Unequal Laws and the Disempowerment of Women in the Labour Market: Evidence from Firm-Level Data

Asif Islam, Silvia Muzi and Mohammad Amin

Journal of Development Studies, 2019, vol. 55, issue 5, 822-844

Abstract: Institutions are defined as the set of rules that govern human interactions. When these rules are discriminatory, they may disempower segments of a population in the economic spheres of activity. In this study, we explore whether laws that discriminate against women influence their engagement in the economy. We adopt a holistic approach where we explore an overall measure of unequal laws also known as legal gender disparities and relate it to several labour market outcomes for women. Using data for over 59,000 firms across 94 economies, we find that unequal laws not only discourage women’s participation in the private sector workforce, but also their likelihood to become top managers and owners of firms. Suggestive evidence indicates that access to finance, property ownership, business registration, and labour market constraints are pathways by which legal gender disparities disempower women in the private sector.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2018.1487055 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Unequal laws and the disempowerment of women in the labor market: evidence from firm-level data (2017)
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:taf:jdevst:v:55:y:2019:i:5:p:822-844

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2018.1487055

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().