public organizations. While literature suggests that western women also face the same challenges in organizations, the unique characteristics of Iranian public organizations calls for separate analysis of these barriers in the Iranian context. By introducing readers to this unique subgroup of employees, the paper represents a starting point to an important area of research.

To provide and assess trends on the status of women in Bangladesh in terms of key macro level indicators namely, women's labour force participation, educational attainments and earnings vis‐à‐vis men.

The trends in women's workforce participation, educational attainments and earnings compared with those of men are evaluated on the basis of descriptive statistics. Correlation and regression techniques are used to examine the relationship between women's education and workforce participation, and to predict the equalisation of female‐male educational attainment.

The study finds evidence of growing commercialisation of women's work in Bangladesh. Although most women in the workforce are self‐employed or employed in low‐skill jobs, their participation in high skill and entrepreneurial jobs as well as policy‐making bodies is on the rise. While gender wage differentials have been considerably reduced in many industries, in general, women tend to be paid less than men. There have been remarkable improvements in women's educational attainments. Further, female education is found to be positively correlated with their workforce participation. Overall, the findings indicate an improvement in women's status in Bangladesh.

The suggested relationship between women's education and employment needs to be further investigated using rigorous econometric techniques in order to distinguish between productivity‐enhancing effects of education and other determinants of increased female employment (FEMPL).

The research should be a useful reference to international and domestic policy‐makers as well as members of the academia and future researchers on the issue.

This study represents the first of its kind in the Bangladesh context. It provides valuable information about, and an independent assessment of, women's status in Bangladesh at the national level.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight an emerging and evolving area within women’s careers literature – women’s opting-out and opting-in experiences. Highlights from several career theories, extant research, and a framework for women’s opting-out and opting-in experiences are discussed as well as future research considerations for women’s career breaks.

The present study provides the first synthesis of the theoretical and empirical work on women’s opting-out and opting-in experiences, by providing a framework that integrates existing research with the kaleidoscope career model. Published works from 1986 until the present were considered from psychology, management, sociology, and economics literatures.

This paper provides information about how women’s experiences of opting-out and opting-in to the workforce have emerged and evolved over the past few decades. Theoretical foundations, quantitative and qualitative research findings, and considerations for future research are discussed.

This paper is a useful source of information regarding an emerging and evolving area of studying within the women’s career literature. The paper discusses considerations for scholars and practitioners regarding developing, supporting, and retaining female talent amidst women’s career break experiences.

This paper provides an integrative framework that provides theoretical and empirical perspectives on the changing nature of women’s career values and choices, which influences their experiences of opting-out and opting-in to the workforce. Given both the changing demographics of the current workforce (e.g. increased women’s participation in the workforce) and women’s career values, research on women’s career breaks is warranted.

One of the main sustainable development goals (SDGs) highlights gender equality. Gender inequality is usually measured through the Gender Inequality Index (GII) based on three main dimensions, namely, (1) economy, (2) social empowerment, and (3) reproductive health, as demonstrated by death ratio and fertility rates. The aim is to formulate a model for women’s empowerment towards achieving the SDGs. Specifically, the objectives include (1) comparing gender inequality levels among ASEAN countries and (2) analyzing regulations on gender and development perspectives in Indonesia. This research used the mixed method and panel data, namely analyzing gender inequality.

The results show that, in the common effect model, all variables affected the participation of women in the workforce. The analysis shows that the enactment of laws and regulations on gender mainstreaming has an impact on reducing gender inequality and increasing various indicators of gender mainstreaming, especially in increasing the participation of women in the workforce.

This chapter deals with an important but neglected aspect of female labor force participation (FLFP) in urban India. Contemporary literature typically focuses on the entire urban sector and ignores one important aspect of urban living – the slums and its dwellers. This study fills that critical gap by examining two different household surveys side-by-side: a primary survey of households living in slums and slum-rehabilitated colonies, and the nationally representative Indian Human Development survey-II. This study brings outs a comparative picture of nature/type of FLFP and its various correlates from both slum and non-slum areas of three metro cities of India, viz. Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. It further explores the similarities and the differences of the correlates for FLFP among the slum clusters of these cities. It is found that despite being poorer and marginalized, the slum dwelling women’s LFP rate is not extra-ordinarily high vis-á-vis their non-slum urban counterparts. In slums, a higher proportion of women are engaged in self-employment (including family business) and casual employments (includes domestic helps), whereas in non-slum areas relatively more women are engaged in regular salaried jobs. Regression analysis identifies correlates that have similar effects, but with different intensity, across-the-board – relationship between education and FLFP reflects a flat-bottom J-shaped pattern; being married, higher child dependency ratio and household heads with higher education significantly constrain women’s work choice; strong income effect of other household members earning on FLFP, but asset holding has no bearing. However, there are other factors that affect FLFP differently in slums and non-slum areas. Policy prescriptions are drawn.

The participation and productivity of women in Oman’s labor force are very low and heavily skewed toward the government sector. There are few women in the private sector and the reasons for this are not well-known. The challenges that women workers face specifically in the Arab World are worth understanding from a participation and policy perspective. The purpose of this paper is to explore employers’ perceptions of women workers and the major challenges they face in Oman in the context of government efforts to develop the female workforce in this Middle East region.

Data collected by interviewing the top executives (employers) from 28 organizations in two major cities in Oman were analyzed qualitatively, grouped into emerging themes, triangulated, and discussed.

The results indicated that employers, in general, are impressed by women workers in Oman. However, they identify a number of challenges women face. This study synthesized and grouped employers’ perceptions of these challenges in the following categories: women’s natural and physiological composition, their attitude at work, post-marital challenges, socio-cultural barriers, nature and place of work, organizational preparedness and governance, biases or prejudices of employers, and work-life balance (WLB) issues facing them.

This study suggests that since female participation in the government sector in Oman is substantial, women can also be attracted to work in the private sector if policies are formulated to safeguard their interests.

There is an absolute dearth of studies about female participation in the Omani workforce; this study is one of the pioneering efforts. Whereas the extant literature on WLB issues represents mostly the western perspective, this study highlights the major WLB issues in Oman and fills some important gaps between the West and the Middle East by focusing on women, WLB, and policies triangle.

This paper poses the question of whether the mainstream feminist movement in the United States, in concentrating its efforts on achieving gender parity in the existing workplace, is selling women short. In it, I argue that contemporary U.S. feminism has not adequately theorized the problems with the relatively unregulated market system in the United States. That failure has contributed to a situation in which women’s participation in the labor market is mistakenly equated with liberation, and in which other far-ranging effects of the market system on women’s lives inside and outside of work – many of them negative – are overlooked. To theorize the effects of the market system on women’s lives in a more nuanced manner, I borrow from the insights of earlier Marxist and socialist feminists. I then use this more nuanced perspective to outline an agenda for feminism, which I call “market-cautious feminism,” that seeks to regulate the market to serve women’s interests.

This study aims to explore the relationship between tourism and women’s employment in 32 South American and Caribbean countries from 1996 to 2020.

In this paper, both static (fixed effects and random effects) and dynamic panel data models (system and differenced generalized method of moments) are used. In addition to gross domestic product, trade, education and urban population are also considered in this study.

According to the findings, a boost in tourism led to an increase in women’s engagement in the economy and service sectors. This paper also explores the efficiency of alternate methods to deal with various models of women labor force (WLF) involvement in various sectors. Women’s employment opportunities in the service sector expand as a result of tourism, but in the agricultural and industrial sectors, that employment opportunity is reduced.

This study investigated the impact of tourism on WLF participation and found that it had a significant impact. This study, on the other hand, specifically contributed to the tourism sector in some specific study areas, such as tourism and agriculture, service and industry sectors. This study also displays that female participation in South America and the Caribbean countries is increasing and women are shifting away from traditional economic sectors.

This is the pioneering study to discover tourism and female participation in employment in South American and Caribbean countries. The findings of this study have important implications for future studies and policy debates examining the consequence of the tourism industry on WLF.