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

Ata Bertay, Ljubica Dordevic and Can Sever

No 2020/119, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: WP; female share; gender composition; benchmark country; country-industry observation; economic growth; economic development; gender inequality; employment data; industry level; external finance dependence; value-added share; Women; Employment; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42
Date: 2020-07-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen and nep-gro
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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