Has Asia’s growth been gender-inclusive? Recent panel data evidence (1990-2015) on female employment

Abstract

The long-standing losers of economic growth have been the poor, marginalized and indigenous groups. Within the Asian spectrum, gender disparities have been a large threat to the inclusivity of growth. Gender wage gaps, difficult working conditions, child rearing responsibilities, disparities in access to school education are all very common barriers to female inclusion in economic activity. This study looks at the recent panel data evidence for Asian (South Asia, East Asia and Asia-Pacific) countries over the time period 1990-2015 in order to determine the factors affecting the growth generically and how gender-sensitive legal and financial infrastructure is related to female labour force participation in particular. As a preliminary inquiry into the statistical evidence, we utilize panel data estimation with fixed and random effects in order to determine the statistical robustness of the conventional and institutional variables as predictors of female labour force participation. We find that the country-specific unobservables correlate only with the female labour-literacy association while the associations of female labour with growth rate and equal pay legislation are not affected by country-specific unobservables