Gender Effects of Trade Openness in Sub-Saharan Africa

Evelyn F. Wamboye, Stephanie Seguino

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

38 Scopus citations

Abstract

ABSTRACT: More than thirty years into the modern era of globalization, scholars are now in a position to evaluate the distributive effects of the policy shifts that have led to greater economic integration. One region of the world for which little robust empirical evidence exists on gendered employment effects is Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To identify whether there is an impact of economic and trade structure on women's relative access to work, this contribution empirically explores these issues for thirty-eight SSA countries, and for two subgroups. Panel data for the period 1991–2010 is examined using fixed effects, random effects and two-stage least-squares estimation techniques. Findings suggest that trade liberalization has gendered employment effects, with the direction depending on the structure of the economy. However, the more robust finding is that a country's infrastructure has played a determining role in gendered labor market outcomes in SSA since the early 1990s.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)82-113
Number of pages32
JournalFeminist Economics
Volume21
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 3 2015

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Gender Studies
  • General Business, Management and Accounting
  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
  • Economics and Econometrics

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