Determinants of female labor force participation: a focus on Muslim countries1

1. This work was partially funded by the George N. Shuster Fellowship Award.

Abstract

This article analyses the cross-national determinants of female labor force participation and different industry sectors with a focus on Muslim countries. The study explores neo-patriarchal perspectives and its measures show a significant impact on the different sectors as well as on the share of the total labor force. The Muslim percentage of the population (% Islamic) has its largest impact on the most modern sectors (industry and service). In contrast, % Islamic has no effect on female share of agriculture. Fertility shows no impact on female share of the labor force (FSHLF), but the separate sector models suggest that higher fertility significantly reduces female employment in the modern sectors. The study also examines the effect of economic development across different sectors. Unlike the FSHLF, which shows a curvilinear effect on energy consumption per capita, the sector models show linear effects on the development measure. Therefore the curvilinearity effect is the result of one linear negative impact on female share of agriculture and one linear positive impact on female share of service.

Keywords:

• labour force
• participation
• Muslim countries

Notes

1. This work was partially funded by the George N. Shuster Fellowship Award.

2. The range of Muslim population varies considerably among countries, clustering at the two ends of the distribution.

3. Barrett (1982) considers degree of religious liberty in a country by looking into the following dimensions of the status of organized religion in a country:

1. State propagates religion

2. Massive or limited state subsidies to churches and other religious institutions

3. State subsidies to church school only

4. Complete state non-interference

5. Limited restrictions on churches’ political activities

6. State ambivalent toward religion, regulations and subsidies used to control, discrimination against minority religions

7. State interference and obstruction (including massive subsidies for purposes of surveillance and control)

8. State hostility and prohibition

9. State suppression or eradication

4. Humana utilizes information from various sources such as Amnesty International, the Europa yearbook and Statesmen's yearbook, World development report and assigns ratings to countries. There are 40 questions and answers related to various topics coded and added to the ratings. Three of these questions are related to Sullivan's rankings of countries. The questions are answered with a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’ with some brief explanation. They are as follows:Q15: Compulsory religion or state ideology are practised in schoolsQ36: Inter-racial, inter-religious or civil marriages are practised and acceptedQ38: People are free to practise any religion