Gender Analysis of the Cambodian Labor Market
This paper has six sections. The authors begin with an overview of the gender-specific trends in labor force participation, industry employment shares, overall shifts in wage employment, and gender gaps in wages and educational attainment in Cambod...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/317271594095404769/Gender-Analysis-of-the-Cambodian-Labor-Market http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34201 |
| Summary: | This paper has six sections. The authors
begin with an overview of the gender-specific trends in
labor force participation, industry employment shares,
overall shifts in wage employment, and gender gaps in wages
and educational attainment in Cambodia. The authors continue
with an industry-specific look at wage employment trends,
which confirms that, while there are a few emerging
higher-skilled sectors such as financial services, the
manufacturing sector (and the garment sector in particular)
still dominates and continues to grow in importance for
women’s wage work. The authors then shed light on the
vertical occupational segregation patterns within industry
and show that even if women are not underrepresented in
manager positions in the dominant manufacturing (garment)
sector, this type of positions represent less than one
percent of all manufacturing jobs. In fact, at present the
only sector providing prospects for career growth beyond
low-skilled work is the services industry, where women are
underrepresented as managers, but overrepresented as
professionals and clerical workers. Moving on to wages, we
test whether the gender wage gap and the factors
contributing to it differ by industry. Occupational levels
and education seem to play a role in explaining only a
fraction of the wage gaps in construction and agriculture
respectively, while the gender gap in trade remains
completely unexplained by observable characteristics. What
is of even greater interest is the fact that there is no
gender wage gap in manufacturing, while the gap in services
appears only after controlling for education and
occupational level. Importantly, in all sectors other than
manufacturing, women with identical characteristics and
similar occupations still earn significantly less than men.
The authors also explore the extent to which motherhood
explains women’s labor force experiences. The presence of
young children in the household do not seem to explain the
gap in wages. Nevertheless, we show that they significantly
increase the probability that a woman will transition to
non-wage employment, likely due to the need to combine
household duties, childcare and work. Inspired by literature
in similar country contexts, authors then demonstrate that
the sizeable expansion of job opportunities for women in the
garment sector has likely had a disproportionately negative
influence on Cambodian girls’ retention beyond primary
schooling (compared to boys), thus limiting their employment
and wage opportunities. Because of the continued role that
non-wage employment plays in women’s occupational paths,
authors finish the paper with an overview of the trends in
the sector, with a focus on non-farm enterprises, which
appear to be slowly taking over agriculture. |
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