World Development Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 533±550, 1999
Ó 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd
All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain
0305-750X/99 $ ± see front matter
PII: S0305-750X(98)00148-X
Trends, Countertrends, and Gaps in Women's
Employment
REKHA MEHRA and SARAH GAMMAGE
International Center For Reserch on Women, Washington, DC 20036, USA
Summary. Ð The factors driving global integration, namely, trade expansion, technological change, and the internationalization of production have altered production
patterns and changed the composition of output in both developed and developing
countries. As global patterns and modes of production have changed there has been a
general shift away from agriculture toward industry and services. Along with these
output changes have come signi®cant changes in regional and national employment. In
developing and developed countries, these changes span divergent trends. On the one
hand, there is the increased availability of more and better quality employment as
workers shift out of agriculture and subsistence production and into waged employment
in the expanding manufacturing and service sectors. On the other hand, there have been
sectors where the trend has been away from formalization toward the informalization
and semi-formalization of production activities and employment practices. Women have
generally bene®ted from improvements in the world economy. This article demonstrates, however, that patterns of employment and income generation among women
often diverge, however, from global trends in important ways that suggest that the
forces shaping global integration e€ect women di€erently. The article frames a policy
discussion that the International Center for Research on Women led to debate the
implications of recent trends in women's employment in the developing and developed
world. The six articles in this section represent this discussion. They span a range of
empirical and theoretical inquiry, exploring global employment trends and highlighting
changes in women's participation in formal and informal economic activities. Ó 1999
Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. INTRODUCTION
The factors driving global integration, namely,
trade expansion, technological change, and the
internationalization of production have indeed
altered production patterns and promoted
growth and development. Merchandise exports,
for instance, have roughly doubled from 10% to
20% and the share of trade in the GDP of developing countries has risen from about 33% in
the mid-1980s to 43% now. Global integration
through trade has been enhanced by increased
private capital ¯ows to developing countries
which quadrupled during 1990±94, and in 1992±
94 developing countries' share of world foreign
direct investment stood at 40% up from 23% in
the mid-1980s (Qureshi, 1996). World output has
grown 3% per annum since the 1980s (ILO, 1995).
Patterns of production have changed and
shifted from agriculture towards industry and
533
services. Agriculture now accounts for just 4%
of world output. In developing countries, where
there has been rapid industrialization, the share
of manufacturing increased to over 20% of total output. Expansion in foreign investment
and the emergence of multinational enterprises
is both symptomatic and causal. In developed
countries, production has also changed with a
signi®cant shift toward services which now account for 65% of total output (ILO, 1995).
Along with output changes have come signi®cant changes in global employment patterns. In developing and developed countries,
these changes include more and better employment as workers shift out of agriculture
and into waged employment in the expanding
manufacturing and service sectors. The percentage of the labor force in agriculture in the
developing countries fell from 72% in 1965 to
61% by 1991, while that for industry and ser-
534
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
vice rose from 11% to 14% and 17 to 25% respectively over the same period (ILO, 1995).
These favorable changes have been attributed
largely to liberalization of trade and ®nancial
markets, exchange rate deregulation, and to the
adoption of country-speci®c economic reform
programs that give freer play to market forces.
Accordingly, recent policy prescriptions for
employment promotion have tended to adopt a
``hands o€'' approach that downplays direct
intervention in labor markets and minimizes
the role of labor market regulation (ILO, 1995;
World Bank, 1995; Qureshi, 1996).
Women have also bene®ted from improvements in the world economy. Patterns of employment and income generation among
women often diverge, however, from global
trends in important ways that suggest that the
forces shaping global integration a€ect women
di€erently. Agriculture, for example, is becoming increasingly feminized as women, following global trends, move out of the sector
but at a slower rate than men. Women appear
to be losing ground in the manufacturing sector
as well. Meanwhile, the low-wage informal
sector continues to be an important employer
of poor women in developing and transition
economies and gender gaps in wages and occupational hierarchies persist. This paper examines these trends, countertrends and gaps.
This article frames a policy discussion that
the International Center for Research on
Women hosted at a variety of fora to debate the
implications of recent trends in women's employment in the developing and developed
world. The six articles presented in this volume
span a range of empirical and theoretical inquiry, exploring global employment trends and
highlighting changes in women's participation
in formal and informal economic activities. A
constant theme is whether employment and
wage di€erentials will persist or erode over
time; whether such di€erentials are the result of
labor market segmentation by gender, the
higher ®xed costs of labor market participation
for women, di€erential investment in human
capital or women's lower job tenure in the
formal sector. How might the increasing globalization of product and factor markets a€ect
such trends and what are the policy implications arising from the increasing informalization of global production?
Tzannatos (1999) describes changes in women's labor market participation over time and
concludes that both pay and participation differentials are eroding dramatically in the de-
veloping countries. Using data from 11
countries in Latin America and the Caribbean
he demonstrates that despite the narrowing
male±female di€erentials, nontrivial economic
costs are imposed upon these economies as the
result of the remaining wage gap. Calculating
the e€ects of the elimination of occupational
segregation and imposing wage equality, he
concludes that there are substantial output
gains which outweigh smaller male wage declines from the equalization of wages.
Horton (1999) focuses attention on women's
overrepresentation in certain sectors and
compares occupational and sectoral measures
of labor market segmentation by gender.
Using Duncan Indices to measure sectoral and
occupational segregation by gender, she concludes that men and women face a more
gender segmented labor market in Latin
America than in Asia, with Europe and North
Africa falling between these poles. Despite the
overall trend toward greater equality of participation across sectors and occupations,
women are not distributed equally throughout
the labor market in proportion to their overall
levels of participation. On average, 39% of the
Latin American labor force and 19% of the
Asian labor force would need to change sectors in order that men and women be represented proportionately in each sector. While
the wage gap may be narrowing, persistent
and unexplained di€erentials remain that may
belie the expectation that investments in female education alone may be sucient to close
the remaining wage gap.
Standing (1999) revisits the discussion of the
feminization of ¯exible labor, characterizing
the decade spanning the late 1980s and 1990s as
one of heightened labor insecurity and ¯exibility. He hypothesizes that it is the spread of
more ¯exible and informal employment that
accounts for much of the upward trend in the
female share of the labor force. This may be a
result of increasing globalization in manufacturing and industry, where the rigors of competition have made wage and labor costs more
important in determining the location of ®rms
and the mode of production. In industries
where pro®t margins are protected by reducing
labor costs, extending hours and decreasing the
numbers of formal production workers, women
predominate. Standing notes that in countries
in Asia where the female share of employment
is rising rapidly and the manufacturing sector
has grown most rapidly, the male±female wage
di€erentials remain the greatest.
TRENDS, COUNTERTRENDS, AND GAPS IN WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT
Chen, Sebstad and O'Connell (1999) highlight the case of homeworkers to explore the
informal sector linkages to the formal sector
and draw attention to the need to re®ne existing
survey instruments to better document women's labor market participation and the terms
and conditions of their employment. Homeworkers, de®ned as either dependent or independent workers who carry out remunerative
work within their homes, comprise a large and
growing portion of the workforce in many
countries. These authors argue that homework
does not emerge as a subsector of the informal
economy solely because some workers prefer to
combine reproductive and productive activities,
but also because employers choose employment
contracts with homeworkers because they are
cost-minimizing or revenue-maximizing. The
article stresses that workers in the informal
sector are not concentrated in stagnant undynamic subsectors, but also in dynamic, exportoriented subsectors. Furthermore, that in these
subsectors, informal sector workers actually
subsidize capitalist growth by providing infrastructure, tools, equipment and often working
below minimum wages in highly insecure and
contingent employment.
In conclusion, Elson (1999) reviews the articles in this volume stressing that labor markets
are gendered institutions and should be seen as
markets structured by practices, perceptions,
norms and networks which are ``bearers of
gender.'' She argues that most labor market
institutions are constructed on the basis that
the burdens of the reproductive economy will
be borne largely by women. She draws attention to the fact that rising rates of female participation are a statistical artifact representing
improvements in accounting practices which
enable some of women's unwaged and informal
economic contributions and activities to be
better measured. Despite such improvements in
survey instruments, documentation and calibration, much of women's work remains invisible. In response, Elson suggests that there is
a very real need to distinguish between labor
force and labor market participation.
Elson is critical of the notion raised by
Tzannatos and Horton that the reported rise in
female earnings relative to those of men is a
result of ``harmonizing upwards,'' since the indicators employed do not capture the movement of average male wages over time. She also
cautions against the conclusion that there has
been a faster reduction in occupational segregation in the developing countries than in in-
535
dustrialized countries. She emphasizes that it is
quite possible for the distribution of women
across sectors and occupational categories to
become more like those of men, without challenging the gender stereotyping of jobs and the
segregation of men and women into di€erent
status employment, with consequences for remuneration, tenure, bene®ts and job quality.
Our paper examines some of these trends,
countertrends and gaps and argues that di€erent and more direct policy responses are needed
to improve women's employment than are
currently popular.
2. ECONOMIC ACTIVITY AMONG
WOMEN
During 1970±90, economic activity among
women increased in all regions shown in
Figure 1, except sub-Saharan Africa and East
and South-East Asia, in both of which they
were already high. In developing regions, the
largest increases were in South Asia and
Latin America and the Caribbean. The large
jump in southern Asia (from 25% in 1970 to
44% in 1990), however, may have been mostly
due to changes in de®nitions in women's
economic activity rates. The most signi®cant
drop occurred in sub-Saharan Africa where
women's labor force participation fell from
57% in 1970 to 53% in 1990 (United Nations,
1995).
In 1990, economic activity rates among
women averaged more than 50% in all the developed regions, in the Newly Independent
States, Sub-Saharan Africa and in East, and
South-East Asia.1 The regional aggregations
mask the some of the within-region variations,
close to half of all adult women were economically active in the Caribbean and Oceania, and
30% in West Asia.2 Lower rates prevailed in
Latin America parts of South Asia, and the
lowest in northern Africa (21%).
Higher rates of economic activity among
women no doubt re¯ect expansion of the global
economy. Moreover, in regions where women's
activity rates fell as in sub-Saharan Africa and,
to a lesser extent in parts of Eastern Europe,
economic contraction was most likely responsible.3 It is important to note, however, that
increases in women's activity rates cannot always be assumed to result from economic
growth. Other social factors such as falling
fertility rates and improvements in education
also play a role. More important, activity rates
536
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
Figure 1. Women's economic activity rates, 1970±90.
among women may increase as a result of
economic downturns.
The experience of sub-Saharan Africa serves
to underscore that the data used to calculate
economic activity rates may underestimate the
economic participation of women, particularly
across periods of economic instability and decline. Much of sub-Saharan African experienced negative or barely positive rates of GDP
growth during the 1980s. Investment fell by
approximately 50% during 1980±89 and gross
domestic savings rates were broadly negative
(Moghadam, 1994; ILO, 1995; World Bank,
1997). As government de®cits grew, so too did
the burden of foreign debt. By 1995, external
debt as a percentage of GNP in sub-Saharan
Africa was an average of 137% (World Bank,
1997). With public sector downsizing, the dismantlement of the parastatals and decreased
foreign direct investment, formal employment
in the modern sector contracted, registering a
decline from 10% of the total labor force in
1980 to 8% in 1990 (Moghadam, 1994; World
Bank, 1997). Yet as the population increases
and economic necessity grows, the informal
sector is expanding, absorbing almost 63% of
the total labor force in 1990 (ILO, 1993). It was
estimated that approximately 35% of all informal sector workers in sub-Saharan Africa were
women in 1990, demonstrating an increase of
almost 10% since 1980. It is possible therefore,
that the observed decline in economic activity
rates for women is a result of the increasing
informalization of women's employment as
their economic activity goes largely undocumented and unquanti®ed.
Certainly, women's economic activity rates
increased in Latin America and the Caribbean
where women's labor force participation increased steadily throughout the 20-year period,
and even during the debt-induced recession of
the 1980s. Part of the explanation may be that
the 10-year period included both crisis and recovery. There was a demonstrable ``added
worker'' e€ect as women increased their economic participation to help families weather
the economic crisis.4
This added worker e€ect is illustrated most
clearly by Chilean data from the 1974±75 economic crisis which show that, despite a longterm decline in women's labor force participation, women's activity rates in the lowest
quintiles of household income distribution increased sharply, from 18% to almost 23%. The
reverse happened with women in the upper
quintiles of household income, and both trends
reverted back to their pre-crisis levels with the
end of the recession (Rosales Villavicencio,
TRENDS, COUNTERTRENDS, AND GAPS IN WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT
1979). Added worker e€ects for women in response to the economic downturns of the early
1980s have been documented for Argentina,
Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Uruguay
(ICRW, 1992; Moser, Herbert and Makonnen,
1993). In fact, there may have been ``added
worker'' e€ects in sub-Saharan Africa as well
which are not immediately obvious because
they are masked by a shift from formal to informal sector work which is not well documented.
These trends demonstrate that the steady
global increase in women's economic participation rates do not uniformly re¯ect economic
growth and prosperity. Rather, the regional
evidence suggests that short-term increases in
women's activity rates can be fueled by the need
to compensate for declining household incomes
during recession. This fact, moreover, is not
always picked up in ocial data because the
increased participation often occurs in the unrecorded informal sector.
Sectoral trends in women's employment
parallel the global trends and re¯ect improvements in employment patterns suggested by the
broad shift from agricultural to nonagricultural
employment. The gender disaggregated trends,
however, also di€er from the global trends in
537
important ways that paint a very di€erent picture of the nature and quality (both earnings
and terms of employment) of women's work.
3. SECTORAL TRENDS IN WOMEN'S
EMPLOYMENT
Globally, with increasing industrialization
and the expansion of services, employment in
agriculture has diminished in importance from
accounting for 57% of the workforce in 1965 to
48% in 1995 (ILO, 1995). This trend holds for
both developing and industrial economies, and
is likely to intensify with policies that favor
export promotion and provide impetus for
technological growth and ®nancial liberalization. In particular, the removal of capital import restrictions coupled with ®nancial
deregulation have been prime determinants of
the shift toward more capital intensive production and expansion of service sector employment.
The trend away from agriculture holds as
well for women. As illustrated in Figure 2, the
percentage of the total female labor force employed in agriculture has fallen or remained
static in all regions except for East and South-
Figure 2. Percentage of total female labor force in agriculture.
538
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
east Asia. Although many of the within-regional trends are downward, in the developing
countries as a whole, agriculture accounted for
approximately 62% of total female employment
in both 1980 and 1990, and remains the most
important sector for female employment
throughout much of Africa and Asia (United
Nations, 1995, various years).
Again re¯ecting global trends, the share of
total female employment in the manufacturing
sector increased in the developing countries,
and particularly in Asia. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Western Asia and the OECD
where the proportion of the total female labor
force absorbed by manufacturing fell, the decline was largely compensated by increases in
service sector employment.
In fact, the overall increase in women's activity rates was absorbed primarily by a growing share of women employed in the service
sector, de®ned here as clerical, sales and services. Women's representation in services grew
signi®cantly in the Newly Independent States
where the share of total female employment in
services increased from 27% in 1970 to 38% in
1990. The percentage of women in the service
sector in this period increased from 47% to
56%, with the most dramatic increase occurring
in Eastern Europe where almost 73% of the
service sector was dominated by women (Table 1; Moghadam, 1992). Service sector employment also grew in North Africa and West
Asia, and in East and Southeast Asia. In 1970
clerical, sales and services commanded 26% of
the total female labor force in North Africa and
West Asia, by 1990, 35% of the total female
labor force was employed in services. Lesser
increases may be observed in South Asia, and
Latin America. Even in Latin America where
women's participation in the service sector is
extremely high, there has been a slight increase
in the feminization of this sector (Figure 3).
As the nonagricultural sectors generally o€er
higher-wage and more stable and secure employment, these trends re¯ect broad improvements in the quality of women's employment.
Thus, the forces of global integration and the
associated macroeconomic developments have
had a generally bene®cial e€ect on women's
employment. The broader sectoral trends,
however, mask other more interesting trends,
particularly in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.
(a) Countertrends in agriculture
Although, as noted above, the importance of
the agricultural sector is diminishing in importance for women as well as for men, women are
moving out of agriculture at a slower pace than
men. As a result, women's representation in the
agricultural labor force of developing countries
is increasing. During 1980±90, for the developing countries as a whole, it rose from 41.6% to
43% (United Nations, 1995).
A signi®cant proportion of the total female
labor force in developing countries is engaged
in agriculture Ð 62% in 1990. In 1990, more
Table 1. Women as a percentage of the labor force in each sector
Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
North Africa
1970
1980
1990
Agricul- Manu- Services
ture facture
Agricul- Manu- Services
ture facture
Agricul- Manu- Services
ture facture
30
5
Asia
South Asia
17
East & Southeast Asia
34
China
N/A
Latin America and the
12
Caribbean
Middle East
12
Newly Independent States 50
OECD
25
a
18
11
28
9
36
10
28
25
30
15
37
20
28
23
36
17
12
41
N/A
29
9
33
N/A
43
20
37
46
15
18
42
44
29
11
35
35
44
32
34
47
16
41
44
43
36
15
41
38
48
12
38
27
12
47
40
14
49
31
12
43
28
16
53
45
12
45
33
10
43
29
17
56
48
a
N/A ˆ Not Available.
Source: United Nations, various years.
TRENDS, COUNTERTRENDS, AND GAPS IN WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT
539
Figure 3. Percentage of the total female labor force in services.
than half of the female labor force in China and
sub-Saharan Africa was employed in agriculture. Even in South Asia, which registered a
decrease in the total female labor force absorbed in agriculture from 65% to 44%, it remained the most signi®cant sector for women.
In the 20-year period from 1970±90, moreover,
women's share of the farm labor force increased in ®ve of the eight developing regions
shown in Table 1. These data suggest that the
agricultural labor force is becoming increasingly feminized.
Various factors account for women's growing representation in agriculture, the relative
importance of one or more of these explanations varying with the region, subregion and
country. In some cases, it re¯ects expanding
opportunities for men outside agriculture as
globalization and industrialization o€er higherwage o€-farm work. Or men may be compelled
to seek o€-farm work because land degradation, drought and other factors reduce farm
yields and incomes and necessitate supplementation of farm with o€-farm incomes. Women
are often left behind, and de facto become
heads of households and farm managers. This
has occurred in places as diverse as Honduras,
Nepal, Southern and Eastern Africa, and Ye-
men (Horenstein, 1989; Islam and DixonMueller, 1991; Casey and Paolisso, 1996; and
Warnken and Nicholson, 1989).
An extensive literature developed over the
past 20 years documents the constraints faced
by women farmers, their lack of access to resources such as credit and farm implements,
and their neglect by agricultural extension services (Berger, DeLancey and Mellancamp,
1984; Buvinic and Mehra, 1990; Kossoudji and
Mueller, 1983; Saito and Weidemann, 1990;
Staudt, 1982; Quisumbing, 1993). In light of
growing concerns about global food security,
the need is clear to design and implement policies that direct resources and services to the
rising proportion of women farmers to enable
them to enhance their productivity and incomes.
In other situations, the feminization may be
due to growing wage labor opportunities for
women as, for example, in nontraditional agricultural exports. While the majority of these
opportunities are for low-skilled, low-paid
work, they nevertheless provide better job options for women workers and can serve to raise
the price of female labor. This seems to have
been the case in Chile where rising demand for
female labor in agricultural exports resulted in
540
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
a shortage of and increased wages for female
domestic workers (Vial, 1992). In this case, too,
policies are needed to support women's work
and improve their wages and working conditions. Particular problems include long hours,
intermittent and seasonal work, exposure to
pesticides and other chemicals, and the diculties associated with organizing labor within
the agricultural sector.
(b) Countertrends in manufacturing
The forces of global integration have also
had a salutary e€ect on women's employment
in manufacturing which has grown substantially in the 20-year period. Women now represent more than a third of the manufacturing
labor force in developing countries, and almost
one-half in some Asian countries. The greatest
increases occurred in countries that adopted
export-oriented development strategies, and
especially those that set up Export Processing
Zones (EPZs), where women comprise on average about 70% of the labor force (Joekes and
Weston, 1994; Wood, 1994). As a result, the
share of women in manufacturing increased
signi®cantly in countries as diverse as the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Honduras, Malaysia,
Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Tunisia.
In Sri Lanka, for instance, women's share in
manufacturing increased from 32% in 1975 to
61% in 1992, while in Mauritius it increased
from 19% in 1970 to 60% in 1992 (Standing,
1989, 1999).
Much of the growth in women's employment
in export-oriented manufacturing is concentrated in industries such as textiles, garments,
shoes, and electronics, although in the Newly
Industrializing Countries (NICs) of East Asia,
women are increasingly employed outside
manufacturing in export-oriented services such
as information processing, tourism, and ®nancial services. In textiles and clothing manufacture where women remain the majority of
employees, employment has grown dramatically. In Mauritius where women represented
70% of the clothing and textiles workforce in
1990, employment had grown by 344% since
1980. Similarly in Morocco and Tunisia where
estimates are that almost 60% of the clothing
and textiles workforce are women, employment
has tripled since 1980 (ILO, 1995). For the vast
majority of women who have fairly recently
entered manufacturing, however, the shift in
employment is from unwaged, less secure employment in agriculture and the informal sector
and, therefore, the relatively more regular
waged employment in the formal sector represents an advance. This improvement is generally acknowledged by women newly entering
the sector (New York Times, 1996; Financial
Times, 1996).
Within the manufacturing sector, however,
women are concentrated in assembly line and
production work that is semi-skilled, low-wage,
contingent and short-term in that the labor
force tends to be young unmarried women who
are replaced when they marry or within a few
years by younger cohorts. Standing (1989) has
termed this phenomenon ``the feminization of
¯exible labor.'' Women appear to be willing to
work under these conditions, presumably because the alternatives are not much better. For
these very reasons, employers seeking to gain
and maintain competitiveness in global markets, are inclined to substitute female for male
workers. In fact, in many cases, these conditions are perpetuated because governments
seeking the employment and foreign exchange
gains from EPZs exempt them from labor regulations. Often, because unions are not permitted in EPZs, women have little bargaining
power to improve their wages and working
conditions (Joekes and Moayedi, 1987). Even
when unions are permitted, issues a€ecting
women are not in many cases a high priority
within them (Mulders and van Osch, 1994).
There are recent indications that these trends
may once again be changing. First, there is an
emerging trend that suggests the defeminization
of labor. In some middle-income and developed
countries, the demand for women's labor appears to be declining as export production is
restructured and becomes more technologized.
More specialized skills are required and this
often translates into an increased demand for
male labor and a reduced demand for female
labor. This has happened, for instance, in Korea where female employment in manufacturing
nearly doubled in the early 1980s from 1.16
million to 2.05 million, only to fall over 1989±
93 (Kim and Kim, 1995). During the 1970s and
early 1980s production was dominated by low
technology consumer items such as radios,
televisions, garments and shoes. When production shifted in the 1980s to more capital
intensive and sophisticated semi-conductor
communications and computer products, the
composition of the workforce changed. The
total number of production workers fell during
1987±92 but female workers were shed faster
than male workers Ð female workers decreased
TRENDS, COUNTERTRENDS, AND GAPS IN WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT
35.3% and male workers dropped by just 13.6%
(Kim and Kim, 1995).
Similarly, in the maquiladoras of Mexico, the
proportion of female workers fell from 77% of
the total labor force in 1982 to just under 60%
in 1990 (Shaiken, 1993). The trend has been
noted as well in the metal industry in Buenos
Aires and the textile and garment industries in
Catalonia, Spain, and as a result of the upgrading of production methods across all sectors in Singapore (Beneria, 1996; Joekes and
Weston, 1994). If the trend re¯ects a pattern for
long-term changes in the sector, it suggests that
the gains women have made so far may be
short-lived. The issue deserves further research.
Second, there is an opposite trend that appears to be reinforcing the feminization of
¯exible labor but not in the direction that o€ers
women better employment in the waged sector.
Rather, the trend is toward the intensi®cation
of ¯exibility, particularly for female employees.
Producers appear to be relying more on casual
or temporary workers, and reducing the numbers of permanent employees. This increased
outsourcing of production work is re¯ected in a
rise in homebased work in both developed and
developing countries. Wherever statistics are
available, moreover, they show that more
women than men are employed in homework
Ð as much as 95% of homeworkers are women
in places such as Greece, Ireland, Italy and the
Netherlands (Chen, 1996; Chen, Sebstad and
O'Connell, 1999). In developing countries, too,
women appear to predominate in homebased
work. For instance, surveys in three east Javanese villages in Indonesia showed, homeworking in the production of embroidered garments
was entirely a female occupation (Wijaya and
Santoso, 1993).5 A signi®cant proportion of
those women employed in clothing and textile
manufacture are homeworkers (Chen, Sebstad
and O'Connell, 1999). In Palestine, 90% of all
homebased workers in the textile and clothing
industry were women, 35% of whom were unwaged (Hindiyeh-Mani, 1996). In the Philippines, 82% of the 500,000 homeworkers that
produce garments for the textile industry are
also women (ILO, 1993).
An important point to note is that homebased work contributes a considerable share to
the production of goods such as clothing, textiles, shoes, carpets and even electronics Ð key
formal sector industries. The outsourcing of
such work represents a ``semi-formalization'' of
the labor market. As the work is done by individuals in their own homes, producers can
541
lower their costs and avoid labor regulations
which apply only to factory-based work. In
fact, workers are paid piece rates which tend to
be low and, in some cases, yield earnings below
the minimum wage. Bene®ts are nonexistent.
Because workers are dispersed, it is dicult for
them to organize and assert demands for better
pay and working conditions.
4. THE INFORMAL SECTOR
A persistent gap in the literature on women's
employment is in the lack of recognition given
to the informal sector (Chen, Sebstad and
O'Connell, 1999; Elson, 1999). Factors contributing to the persistence of this gap are the
lack of data availability and perceptions that
the sector represents a residual category and
that it does not contribute signi®cantly to either
the national or global economies. Research
done over the past 20 years shows the informal
sector is vital for the economic survival of poor
women (Berger and Buvinic, 1989). It provides
more employment more consistently for women
than the formal sector and, in fact, for the
majority of the labor force in most developing
countries.
More than 80% of workers in low-income
countries and 40% of those in middle-income
countries are employed in the informal sector,
both urban and rural. As the low and middleincome countries between them account for
85% of the world's population, it is clear that a
majority of the world's workers 61% are employed in the informal sector (Chen, 1996). Of
these, women represent a signi®cant share. The
data in Table 2 show that in every country
listed a larger percentage of women than men
are employed in nonwage employment. Since
the majority of nonremunerated workers are
also in the informal sector, nonwage employment provides a useful metric to gauge the size
of the informal sector. Virtually all women
workers in low-income countries such as Tanzania and Ghana are concentrated in informal
sector employment. Even in ``middle-income''
countries, a large proportion of women are in
the informal sector, notably, 76% in Thailand
and as much as 80% in Turkey. There is evidence, too, that the informal sector is becoming
increasingly important in the transition economies, especially for women retrenched from the
formal labor force (Aslanbeigui, Pressman and
Summer®eld, 1993; Kuehnast, 1993; Moghadam, 1994).
542
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
Table 2. Shares of men and women in nonwage employment
Country
Year
Men
Women
Income level
Bolivia
Cape Verde
Egypt
El Salvador
Ghana
Indonesia
Korea, Rep. of
Pakistan
Peru
Tanzania
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
1991
1990
1989
1991
1989
1989
1991
1992
1991
1988
1989
1989
1991
42
42
46
28
69
70
38
66
39
84
71
36
55
70
54
74
48
92
79
43
77
55
95
76
51
80
Middle
Middle
Low
Middle
Low
Middle
Middle
Low
Middle
Low
Middle
Middle
Middle
Source: World Bank (1995).
Furthermore, employment in the sector has
either been stable or has grown during the
1980s in many parts of the developing world.
ILO data show that formal sector employment
has grown rapidly only in East Asia; it has
grown more slowly in South Asia (e.g., 1.6%
per annum in India). In sub-Saharan Africa,
waged employment fell during the 1980s at the
rate of 0.5% per annum, while in Latin America, employment in the urban informal sector
increased from 13.4% of the labor force in 1980
to 18.6% in 1992. As noted above, even formal
sector enterprises are becoming informalized as
they rely more on homebased work or on a
variation of it, on-site contractual work outside
factory boundaries. Such work quali®es as
``informal'' because employers are able to circumvent labor regulations.
The informal sector in many developing
countries is large, and diverse. The term ``informal'' actually describes a range of activities
that, in rural areas, include farming, cottage
industries, tool-making and garment-making,
and in urban areas, petty trading (viz., fruit and
vegetable selling) and small-scale manufacturing enterprises. Although informal sector work
can be both paid and unpaid, much of the work
women do in this sector is paid. Women's
earnings in the informal sector, however, are
low and often uncertain and working conditions are poor. Increasingly, with homebased
work, informal sector activities re¯ect activities
in the formal sector and are directly tied into
them. Informal sector activity also includes
self-employment. Thus, 55% of women in the
urban informal sector in Bolivia were self-employed, 37% in Guatemala, and 24% in Brazil
in activities such as commerce, food production
and retail, and personal services (United Nations, 1993). Self-employment for women can
take the form of dead-end survival activities to
more stable enterprises that have potential for
expansion and development. This range poses
dicult challenges for policy and programs.
The 1995 World Development Report that
focused on employment paid little attention
to the informal sector, regarding it primarily
as a residual whose role in the adjustment
and globalization processes was to absorb
workers temporarily displaced from the formal labor market. The reasoning was that as
adjustment occurred and economies expanded
the displaced workers would ®nd employment
in the formal sector and that there was no
need to directly address issues in the informal
sector.
We have argued, however, that the reality
among women is that employment in the informal sector is not transitory. While a share of
this employment may be temporary in countries experiencing recession and or adjustment,
for the most part, women's participation in the
informal sector re¯ects long-term trends such
as women's lack of occupational mobility due
to low education and skill levels; poverty, that
limits women's access to product and factor
markets; and more recently, shifts in employer
preferences resulting in the informalization and
semi-formalization of labor. Institutional factors such as the constraints posed by women's
reproductive roles are also at work. Direct
policy interventions are needed in the short
term to improve women's incomes and working
conditions within the informal sector and in the
TRENDS, COUNTERTRENDS, AND GAPS IN WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT
longer term to enable them to better access
employment in the formal sector.
5. PERSISTING GAPS IN WOMEN'S
EMPLOYMENT
Other persistent gaps in women's employment are those having to do with gender differences
in
occupations,
wages
and
unemployment rates. Once again, information
on wages and unemployment rates, especially
in developing countries, is very scanty but the
trends are fairly consistent, as we show below.
(a) Occupational segregation
Women and men work essentially in di€erent
occupations, although the speci®c jobs they do
vary both by region and over time. Worldwide,
women are concentrated in clerical, sales and
service jobs traditionally regarded as ``female''
occupations. They are signi®cantly underrepresented in production and transport and in
administrative and managerial jobs in which
men predominate. Nearly half of all working
women in developed countries are in clerical,
sales or service jobs and just a fourth in professional and managerial jobs (Table 3). By
contrast, men are concentrated in production
and transport jobs. In developing countries,
too, a much higher proportion of men than
women hold production jobs Ð 21% of men
compared with 9% of women in sub-Saharan
Africa, and in Southern Asia, 26% of men relative to 19% of women. In East and South-
543
eastern Asia, during 1970±90, the percentage of
women employed in production fell as they
shifted into clerical and service occupations
(Table 3). Women represent a very small proportion of administrative and managerial
workers in all regions, although their representation has been growing since 1980 everywhere except in South Asia (United Nations,
1995).
Women are, however, better represented as a
percentage of the workforce in professional and
technical jobs, although less so in Africa than in
the other regions, see Table 4. In the developed
regions and in Latin America/Caribbean,
women represent almost half of all professional
and technical workers. This category, however,
includes teachers, nurses, and other professions
traditionally regarded as women's occupations.
Data for Latin America in fact show that although women represent from 37% to 60% of
professionals in countries such as Argentina,
Chile Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay,
Peru and Venezuela, most such women work as
teachers and nurses and only a small proportion
are lawyers, medical doctors, administrators,
and managers (Buvinic and Lycette, 1994).
As noted earlier, women in most developing
regions have been shifting out of agriculture
and into the services. While this is a positive
trend, it is important to note that they are
concentrated in the lower-paying jobs in community, social and personal services and in
trade, restaurants, and hotels. Only a very small
proportion of women are employed in the
higher-paying ®nance, insurance and business
services (Table 5).
Table 3. Distribution of the female labor force by major occupational group, developing countries, 1970 and 1990
(percentage)
Professional and technical; administrative and
managerial
Developed regions
Northern Africa and Western
Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Latin America and Caribbean
Eastern and Southeastern Asia
Southern Asia
Oceania
Source: United Nations (1995).
Clerical, sales and
service
Production and transport workers and
laborers
1970
1990
1970
1990
1970
1990
13
25
23
21
49
26
48
35
20
9
15
9
5
13
8
4
16
6
15
9
11
17
27
54
31
8
22
23
55
38
12
37
7
15
20
21
3
9
14
14
19
13
544
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
Table 4. Women's share in the major occupational groups, 1980 and 1990 percentage women
Professional, technical
and related
workers
Administrative and
managerial
workers
1980 1990
1980 1990
Clerical and
related workers; service
workers
Sales workers
Production and
transport workers and labourers
1980
1990
1980
1990
1980
1990
Developed regions
Eastern Europe
Western Europe
Other developed
57
42
46
56
50
44
22
12
16
33
18
32
64
62
65
73
63
69
69
48
43
66
48
41
25
15
17
27
16
22
Africa
Northern Africa
sub-Saharan Africa
24
30
29
36
7
8
9
15
18
29
22
37
3
43
10
52
11
13
10
20
Latin America and Caribbean
Latin America
Caribbean
47
51
49
52
15
22
23
29
52
62
59
62
39
57
47
59
14
18
17
21
Asia and Paci®c
Eastern Asia
Southeastern Asia
Southern Asia
Western Asia
Oceania
35
42
30
30
38
43
48
32
37
41
7
13
8
4
10
11
1
6
7
18
41
40
15
19
42
48
48
20
29
52
40
45
8
6
37
42
53
8
12
53
32
25
26
4
6
30
21
16
7
17
Source: Prepared by the Statistical Division of the United Nations Secretariat from Women's Indicators and Statistics
Database (WISTAT), Version 3, CD-ROM (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.95.XVII.6).
Table 5. Female service employment by subsectors, selected developing countries
Year
Africa
Botswana
Egypt
Kenya
Malawi
Asia
Bahrain
Hong Kong
Indonesia
Republic of
Korea
Philippines
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Thailand
Latin America
Barbados
Colombia
El Salvador
Uruguay
Venezuela
Trade restaurants Transport storage Finance, insurance, real Community, social and
and hotels
and communications estate business services
personal services
1986
1983
1986
1985
25.7
19.7
8.5
20.6
2.3
3.0
3.9
7.6
6.9
4.2
6.1
8.8
63.2
63.6
78.9
58.8
1982
1986
1985
1986
5.4
40.6
61.6
60.9
10.2
5.2
0.3
2.1
10.9
12.2
0.6
6.9
70.1
40.0
36.3
27.7
1985
1986
1984
1984
45.1
35.2
39.9
47.6
1.0
7.8
5.0
2.3
3.3
16.8
32.7
ÿ
50.1
37.1
11.0
46.1
and the Caribbean
1986
33.3
1986
35.0
1983
45.3
1986
20.2
1986
26.8
4.2
2.4
7.2
2.7
2.2
4.8
8.0
16.6
6.0
8.4
55.8
53.2
23.0
70.0
60.9
Source: United Nations (1989).
TRENDS, COUNTERTRENDS, AND GAPS IN WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT
In general, jobs in which women predominate
are less desirable and lower status occupations.
Such jobs pay less. Studies show that there is a
strong relationship between occupational segregation and lower pay for women. In urban
Peru, a study showed that women were concentrated in occupations with the lowest average
earnings and the largest male±female di€erences.
In the former Soviet Union, industries where
women represented more than 70% of the work
force had the lowest average wages (United
Nations, 1995). Generally, women are concentrated in jobs that are less desirable not only
because they pay less but they also lack or have
fewer bene®ts, the type of work and the hours are
unfavorable, employment is often contingent,
and promotion opportunities are limited.
(b) Wage di€erentials
Worldwide, there are persistent gaps between
women's and men's earnings. There is a widely
held belief that the persistent male±female
earnings di€erentials are a function of women's
lower levels of education and/or experience.
Since statistical data generally refute this belief,
as women in equivalent occupations and sectors often have higher levels of education than
men, other explanations must be sought. A
variety of theories exist that cast doubt on
market-clearing analyses of the labor market,
many of which would instead support the notion of a sex-segmented labor market (Arriagada, 1994; Cox, Edwards and Edwards, 1991;
Psachoropoulos and Tzannatos, 1992; United
Nations, 1993). Controlling for age, education
and labor market tenure persistent di€erentials
remain between rates of remuneration for men
and women (Hotchkiss and Moore, 1996; Seguino, 1994; Tam, 1996; Barros, Ramos and
Santos, 1995).
The United Nations (1995) found that in
none of the 37 countries for which data were
available did women's wages in manufacturing
equal that of men (Table 6). In ®ve countries,
women's average earnings were less than 60%
than those of men, including Japan, Korea and
Singapore. Women's wages were closer to
men's (ratios higher than 80) mostly in developed countries such as some of the Nordic
countries, Italy and Australia, and in a few
developing countries such as El Salvador, Myanmar, and SriLanka.
During 1970±90, the OECD countries made
some progress in reducing the gap between
male and female wages. Tzannatos (1996) also
545
found relative increases in female earnings in
six developing countries during the 1980s.
These improvements were largely due to improvements in women's wages in manufacturing. In other countries, however, recent data
show that the male±female wage di€erential is
widening, most notably in Japan, Hong Kong
and Singapore, the latter two being places in
which women's employment in manufacturing
is high.
This may be attributed to increasing labor
market segmentation as within sector hierarchies become more pronounced and occupations more starkly partitioned between men
and women. Analysis of Duncan Indices6 in
global trends in women's employment revealed
that while gender inequality in participation
across all sectors initially falls in many developing countries, the transition to more marketoriented economies and global integration of
product and factor markets appears to be associated with a consequent rise in sectoral and
occupational segmentation by sex (Gammage,
1996). As the workforce becomes more divided,
pronounced di€erentials in skills and wages
emerge that are indicative of an erosion of the
terms and conditions of female employment,
and respond to the dual trends we observe in
the manufacturing sector of recapitalization
Table 6. Women's average wages in manufacturing as
percentage of men's, developing countries, 1980 and 1990
1980
1990
62
62
55
68
74
54
73
Latin America and Caribbean
Costa Rica
El Salvador
Netherlands Antilles
Paraguay
70
81
51
79
74
94
65
66
Asia and the Paci®c
Cyprus
Guam
Hong Kong
Korea, Republic of
Myanmar
Singapore
Sri Lanka
50
50
78
45
86
62
75
58
51
69
50
97
55
88
Africa
Egypt
Kenya
Swaziland
Zambia
a
From Standing (1989).
Source: United Nations (1995).
a
546
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
and informalization. As the transition from
low-income to high-income economy progresses, the skill mix of men and women changes, the
wage gap narrows and the Duncan Index falls.
The speed of the adjustment depends acutely,
however, on the level of human capital investment undertaken by states and by ®rms and the
availability of new higher-skilled labor market
entrants of both sexes.
Other evidence on manufacturing sector
wages comes from the EPZs. It, too, is contradictory and shows that wages in EPZs can be
both higher and lower than those in the surrounding economy. Explanations include a
``salary life cycle'' in which EPZ wages are at
®rst high, but decline over time and, in 10±15
years, end up lower than in the local area
(Joekes and Weston, 1994). Wage di€erences
may also arise from the shift noted above towards high-technology, higher-value added
(and hence, presumably, higher wage) industries in which the share of women workers is
declining.
Overall, women earn less than men everywhere. Although there are signs in some places
that the wage gap may be lessening, in others, it
has been increasing (Horton, 1999). Part of the
explanation, as noted above, is that women
work in lower-paying occupations and because
they hold lower-level positions. They also are
more likely to be employed in part-time work
than men. But a study in Latin America where
on average men earn 30% more than women
found that di€erences in human capital such as
education, years of job experience, and hours
worked per week accounted for only 20% of
male/female wage di€erentials. The unexplained remainder they attributed to discrimination (Psachoropoulos and Tzannatos, 1992).
(c) Unemployment
In many countries, in both developed and
developing regions, women represent a disproportionately high share of the unemployed. In
developed regions unemployment rates were
higher among women than men in two thirds of
the countries for which data were available.
Rates tended to be about 50±100% higher for
women than men. In the developing countries
shown in Table 7, in 22 countries for which
unemployment data were available in Latin
America and the Caribbean, only in one
(Puerto Rico) were rates for men signi®cantly
higher than for women, they were about equal
in seven and higher for women than men in 16.
In Asia, the industrialized NICs (Hong Kong,
Korea, Macau, and Singapore) show rates
slightly lower for women than men, but in the
poorer countries rates for women are consistently higher than for men Ð twice as high in
Sri Lanka and four times as much in Pakistan.
6. CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY
IMPLICATIONS
Globally, women's participation in economic
activities is growing. Paralleling trends in
overall employment, women's employment in
wage work is increasing. But improvements in
women's employment as judged by shifts from
agriculture to manufacturing and from lowerwaged to higher-waged employment lag behind
global trends. Women tend to be retained
longer in less desirable employment as, for example, in agriculture. They also tend to be
absorbed faster in lower-paying and less secure
work as in the ``semi-formal'' production sector, and to be displaced faster when work becomes more skilled and technologized. Their
wages are generally lower and ``stickier'' than
those of men, their working conditions poorer,
and their bargaining power more limited.
Some of these di€erences can be explained by
structural factors that include underinvestment
in women's human capital, others by social and
institutional norms that assign reproductive
responsibilities almost exclusively to women
and underplay their economic roles. It is important to note that these factors do not just
a€ect the long-term trends in women's employment. Rather, they permeate the nature
and conditions of women's work on a daily
basis contributing, for instance, to gender-differentiated ®ring and hiring practices, terms of
employment, and bene®ts policies.
Thus, while adjustment and trade liberalization are necessary, in most cases, to set the
preconditions for improvements in women's
employment, they are not sucient to change
the underlying conditions a€ecting women's
employment and incomes. More direct policy
actions are required on a broad set of issues
pertaining to women's employment, wages and
working conditions. Types of policies needed
are as follows:
Greater investments are needed in girls' and
women's human capital, including both
schooling and job-speci®c skills development,
both to improve women's access to employment overall and to facilitate women's occu-
TRENDS, COUNTERTRENDS, AND GAPS IN WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT
547
Table 7. Unemployment rate by sex, developing countries, 1991 and 1992 (percentage)
Women
Latin America and Caribbean
Argentina a
7.7
Bahamas
12.5
Barbados
25.7
Bolivia
7.8
3.4
Brazil b
Chile
5.6
Costa Rica
5.4
8.5
Ecuador c
El Salvador
7.2
17.6
French Guiana d
Guadalupe
34.0
Jamaica
23.1
3.1
Mexico e
f
20.9
Netherlands Antilles
Nicaragua
19.4
Panama
21.2
4.7
Paraguay g
10.7
Peru h
Puerto Rico
12.9
Trinidad and Tobago
23.4
11.6
Uruguay c
Venezuela
9.4
Men
6.6
11.0
20.4
6.9
3.8
4.1
3.5
4.1
8.4
11.7
16.0
9.3
2.5
13.1
11.3
10.0
5.4
6.0
19.0
15.7
7.2
9.6
Asia and Paci®c
China
Hong Kong
Israel
Korea, Republic of
Macau
Pakistan
Philippines
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Syrian Arab Republic
Thailand
Turkey
Women
Men
1.1
1.9
13.9
2.1
2.5
16.8
9.9
2.6
21.0
14.0
2.4
7.2
0.8
2.0
9.2
2.6
3.0
4.5
7.9
2.7
10.6
5.2
2.1
8.1
Source: United Nations (1995).
Greater Buenos Aires only.
Excluding some rural areas.
c
Urban areas.
d
Cayenne and Kourou.
e
Metropolitan areas of Mexico City, Monterey and Guadalajara.
f
Curacßao only.
g
Metropolitan area.
h
Lima.
a
b
pational mobility. Policies are also needed to
encourage ®rms that provide training to ensure
equal access for both women and men.
In order to make women's work more visible
and to facilitate better tracking of trends and
developments, improvements are needed in
data collection through national censuses and
employment surveys. Survey instruments
should be made more sensitive to women's
work in the informal and semi-formal sectors
and to obtain more and better data on wages
and incomes.
In agriculture, policies are needed that acknowledge women's roles as farmers, and
thereby, eligible on an equal basis for services
and resources available to male farmers Ð agricultural extension, credit, training, information and new technologies. Women also need
access to land in their own right.
In addition to ®nancial market reform, policies needed to improve women's work in the
informal sector include those that address
women's production constraints (lack of access
to capital, technology, training and information, and markets) as well as provide social
services health services and social security. Labor laws and standards should be extended to
encompass and protect informal sector workers
and policies designed to facilitate organization
among them to enable them to advocate in
their own behalf. Similar policies are needed to
address women's employment in the semi-formal sector.
Finally, gender neutral bene®ts policies are
needed to ensure that the intention of protective labor legislation such as that pertaining to
maternity leave, hours of work is not used to
undermine the terms and conditions of employment of women workers.7 Worker bene®ts
should be made conditional upon the outcome
or need (child-birth, skill di€erentials, unemployment) and not the gender of the worker.
548
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
NOTES
1. The Newly Independent States (NIS) are de®ned
here as all those former Soviet or Socialist Republics in
Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Although this regional subgrouping did not exist before 1989, we have
aggregated and taken weighted averages of employment
statistics from the following countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Poland, the Republic of Moldovia, Romania, the
Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
2. West Asia comprises Bahrain, Cyprus, Iraq, Israel,
Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, United Arab Emirates,
Yemen.
3. In sub-Saharan Africa 18 out of 47 countries experienced negative rates of growth over 1980±90 with a further
®ve experiencing barely positive rates of growth between
zero and 0.5. In the Newly Independent States (NIS)
growth rates have been resoundingly negative over the last
®ve years as prices are freed and markets created for
formerly non-traded domestic inputs and highly subsidized outputs (United Nations, 1995, WISTAT).
4. A similar trend was observed in the United States
(and other developed countries) during the Great
Depresssion of 1929±32 as women took jobs to compensate for household income losses due to the displacement of male workers.
5. Homework does o€er women greater ¯exibility to
combine their reproductive and productive tasks. For
many women, who are unable to exercise full choice over
when and where they work this represents an important
economic opportunity enabling them to meet their
subsistence needs without relinquishing their household
responsibilities (Tzannatos, 1999). Homework contracts
are sought out by certain producers as being costminimizing or revenue-maximizing. The resultant employment bargain represents a coincidence of ``choice''
by individuals who encounter binding constraints to
formal labor market participation and ®rms that prefer
¯exible employment contracts where workers provide
the physcial production space and may subsidize machinery, tools and other equipment (Chen, Sebstad and
O'Connell, 1999; Elson, 1999).
6. The Duncan Index is a statistic that measures the
extent of inequality of participation in each sector by
sex. This statistic provides an index of dissimilarity
within each sector or occupation. In the case where the
total male and female labor force are approximately of
equal size, the value of the Duncan index represents the
minimum proportion of persons of either sex who would
have to change to an occupation in which their sex is
underrepresented in order for the occupational distributions of the two groups to be identical. The Duncan
Index ranges from zero, where women and men have
identical employment distributions, to one where there is
complete dissimilarity, and where no women and men
work in the same sector.
7. Maternity leave for female workers has been found
to reduce the demand for women workers in Russia
(Sewall, 1992; Sewall, 1996; Human Rights Watch,
1996).
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