The Dynamics of Family Formation and Women’s Work: What Facilitates and Hinders Female Employment in the Middle East and North Africa?

Irene Selwaness, Caroline Krafft

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Despite increases in educational attainment, women’s employment rates remain very low in the Middle East and North Africa. Difficulties reconciling work and family formation have been identified as an important but under-researched factor in low female employment rates. This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between family formation and women’s employment. The paper studies Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, leveraging unique retrospective data on work, marriage, childbearing, and child rearing. The data allow us to estimate discrete time hazard models for the duration of different labor market statuses. This paper examines three sets of outcomes: (1) duration in employment, (2) duration in non-employment, and (3) duration in different labor market states and specific types of work. We explore the different roles of getting married, being married, expecting children, having children, or having young children as constraints to employment. Findings show that anticipating marriage and getting married are strongly associated with women’s employment outcomes. Non-employment is an absorbing state, particularly after marriage.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)533-587
Number of pages55
JournalPopulation Research and Policy Review
Volume40
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Nature B.V.

Keywords

  • Duration analysis
  • Marriage
  • Middle East and North Africa
  • Women’s employment

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