Revitalizing Women's Labor Force Participation in North Africa: An Exploration of Novel Empowerment Pathways

ABSTRACT

This paper explores new pathways to women's empowerment, including household structure, family support, satisfaction and self-esteem, and trust in institutions and politicians, and their impact on labor market participation, with a specific focus on gender differences. Using a microeconomic database of 7,860 individuals from North Africa and employing a Probit model, we find that gender significantly influences labor market participation. Surprisingly, our results reveal that education operates in an unexpected direction in the North African region, confirming the “MENA paradox”. Moreover, household structure's impact on labor decisions varies by gender, as gender norms prevalent in male-dominated societies hinder women's labor market participation, leading to a “marriage penalty.” In a similar vein, our estimations reveal a significant positive correlation between men's belief that “men should have greater job rights than women during scarce work periods” and their labor force participation, shedding light on the influential role of gender norms in North Africa. Our study emphasizes the critical role of networking, social capital, and how North Africans' perception of political life impedes their labor force participation. As for policy implications, our contribution illuminates new pathways for women's empowerment, advocating for comprehensive legislative reforms to promote gender equality and foster inclusive development.

KEYWORDS:

• Women
• labor force participation
• gender norms
• household structure
• family support
• satisfaction and self-esteem
• and trust in institutions and politicians
• micro-data
• North Africa

JEL CLASSIFICATIONS:

• J21
• J16

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 ‘Gender gap’ refers to the disparity between men and women in four main areas, including economic participation, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival. The Global Gender Gap Index methodology consists of four steps: 1) Ratio conversion: Data is transformed into female-to-male ratios, capturing the gaps in achievement levels rather than absolute values. 2) Equality benchmark truncation: Ratios are limited to an equality benchmark, which varies depending on the specific indicator. This process assigns scores based on parity or when women exceed men. 3) Subindex score calculation: Subindexes (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Political Empowerment, and Health and Survival) are computed as weighted averages of the underlying indicators. Indicators are normalized to ensure equal influence. 4) Final score calculation: The Global Gender Gap Index score is derived as the average of the subindex scores, ranging from 0 (imparity) to 1 (gender parity). These scores remain consistent over time, enabling tracking of country progress (World Economic Forum, 2020, p. 47).

3 To capture satisfaction and self-esteem: the individual is asked: ‘is he/she satisfied with him/herself overall’, question that he/she gives his/her appreciation on a scale as follows: Totally agree; Rather agree; Rather disagree; Totally disagree.

4 The individual is asked to give his or her evaluation on a Likert scale in the same way as for the Parliament, political parties and politicians of his or her country.

2 Gender norms are ‘perceived rules and collective expectations onhow an individual should behave according to his or her gender, for example, in some societies women are limited to family responsibilities, which allows them less time for income generating activities. In other societies, women do not have any financial privacy from parents and husbands’ (Elouaourti & Ezzahid, 2022, p. 03).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aomar Ibourk

Prof. Aomar Ibourk is a specialist in quantitative methods and social economics. His research focuses on econometric methods applied to the social sciences (labor economics, economics of education and development).

Zakaria Elouaourti

Zakaria Elouaourt is a researcher in Applied Economics and is affiliated with Mohammed V University, Morocco.