Encouraging Women’s Economic Opportunities in Croatia : Empirical Evidence of Determinants and Policy Advice
This report analyzes potential factors and determinants affecting female labor force participation in Croatia and identifies potential policy options to facilitate greater participation of women in the labor market. Our results show that the main r...
| 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/791821602260137306/Encouraging-Women-s-Economic-Opportunities-in-Croatia-Empirical-Evidence-of-Determinants-and-Policy-Advice http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34605 |
| Summary: | This report analyzes potential factors
and determinants affecting female labor force participation
in Croatia and identifies potential policy options to
facilitate greater participation of women in the labor
market. Our results show that the main reason for women’s
inactivity in Croatia is child-rearing and other family
responsibilities. While Croatia provides a generous
maternity leave allowance in comparison with other EU
countries, the absence of compulsory paternity leave does
not encourage the distribution of child-rearing
responsibilities between men and women. Childcare
responsibilities also hinder mothers of school-age children
from participating in economic activity, although this
constraint is lower for mothers of children attending
schools with longer school days. Our results also show that
both informal and formal factors play a role. Patriarchal
views—which were demonstrated to be negatively associated
with women’s labor force participation—are more prevalent in
Croatia than in many European countries; these views tend to
be more prevalent among men, older people, and less-educated
individuals. Labor market regulations also play an important
role: despite recent reforms aimed at relaxing excessively
strict employment protection legislation, introducing more
flexibility in the labor market, and boosting active labor
market policies, Croatia still lags behind its EU
counterparts along these dimensions as is reflected in their
low ranking on the ease of hiring and firing, a low
proportion of flexible forms of employment, and low
expenditure and coverage of active labor market policies.
Finally, despite being a common reason in the literature for
gender wage gaps, we did not find evidence that the
systematic selection of women into low-wage occupations
contributes significantly to the observed gender wage gaps. |
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