Changes in Global Trade Patterns and Women's Employment in Manufacturing, 1995–2011

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the feminization and defeminization trends in manufacturing employment in thirty countries from 1995 to 2011. Utilizing two separate methods, structural decomposition analysis (SDA) and factor content analysis (FCA), the study identifies the major industries and trade partners behind the structural shifts in trade that have induced changes in employment and thus in the rates of women’s employment. The findings highlight that, as a general trend, defeminization in manufacturing has persisted in the Global North, led by a negative trade impact in low-technology industries. In the Global South, feminization and defeminization trends are not as straightforward. Despite positive changes in women’s share of employment in medium-high- and high-technology industries, negative gender bias effects of trade changes are found particularly in high-technology industries, where occupations are notably gendered.

KEYWORDS:

• Global integration
• North–South trade
• women’s employment
• structural decomposition analysis (SDA)
• factor content analysis (FCA)
• gender bias

JEL Codes:

• F16
• J16
• F14

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank the participants of the 22nd IAFFE Conference, 16th International Economic Association (IEA) World Congress for useful comments and suggestions. The authors appreciate the associate editors’ and the reviewers’ very useful comments and suggestions that helped improve the previous version of the paper substantially. They kindly acknowledge financial support from TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) Project No. SOBAG 109K510. All remaining errors and views expressed remain solely our responsibility.

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2018.1435899

Notes

1 Yet, it is important to note that an analysis of the impact of the crisis is beyond the focus of this research.

2 In the empirical literature, North–South trade is generally approximated by trade between OECD and non-OECD countries. However in this study, to mimic North–South trade, we considered OECD-MI together with non-OECD countries (ODCs) in the South as there are major differences between OECD-MI and OECD-HI countries.

3 The Eurostat database covers Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey (only for 2008–9), and the UK. The US BLS database covers the US.

4 The residual term represents the covariation or interaction in the change in the relative structure of sectors and changes in the fraction of women within sector.

5 Although we directly follow Kucera and Milberg (2003) in the definition of the trade expansion vector (T), taking the final demand (D) vector into consideration in the measurement of export and import propensities, other notable studies on the FCA are Kucera and Milberg (2000) and David Kucera and Leanne Roncolato (2011), which consider a slightly different formulation of the vector (T), taking domestic production (Q) vector into account in the measurement of export and import propensities.

6 Depending on the level of disaggregation, X and M represent export and import values of each of the thirty reporter countries in our sample, either with respect to each of the three trade partners (North, South, and China), for each of the aggregated sixteen manufacturing sectors, or with respect to aggregate trade in each of the aggregated sixteen manufacturing sectors.

7 Although women’s employment in manufacturing seems to be gaining ground in India, a study by Nidhiya Menon and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers (2009) nevertheless reveals that over the period 1983–2004, the gender wage gap in manufacturing industries has been widening to the detriment of women, despite employment gains with respect to trade expansion in the same period.

8 For some countries and some sectors, FCA outcomes are higher than 100 percent. This implies that the initial data point of analysis in trade changes is very small relative to the end data point of analysis, hence giving exaggerated results.

9 It also aligns with the positive trade effect from the FCA in the three countries in which we observe feminization in manufacturing employment: Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden (Table 1a, column 4 and Table 2a, last line).

10 This finding supports the results obtained by Kucera and Tejani (2014), where they state that the labor-intensive manufacturing industries contributed most to changes in women’s share in manufacturing over the period 1981–2008.

11 Except for only two Asian economies (the Republic of Korea and the Philippines).

12 Ireland, Japan, Republic of Korea, Hungary, Slovak Republic, and the Philippines show a positive impact of changes in trade with China on women’s employment for the period from 2000–7 to 2008–11.

13 Although we provide partner-level FCA outcomes concerning the overall manufacturing sector (Supplemental Online Appendix Tables S3–S6), the partner-level outcomes with respect to individual sectors are available from the authors upon request.

14 Kazakhstan is an exception. In fact, in all countries, the share of employment in mid-low-tech industries in total manufacturing employment is also the lowest: on average, the share of manufacturing employment in these industries is about 17 percent (except for Kazakhstan, where this share is 42 percent).

15 Or, the fall in employment in these sectors occurred at a lower rate than the fall in overall manufacturing, a general pattern we observe in economies in the North.

16 In this process, the Philippines is among the East Asian countries that have increased their competitiveness in high-technology products (Haddad 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dürdane Şirin Saraçoğlu

Dürdane Şirin Saraçoğlu is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. She specializes in macroeconomics, internal migration and regional inequality issues, the informal sector, and women’s employment.

Emel Memiş

Emel Memiş is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Ankara University. She specializes in macroeconomics, gender and economic development, and feminist economics.

Ebru Voyvoda

Ebru Voyvoda holds MS and PhD degrees from Bilkent University, Turkey. She is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Middle East Technical University, Turkey.

Burça Kızılırmak

Burça Kızılırmak is Professor of Economics at Ankara University, specializing in macroeconomics and labor economics. Her recent research focuses on the gendered patterns of paid and unpaid work.