Problems of Workig Women

The Pakistan Development Review 41:4 Part II (Winter 2002) pp. 495–513

How Do Women Decide to Work in Pakistan?
ZAREEN F. NAQVI and LUBNA SHAHNAZ* 1. INTRODUCTION The incidence of women labour force participation is very low in Pakistan. According to the Labour Force Survey, 1999-2000 female participation rate was merely 14 percent of the total labour force. Even though average annual growth rate of female labour force participation has been increasing slightly in Pakistan; it was 4 percent in 1980-99 and has gone up to 5.1 percent during 1995-98,1 however, this rate is still very low as compared to the other South Asian countries—42 percent in Bangladesh, 41 percent in Nepal, 32 percent in India and Bhutan, 37 percent in Sri Lanka [World Bank (2002)]. This paper is an attempt to identify household related factors that lead to women participation in the economic activities. This issue has been taken up in a number of other studies.2 The innovative aspect of this paper is that it relates women’s decision to participate in economic activities with their empowerment—who makes the decision to participate in the labour force—whether it is the women themselves or others. We would like to state at the very onset that this paper is a first cut to explore the issues of women’s participation in economic activities and their and empowerment. We hope to get feedback in the conference to improve the technical aspects of this paper and explore other aspects of this issue. Some key empirical findings of this paper are that the women economic participation is significantly influenced by factors such as their age, education and marital status. The employment status of the head of the household (generally a male), presence of male member, and children of ages 0–5 are also important variables that significantly affect women’s participation in economic activities. We identified marital status, education level, family size, household’s financial status and area of residence as the

References: Aly, Y. H., and I. A. Quisi (1996) Determinants of Women Labour Force Participation in Kuwait: A Logit Analyses. The Middle East Business and Economic Review 8: 2. Becker, G. S. (1965) A Theory of the Allocation of Time. The Economic Journal 75: 299. Berndt, E. R. (1991) The Practice of Econometrics: Classic and Contemporary. Reading. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. Greene, W. H. (1992) Econometric Analyses. New Jersey: Macmillan Publishing Company. Gujratai, D. N. (1995) Basic Econometrics. Third Edition. New York: McGraw Hill, Inc. Hafeez. A., and Eatzaz Ahmed (2002) Factors Determining the Labour Force Participation Decision of Educated Married Women in Pakistan. Sustainable Development Policy Institute. (Working Paper Series No. 174.) Kmenta, J. (1971) Elements of Econometrics. London: Macmillan Publishing Company. Kozel, V., and H. Alderman (1990) Factors Determining Work Participation and Labour Supply Decisions in Pakistan’s Urban Areas. 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Comments This paper has examined the effect of various demographic, socio-economic, and human capital-related factors on women’s participation in economic activities. The paper looks at two types of decisions that women and/or their families are making. One type of decision is whether to participate in economic activities or not. The second type is related to women’s empowerment: whether they decide on their own to join the labour market or the decision is made by someone else but with their consultation or by ignoring their say. The latter, according to the authors, is the innovative aspect of their paper. Labour force surveys are commonly used in Pakistan to determine the factors associated with women participation in the labour market. This paper, however, has used the employment module included in the 1998-99 Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (PIHS). It is important to note that questions related to women’s empowerments, including decision about labour force participation, were not included in the employment module. Rather they were made part of a module concerning empowerment of women in reproductive age, 15–49 years. This paper has therefore selected the sample of women of 15–49 years old whereas working age population in Pakistan, as used in labour force surveys, is 10 years or above. By using probit and multinomial models, the paper shows that the chances of a women to be a paid and productive member of the society increases with education. The authors also find that women’s chances of being involved in economic activities increase if they are coming from families located in rural areas, if the head of the household is illiterate and employed as an unpaid family helper. In these conditions, according to authors, women are forced to seek employment to supplement their family income. With respect to decision process related to labour force participation, the paper finds that women who are older, better educated, living in a household headed by female, or coming from better off urban families are relatively more empowered to take decisions on their own about their participation in labour market. In contrast, younger, poorly educated women who are from larger families enter into labour force not because of their own choice. Decision whether they go out and get a job are made by other members of the households even without their consultation. The paper did not properly compare the female labour force participation rates derived from PIHS with labour force survey data. The authors show female participation rate as 23 percent that is about 9 percent point higher than labour force rates. Whereas the authors have selected the sample of women in reproductive age, 15–49 years, a comparable statistics may be drawn from the labour force survey. This is important to put the study in proper context. The main contribution of the paper as its authors have claimed is that it has determined how the decision about women’s participation in labour market is taken. Comments 513 Here several issues are important. First, in the PIHS a question was asked from all women in productive age that who takes the decision about their labour force participation. A three-category answer of this question is used as the dependent variable in multinomial logit model. But the problem is that the question was administered to all women irrespective of their activity status. It is simply a perception of women. In this type of question it is probably assumed that in each household there is an issue of female participation in the labour market. To make analysis more meaningful it is suggested that only those women may be selected who were economically active to determine precisely how the decision took place. Second, although a women can enter in the labour market for a short period, it can be a life long phenomenon. Employment decision is not like the decisions about movement of women outside the household e.g. going out alone for shopping or visiting alone the hospital for treatment of sick children. This decision is unlikely to be made in a vacuum. It also reflects from the analysis; for example, results of the study do not show any real difference between the decision taken alone or taken with the consultation of others (husband and head of households). Third, the question on decision-making is really not directly related to female labour force participation. The question, as the paper has pointed out, is about the paid employment. But in female labour force only a small percentage is in paid employment, about one-fifth are unemployed and more than half are unpaid family helpers. If the paper is concerned only with ‘paid employees’ (or wage employment), it may be analysed more systematically. Authors have not properly defined the three labour market states: employed, unemployed and not in the labour force. The first two (employed and unemployed) comprised of labour force. Can unemployment rate be computed from the PIHS data set? Authors have wrongly interpreted women not seeking work as unemployed. One reason of female inactivity, domestic work is explained as employed in unpaid domestic activities. It is wrong. In short, authors should clearly show whether labour force participation can be estimated from the PIHS data. My suggestions are as follows: (1) three labour market states employed, unemployed and not in the labour force—may clearly be defined; (2) labour force participation rates as reported in the PIHS may be compared with labour force survey rates across the comparable age groups; and (3) decision-making variable on which multinomial logit model is built may be used as an explanatory variable in the probit model. It means multinomial logit model may be dropped from the analysis. G. M. Arif Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad.