Female employment in MENA’s manufacturing sector: the implications of firm-related and national factors

Abstract

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has realized significant advances toward improving women's well-being and social status over the last few decades. However, women's employment rate in the MENA region remains one of the lowest in the world. This paper examines the implications of firm-related and national factors for female employment in manufacturing firms located in the MENA region. The empirical analysis is implemented for firm-level data derived from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys database. It uses fractional logit and other econometric models to perform the estimations for female overall employment, female non-production employment, and female employment in managerial positions. The results reveal significant implications of firm-related factors, such as private foreign ownership, exporting activities, firm size, and labour composition, for female employment. They also show that national factors, such as economic development and gender equality, promote female employment. There are considerable differences in the estimated marginal effects across female employment categories. This paper provides policy-makers with directions to design strategies aiming at enhancing women's economic opportunities and employment rates.

What Firm Characteristics Determine Women's Employment in Manufacturing? Evidence from Bangladesh

“…A similar result was found by Fakih and Ghazalian (2015) for manufacturing firms in the MENA region.…”

“…The fractional nature of the dependent variable necessitates the use of the fractional logit model proposed by Papke and Wooldridge (1996). 9 As was discussed above, our approach is closely related to that of Fakih and Ghazalian (2015). However, we extend this previous work in two significant ways.…”

“…Other firm-level characteristics that may affect female employment in Bangladesh include whether the owner of the firm is female, 5 the number of years of experience of the manager, whether the firm has a website, and whether it exports its output (Fakih and Ghazalian, 2015). It is natural to expect that firms with a female presence in ownership may hire more women than men.…”

“…The analysis in this paper sheds light on these issues using data from the World Bank's 'Enterprise Survey' for Bangladesh, which is a firm-level panel survey that has recently been made available publically for the years 2007, 2011 and 2013. We analyse the demand-side determinants of female employment in the manufacturing sector using the fractional logit model, which is estimated using the Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimator (QMLE). The paper builds on the work of Fakih and Ghazalian (2015), who analyse the demand-side determinants of female employment in the MENA manufacturing sector. However, we depart from the study by Fakih and Ghazalian in two significant ways.…”

Gender and Services Economy: Lebanese Women Position in Complex Arab World

“…In a paper prepared by Fakih and Ghazalian (2015), expanding female occupation rates remains a fundamental thing on the work arrangement motivation of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) locale. Despite that MENA nations have perceived fundamental accomplishments in advancing females' prosperity and societal position in the course of the last few decades, MEnA's record regarding female job is as yet remaining behind numerous geo-monetary districts and stays one of the most reduced on the globe (Morrison et al, 2008;World Bank, 2011;International Labor Organization, 2014).…”