The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is known for having low female labor market participation rates compared with its level of economic development. A possible explanation is that countries in this region do not follow a U-shape relation between female participation and GDP during the...

This paper analyzes the occupational status and distribution of free women in the antebellum United States. It considers both their reported and unreported (imputed) occupations, using the 1/100 IPUMS files from the 1860 Census of Population. After developing and testing the model based on...

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, we use employment data from about one hundred censuses and surveys from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan,...

Modern women often face an uneasy choice: dedicating their time to reproductive household work, or joining the workforce and spending time away from home and household duties. Both choices are associated with benefits, as well as non-trivial costs, and necessarily involve some trade-offs,...

With only 32% of active age women in the labor market, Guatemala is an upper middle-income country with one of the lowest rates of female labor force participation in the Latin America and the Caribbean region, and in the world. The rate of female labor participation is especially low in the...

The southern state of Kerala in India is known for greater status of women and low gender bias in society. However, the social and human development in Kerala have not been congruent to the economic emancipation of women, and paradoxically, female labour force participation has been on the...

We ask whether shifting male and female employment patterns can help to explain why the US college boom between 1981 and 2005 was dominated by women. We make three contributions. First, we show that while a massive feminization of high-wage, high-skill occupations plausibly contributed to the...

The Visegrad 4 countries are characterized by low female and maternal employment rates compared to other Western and Nordic countries. Employment rates of mothers with children aged 0-2 years old are especially low, except in Poland. Work-family balance indicators and gender wage gaps are also...

Rates of labor force participation in the US in the second half of the nineteenth century among free women were exceedingly (and implausibly) low, about 11 percent. This is due, in part, to social perceptions of working women, cultural and societal expectations of female’s role, and lack of...

Modern women often face an uneasy choice: dedicating their time to reproductive household work, or joining the workforce and spending time away from home and household duties. Both choices are associated with benefits, as well as non-trivial costs, and necessarily involve some trade-offs,...