For Labor or for Divorce ? Unilateral Divorce Laws and Women’s Labor Outcomes

Najat El Mekkaoui, Sara Loukili, Yeganeh Fourouheshfar and Nada Omer Eissa

No 10661, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Despite substantial progress in closing the gender gap, women’s labor force participation in the Middle East and North Africa remains one of the lowest globally, at a mere 18 percent. This paper investigates the effect of the introduction of unilateral divorce laws on women’s labor outcomes, using data from the Demographic and Health Survey program that spans decades and a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences design in three countries: Morocco, the Arab Republic of Egypt, and Jordan. The results highlight that no-fault divorce legislation was associated with a modest increase in mothers’ labor outcomes, measured by current employment, a few years after the reform. These findings are likely induced by a power shift and anticipatory effects that drive women into the labor force. However, when a longer time window is considered, 10 or more years after the reform, the study documents a negative effect of the reform on women’s labor outcomes in Morocco, and a positive effect in the Arab Republic of Egypt and Jordan. These differences can be attributed to a set of countervailing effects, including social norms, labor market dynamics, and evolution of the legislation, that make the derived utility from marriage, in some cases, more attractive than that derived from employment, and vice versa. These findings partially confirm results from previous research on the relationship between no-fault divorce and women’s agency and empowerment in the Middle East and North Africa region, but, at the same time, contrast with prominent perspectives on legislation that aims at reducing gender-based discrimination. Instead, they show that there might be undesired effects of legislation and provide a policy relevant discussion on that basis.

Date: 2024-01-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/09965220 ... ed3139e211ed42d7.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:wbk:wbrwps:10661

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().