Gendered patterns of industrialization in MENA

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes different trajectories followed by Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries with regard to feminization of the labor force. It uses accounting decomposition analysis for the manufacturing sector employment in eight MENA countries from 1983 to 2013. Overall feminization has been weak in the region, even for the best-performing countries. The trends in feminization are driven by labor-intensive industries, particularly textile and clothing, with Jordan being an exception with feminization in capital-intensive industries. As traditionally ‘female’ jobs lose their significance with structural transformation and capital deepening, manufacturing employment opportunities for women disappear, confirming the defeminization literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminization
• defeminization
• structural change
• decomposition analysis
• MENA

JEL CLASSIFICATIONS CODES:

• J16
• J21
• O14
• O25

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ISI is based on production for the local market with high levels of protection for domestic producers. It promotes the growth of capital-intensive sectors which are usually male dominant. EOI promotes manufacturing exports. The first stage of EOI relies on labor-intensive industries such as textiles and clothing which creates more demand for female labor. Moreover, there is another major difference between two strategies in terms of their implications for female labor supply. Producing for the domestic market, ISI provides higher wages to boost domestic demand whereas EOI strategy relies on low wages to compete in the international markets. Family wages in the first case discourage married women’s labor participation.

2 There is lack of consistency in MENA country classifications across different data sources and institutions. Different classifications are used even in the World Bank based on income, resource-dependency, growth regimes or labor abundance. This three-group classification, resource- poor labor-abundant (RPLA) countries (Arab Republic of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia); resource-rich labor-abundant (RRLA) countries (Algeria, Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syrian Arab Republic, and Republic of Yemen); and resource-rich labor-importing (RRLI) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirate) was first introduced in a 2004 report (World Bank, 2004b, chapter 2) and has been used in other MENA region reports since then. Net inflows versus outflows of worker remittances is the basis of labor abundance measure. Natural resource rents as percentage of GDP in 1994 from oil and minerals is the basis of classification based on resource endowments. Table 2.1, adopted from Auty (2001), explains the basis of classification.

3 The most recent data, INDSTAT 2 2017 are provided from UNIDO at the ISIC (International Standard Industrial Classification) two-digit level, Revision 3.

4 Kucera and Tejani (2014) refer to an older paper in calculation of labor intensities of different sectors. See Kucera and Sarna (2006) for the details of labor coefficient calculations of 29 industries and their rankings in terms labor and capital intensity.

5 I would like to thank an anonymous referee for this suggestion.

6 Sectoral distribution of female employment data is retrieved from World Development Indicators for all countries studied in this paper. Table A3 in the appendix present distribution of total employment in agriculture, industry and services and female share of employment in these sectors for 1991, 2005 and 2019.

7 Industrial policy in Morocco since 1990s can be divided in three periods. The 1990s was a period of privatization and decline in trade protection. Various investment promotion and tax exemption schemes were used in the second period between 2002 and 2007 targeting both large firms and small and medium enterprises. Emergence Program was implemented in the third period targeting specific industries with investment incentives, including aeronautics, electronics, automobile, offshoring, textile and food industry (Ali & Msadfa, 2016).

8 Female expats make up 18% of total female employment in the manufacturing industries in Oman in 2012. But wearing and apparel industry is different than others having more female expats than Omani female employees (57% migrant female labor).