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\"One of the most dramatic economic transformations of the past century has been the entry of women into the labor force. While many theories explain why this change took place, we investigate the process of transition itself. We argue that local information transmission generates changes in participation that are geographically heterogeneous, locally correlated, and smooth in the aggregate, just like those observed in our data. In our model, women learn about the effects of maternal employment on children by observing nearby employed women. When few women participate in the labor force, data are scarce and participation rises slowly. As information accumulates in some regions, the effects of maternal employment become less uncertain and more women in that region participate. Learning accelerates, labor force participation rises faster, and regional participation rates diverge. Eventually, information diffuses throughout the economy, beliefs converge to the truth, participation flattens out, and regions become more similar again. To investigate the empirical relevance of our theory, we use a new county-level data set to compare our calibrated model to the time series and geographic patterns of participation.\" (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku). Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch; Längsschnitt; historisch. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1940 bis 2005.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the link between two different family policy dimensions – one supporting the combination of work and parenthood and one supporting stay-at-home mothers – and fertility rates between 1995 and 2011 in 33 industrialized countries.Design/methodology/approachTotal fertility rates were regressed on the two policy dimensions, earner–carer support and traditional–family support, using pooled time-series analysis with country fixed effects and stepwise control for female labor force participation, unemployment rates and GDP.FindingsThe analyses show that earner–carer support is linked to higher fertility, while traditional–family support is not. Also, higher female labor force participation is linked to higher fertility before GDP is included. Conversely, higher unemployment is correlated with lower fertility levels. Sensitivity analyses with and without day care enrollment on a smaller set of countries show no influence of day care on the results for family policy.Originality/valueThe results give weight to the argument that family policies supporting the combination of work and parenthood could increase fertility in low-fertility countries, probably mediated in part by female labor force participation. Earnings-related earner–carer support incentivizes women to enter the labor force before parenthood and to return to work after time off with their newborn child, thus supporting a combination of work and parenthood.

Since the early 1990s, countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region have made admirable progress in reducing the gap between girls and boys in areas such as access to education and health care. Indeed, almost all young girls in the Region attend school, and more women than men are enrolled in university. Over the past two decades, maternal mortality declined 60 percent, the largest decrease in the world. Women in MENA are more educated than ever before. It is not only in the protest squares that have seen women whose aspirations are changing rapidly but increasingly unmet. The worldwide average for the participation of women in the workforce is approximately 50 percent. In MENA, their participation is half that at 25 percent. Facing popular pressure to be more open and inclusive, some governments in the region are considering and implementing electoral and constitutional reforms to deepen democracy. These reforms present an opportunity to enhance economic, social, and political inclusion for all, including women, who make up half the population. However, the outlook remains uncertain. Finally, there are limited private sector and entrepreneurial prospects not only for jobs but also for those women who aspire to create and run a business. These constraints present multiple challenges for reform. Each country in MENA will, of course, confront these constraints in different contexts. However, inherent in many of these challenges are rich opportunities as reforms unleash new economic actors. For the private sector, the challenge is to create more jobs for young women and men. The World Bank has been pursuing an exciting pilot program in Jordan to assist young women graduates in preparing to face the work environment.

In 1990, the US had the sixth highest female labor participation rate among 22 OECD countries. By 2010 its rank had fallen to seventeenth. We find that the expansion of “family-friendly” policies, including parental leave and part-time work entitlements in other OECD countries, explains 29 percent of the decrease in US women's labor force participation relative to these other countries. However, these policies also appear to encourage part-time work and employment in lower level positions: US women are more likely than women in other countries to have full time jobs and to work as managers or professionals.

This paper develops a three-sector general equilibrium model for a small open developing economy with a non-traded sector that uses only unskilled female labour to provide final services to the skilled families. For measuring the gender-based inequality, we concentrate solely on the unskilled labour market knowing fully well that there exists gender wage discrimination in the market for skilled labour as well. The unskilled female labour supply is endogenously determined from the optimizing behavior of a representative unskilled working family. The consequences of FDI flows and credit market reform have been analyzed on the gender-based wage inequality. Besides, we have gone in for examining the policy impacts on skill-based wage inequality assuming away discrimination against female labour in the high-skilled labour market. Finally, the consequences of FDI flows and credit market reform on the welfare of a poor unskilled working family have also been studied.

This paper develops a learning model of cultural change to investigate why women's labor force participation (LFP) and attitudes toward women's work both changed dramatically. In the model, women's beliefs about the long-run payoff from working evolve endogenously via an intergenerational learning process. This process generically generates the data's S-shaped LFP curve and introduces a novel role for wage changes via their effect on the speed of intergenerational learning. The calibrated model does a good job of replicating the evolution of female LFP in the United States over the last 120 years and finds that the new role for wages was quantitatively significant.

An oft-cited strategy to advance economic development is to further integrate developing countries into global trade, particularly through global value chains, bolstered by the expansion of female-intensive industries to bring more women into the formal labor force.

An equal division of paid and unpaid work in couples is a central political ambition in many countries. Utilizing a survey from 2007, this article finds that many Norwegian women perform approximately as much paid work as their partner. Still, few work more than their partners and about half work less than them. Domestic commitments as well as the partners' labour market resources affect women's allocation of paid work, but the highly gender-segregated labour market also plays an important role. When the woman works most, her spouse often has health problems, is unemployed or retired. In dual-earner couples women with longer hours than their partner are often well educated, self-employed, managers, have no young children or a partner in the public sector. Women with young children or health restrictions often work less than their partner, as do those with a partner who is self-employed, holds a managerial position or a private-sector job.

Forty percent of working women in the UK work part-time; does part-time work support a woman's labour market career or frustrate it? Cohort data on women's labour market involvement to age 42 show highly varied pathways through full-time/part-time/non-employment. Part-time work can be part of two different pathways in women's labour supply for persistent workers and marginal workers. A history of full-time work, even including part-time or non-employment spells, tends to lead back to full-time work, indicating that part-time work supports a career. However, part-time work combined with non-employment is a trap against the resumption of full-time work.

There is a strong effect of childbirth on female labour supply. This effect, however, is changing over time. This article uses panel data on the last two decades on three European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, the UK) to study changes in female labour force behaviour around childbirth and tries to find an explanation for these changes by looking at differences between the three countries. We conclude that there are substantial differences in participation patterns between the three countries in our study and that policy measures and institutions such as childcare that make the costs of combining work and family lower relative to being a full-time mother seem to increase female participation rates.