Gender Inequality and Economic Growth: Evidence from Industry-Level Data

By Ata Can Bertay, Ljubica Dordevic, Can Sever

July 3, 2020

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Ata Can Bertay, Ljubica Dordevic, and Can Sever. Gender Inequality and Economic Growth: Evidence from Industry-Level Data, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2020) accessed November 8, 2024

Disclaimer: IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

Summary

We study whether higher gender equality facilitates economic growth by enabling better allocation of a valuable resource: female labor. By allocating female labor to its more productive use, we hypothesize that reducing gender inequality should disproportionately benefit industries with typically higher female share in their employment relative to other industries. Specifically, we exploit within-country variation across industries to test whether those that typically employ more women grow relatively faster in countries with ex-ante lower gender inequality. The test allows us to identify the causal effect of gender inequality on industry growth in value-added and labor productivity. Our findings show that gender inequality affects real economic outcomes.

Subject: Employment, Gender, Gender inequality, Health, Labor, Women

Keywords: Benchmark country, Country-industry observation, Economic development, Economic growth, Employment, Employment data, External finance dependence, Female share, Gender composition, Gender inequality, Global, Industry level, Value-added share, Women, WP

Publication Details

Pages:

42
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2020/119
Stock No:

WPIEA2020119
ISBN:

9781513546278
ISSN:

1018-5941

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