Digitalisation and Women’s Workforce Participation in the Indo-Pacific

Timothy Watson (), Michael Corliss and Michelle Le ()
Additional contact information
Timothy Watson: Australian National University
Michael Corliss: Centre for Labour Market Research
Michelle Le: Australian National University

Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), 2018, vol. 21, issue 1, 45-74

Abstract: Between 2000 and 2016 the gap between women and men’s workforce participation in the Indo-Pacific has narrowed, while indicators of digital connectivity and Internet use have grown rapidly. We find a robust and statistically significant correlation between Internet use and women’s workforce participation controlling for country fixed effects, a time trend, and numerous other controls. The most conservative estimate suggests that, on average, growth in Internet use has been associated with around four-fifths of the increase in women’s participation in the Indo-Pacific between 2000 and 2016. Instrumental variables estimation finds a stronger positive association between women’s workforce participation and exogenously determined Internet use. Despite finding a positive association between Internet use and women’s participation, a number of barriers exist that are preventing women from fully sharing in the benefits of the digital economy. Based on findings from the G20 Taskforce on Digitalisation, we consider a range of measures that policymakers in the Indo-Pacific can pursue to address these barriers.

Keywords: labour economics; gender; technological change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://ftprepec.drivehq.com/ozl/journl/downloads/AJLE211watson.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ozl:journl:v:21:y:2018:i:1:p:45-74

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE) from Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sandie Rawnsley ().