The Determinants of Female Labor Force Participation: Evidence From Aggregated and Disaggregated Panel Data of Developing Countries

Literature On The Determinants Of Female Labor Force Participation

Reviewing the literature, we find that the studies investigating the determinants of FLFP mainly focus on various factors. According to Shah and Al-Qudsi (1990), they are divided into two groups that are background and intervening. Background factors consist of demographic and socio-cultural ones, influencing the supply factors, and intervening factors consist of supply and demand ones. While socio-cultural factors include protective norms, non-desirability of specific jobs, and status considerations; demographic ones include age, family size, age of youngest child, marital status, household headship, and family type. Supply factors consist of husband’s income, occupation, and income, which are related to husbands, and women’s education, skill level, and motivation to work are the main ones, which are related to women. The availability of child care and attractiveness of jobs can also be considered as the variables including in the supply factors. The demand factors affecting FLFP include the variables related to the demand for female workers such as rate and character of economic development, the size of the informal sector, discrimination against the female employment, and regulations about wages and sex discrimination in hiring. In this study, considering the factors explained above, we select the variables used in the econometric models, which can be accounted for as follows: