Women’s Opportunities and Challenges in Sub-Saharan African Job Markets

By Christine Dieterich, Anni Huang, Alun H. Thomas

June 13, 2016

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Format: Chicago

Christine Dieterich, Anni Huang, and Alun H. Thomas Women’s Opportunities and Challenges in Sub-Saharan African Job Markets, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2016) accessed November 21, 2024

Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary

As labor market data is scarce in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), this paper uses household survey data to analyze the determinants of the gender gap in the labor market and its welfare implications for five SSA countries in multinomial logit models with propensity score matching method. The analysis confirms that education opens up opportunities for women to escape agricultural feminization and engage in formal wage employment, but these opportunities diminish when women marry—a disadvantage increasingly relevant when countries develop and urbanization progresses. Opening a household enterprise offers women an alternative avenue to escape low-paid jobs in agriculture, but the increase in per capita income is lower than male-owned household enterprises. These findings underline that improving women’s education needs to be supported by measures to allow married women to keep their jobs in the wage sector.

Subject: Agricultural sector, Economic sectors, Education, Employment, Gender, Gender inequality, Labor, Wages, Women

Keywords: Agricultural sector, Agriculture Feminization, Employment, Employment opportunity, Employment sector, Female Informal Employment, Household Enterprise Employment, Labor force, Multi-sector Labor Market, Propensity score, SSA Labor Market, Sub-Saharan Africa, Wage, Wage employment, Wage sector, Wages, Women, WP

Publication Details

Pages:

28
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2016/118
Stock No:

WPIEA2016118
ISBN:

9781484388518
ISSN:

1018-5941

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