THE DETERMINANTS OF FEMALE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION: THE EFFECTS OF THE SECTORAL COMPOSITION OF LABOR MARKETS (GHANA, CHILE, SRI LANKA, INDONESIA)

Although much study has been done on patterns of association between supply factors and female participation in economic activity, an examination of the relationship between female participation in the sectors of the labor market and their overall labor force participation has often been ignored. That is, an investigation of: (i) how differential female participation rates are associated with prospects of employment in the dominant sector; and, (ii) how these prospects in that sector are related to the overall participation in the labor markets has not been done. On the basis of census data from Ghana, Chile (1970), Sri Lanka and Indonesia (1971), the dissertation aims at explaining the overall female participation in these four labor markets with regard to their participation in the formal and informal sectors. The fact that the supply factors available from the data are dichotomous in nature has necessitated the use of a dummy variable regression analysis for the estimation of both the differential in participation rates and the relative significance of these variables. The analysis shows that: (i) according to the supply factors, female participation rates differ within each labor market; (ii) differences exist in the patterns of association between female labor force participation and supply factors across labor markets; and (iii) in each sector the patterns of association indicate similarities across labor markets for most of the variables. These results lead to the conclusion that variations in participation patterns across labor markets are, therefore, a reflection of the differences in the sectoral compositions of the labor markets.