Exports and Women Workers in Formal Firms

Theory suggests several ways in which exporting may benefit women’s employment. However, the empirical evidence is mixed and limited, especially for developing countries. This paper uses firm-level survey data for 91 developing countries to estimat...

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Main Authors: Amin, Mohammad, Islam, Asif M.
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/239241611764251805/Exports-and-Women-Workers-in-Formal-Firms
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35074
id okr-10986-35074
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-350742022-09-20T00:10:20Z Exports and Women Workers in Formal Firms Amin, Mohammad Islam, Asif M. FEMALE WORKERS EXPORTS FEMALE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION FEMALE EMPLOYMENT TRADE WOMEN WORKERS GLOBALIZATION GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN Theory suggests several ways in which exporting may benefit women’s employment. However, the empirical evidence is mixed and limited, especially for developing countries. This paper uses firm-level survey data for 91 developing countries to estimate the relationship between exporting and the share of women workers at the firm. The analysis pays close attention to endogeneity concerns. First, it proxies a given firms’ exports by the average exports of all other firms in the same country-year-industry cell. Second, it exploits the repeated cross-section nature of the data and analyzes how changes over time in exporting activity are associated with changes in the share of women workers. The strategy is more immune to endogeneity problems than pure cross-section regressions. Third, it tests several mechanism or mediating factors as predicted by the theory through which exporting impacts women’s employment prospects. The predictions are confirmed in the data, an unlikely scenario if exports were a mere proxy for other correlated drivers of women’s employment. The results show a large, positive impact of higher exports on the share of women workers. A conservative estimate is that for each percentage point increase in the ratio of exports to total sales, the share of women workers increases by 0.16 percentage point. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, this positive relationship is much larger (more positive) in industries that rely more on women workers, in country-industry pairs where competitive pressure is largely from international markets in comparison to less competitive domestic markets, when social attitudes and labor laws are more favorable toward women’s work, and when the law and order situation is more business friendly. 2021-01-28T15:58:15Z 2021-01-28T15:58:15Z 2021-01 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/239241611764251805/Exports-and-Women-Workers-in-Formal-Firms http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35074 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9527 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic FEMALE WORKERS
EXPORTS
FEMALE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION
FEMALE EMPLOYMENT
TRADE
WOMEN WORKERS
GLOBALIZATION
GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN
spellingShingle FEMALE WORKERS
EXPORTS
FEMALE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION
FEMALE EMPLOYMENT
TRADE
WOMEN WORKERS
GLOBALIZATION
GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN
Amin, Mohammad
Islam, Asif M.
Exports and Women Workers in Formal Firms
relation Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9527
description Theory suggests several ways in which exporting may benefit women’s employment. However, the empirical evidence is mixed and limited, especially for developing countries. This paper uses firm-level survey data for 91 developing countries to estimate the relationship between exporting and the share of women workers at the firm. The analysis pays close attention to endogeneity concerns. First, it proxies a given firms’ exports by the average exports of all other firms in the same country-year-industry cell. Second, it exploits the repeated cross-section nature of the data and analyzes how changes over time in exporting activity are associated with changes in the share of women workers. The strategy is more immune to endogeneity problems than pure cross-section regressions. Third, it tests several mechanism or mediating factors as predicted by the theory through which exporting impacts women’s employment prospects. The predictions are confirmed in the data, an unlikely scenario if exports were a mere proxy for other correlated drivers of women’s employment. The results show a large, positive impact of higher exports on the share of women workers. A conservative estimate is that for each percentage point increase in the ratio of exports to total sales, the share of women workers increases by 0.16 percentage point. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, this positive relationship is much larger (more positive) in industries that rely more on women workers, in country-industry pairs where competitive pressure is largely from international markets in comparison to less competitive domestic markets, when social attitudes and labor laws are more favorable toward women’s work, and when the law and order situation is more business friendly.
format Working Paper
author Amin, Mohammad
Islam, Asif M.
author_facet Amin, Mohammad
Islam, Asif M.
author_sort Amin, Mohammad
title Exports and Women Workers in Formal Firms
title_short Exports and Women Workers in Formal Firms
title_full Exports and Women Workers in Formal Firms
title_fullStr Exports and Women Workers in Formal Firms
title_full_unstemmed Exports and Women Workers in Formal Firms
title_sort exports and women workers in formal firms
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2021
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/239241611764251805/Exports-and-Women-Workers-in-Formal-Firms
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35074
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