Gender inequality in the labor market remains a pressing problem in contemporary
Africa. Although there are large variations across countries in
male and female labor market outcomes, evidence shows that, in several
countries of the region, women are less likely to be in paid jobs, and those that
are employed are disproportionately concentrated in informal and precarious
employment and paid substantially less than men (for example, Appleton, Hoddinott,
and Krishnan 1999; Bigsten and Horton 1997; Brilleau, Roubaud, and
Torelli 2004; ECA 2005; Glick and Roubaud 2004; ILO 2002; Lachaud 1997).
While the lack of decent employment for both men and women is at the
heart of the poverty battle in Africa, the fact that women experience greater
diffi culties in the labor market is an additional concern and a specifi c poverty
challenge. Women’s employment and earnings are essential in the fi ght against
poverty, not only because of the direct contribution they make to household
welfare, but also because such employment provides personal power for women
in making family decisions and redirecting household spending on essential
needs, especially in favor of children’s health and education (UNICEF 1999).
Supporting employment for women is also instrumental in securing initial
investment in girls’ education.
Assessing and comparing women’s disadvantages in African labor markets
remains a challenge, however. In-depth comparative analyses are lacking, largely
because reliable and comparable comprehensive data have been scant and have
the following limitations. First, when centralized databases do exist, they typically
break down only a few basic labor market indicators by gender, whichyields incomplete information on the relative situations of men and women
and does not allow comparison between indicators. A further problem is that
reported labor market indicators by gender are often not comparable across
countries because they refer to different survey instruments with different concepts
and measures of employment and earnings. Second, while ad hoc comparable
survey instruments for several countries in Africa have been developed
from time to time, they usually cover only urban areas or capital cities (Brilleau,
Roubaud, and Torelli 2004; Lachaud 1997). Third, fairly good poverty and labor
market data gathered from multi-topic household surveys that cover urban and
rural areas do exist for a number of African countries, but until recently they
were not easily comparable because of differences in survey instruments.
The objective of this study is to help correct an important knowledge gap
regarding gender disparities in Africa’s labor markets. The study is novel in providing
a comparative analysis based on standardized, nationally representative
survey data for 18 countries. The data were extracted from multi-topic integrated
household surveys conducted in the region around 2000 and recently harmonized
as part of the World Bank Survey-based Harmonized Indicators Program (SHIP).1
The fundamental issue this study addresses is the extent to which women
in Africa are disadvantaged in the labor market, and how this disparity might
vary across countries. The research questions include: Are gender disparities
in the labor market particularly pronounced? What is the nature of women’s
disadvantages? Is greater gender parity in education likely to result in improved
and more equal labor market outcomes?
This chapter is organized as follows. The next section presents the SHIP
dataset and the concepts used to compute key labor market indicators. It also
discusses comparability and measurement issues. An overview of gender disparities
in labor market outcomes is provided in the third section. The fourth
section discusses gender inequalities within employment in the sample countries.
The role of educational attainment and gender inequalities in education
is reviewed in the fi fth section, and a summary section follows.