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International Labour Review, Vol. 153 (2014), No.
Closing the gender gap in education:

What is the state of gaps in labour force
participation for women,
wives and mothers?
Ina GANGULI,* Ricardo HAUSMANN** and Martina VIARENGO***
Abstract. The educational gender gap has closed or reversed in many coun-

tries. But what of gendered labour market inequalities? Using micro-level census
data for some 40 countries, the authors examine the labour force participation
gap between men and women, the “marriage gap” between married and single
women’s participation, and the “motherhood gap” between mothers’ and non-
mothers’ participation. They find significant heterogeneity among countries in
terms of the size of these gaps, the speed at which they are changing, and the
relationships between them and the educational gap. But counterfactual regres-
sion analysis shows that the labour force participation gap remains largely un-
explained by the other gaps.
E liminating differences in education between men and women has been

a priority of development organizations and the international commu-
nity for many years. Pursued by institutions like the United Nations and the
World Bank, the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG) aims to “elim-
inate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by
2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015”.1 Equality of educa-
tional opportunities between men and women has also been acknowledged in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and in the 1979 United
* SITE, Stockholm School of Economics and Harvard University, email: ina.ganguli@

hhs.se. ** Harvard University, email: [email protected]. *** The Graduate Insti-
tute, Geneva, and Harvard University, email: [email protected]. The authors
gratefully acknowledge the support received from the Women and Public Policy Program and the
Women’s Leadership Board at the Harvard Kennedy School, and from the Center for International
Development at Harvard University. They would also like to thank Iris Bohnet, Claudia Goldin,
Marcela Escobari, Victor Lavy and Lant Pritchett for helpful discussions.
Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and
publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.
1
For a list of the Millennium Development Goals, see: http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/
goals/gti.htm [accessed 26 May 2014].
Copyright © The authors 2014

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2014
174 International Labour Review
Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against

Women.2 A key rationale for the above MDG is to contribute to the attain-
ment of other development goals, such as economic growth, world poverty
reduction, the eradication of disease and epidemics, and the improvement of
other well-being indicators. According to the World Bank (2012), “there is no
investment more effective for achieving development goals than educating
girls”.
The differences in education between men and women have now dis-
appeared, or even been “reversed” in women’s favour, in almost all developed
countries and in many developing countries as well, including among cohorts
born over 60 years ago in several countries. The question, then, is whether
these countries have also made progress in eliminating other inequalities fa-
cing women in the labour market, not only in terms of broader gender equal-
ity and women’s empowerment for economic participation, but also between
married women and single women, and between mothers’ and non-mothers’
labour force participation.3 Also, how have developed countries fared relative
to developing countries in this respect?
Based on micro-level census data from some 40 countries, this article
shows how these inequalities or “gaps” have changed over time. First, we
document the closing of the gender gap in education and rank countries by
the year in which this gap closed or reversed. We then turn to analysis of the
gender gap in labour force participation, the “marriage gap” and the “mother-
hood gap”. These gaps still exist in many countries, although there is sig-
nificant heterogeneity in terms of their size and the speed at which they are
changing. Finally, we investigate the relationships between the gaps. While
our cross-country research design does not allow us to identify causality be-
tween the gaps or the impact of economic development on them,4 it does
provide a useful descriptive analysis of how they relate to one another. De-
spite the international community’s significant focus on reducing the gender
gap in education and the remarkable reversal of the gap in so many coun-
tries, this is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study to use micro-level
data for so many countries to study the state of these gaps and how they
have changed over time.
2
Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that: “Everyone has the
right to education … and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit ...
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strength-
ening of respect for human rights.”
3
We acknowledge the importance of other dimensions of women’s empowerment, such as
political participation, earnings and property rights protection. Eliminating gender disparity in these
areas is clearly necessary on grounds of human rights and, according to a large body of literature,
to promote development (Bandiera and Natraj, 2011). In this article, we focus on labour force par-
ticipation, which has often been regarded by international organizations as a first step towards im-
proving women’s living standards, and as a mechanism for increasing income and economic growth.
4
See Bandiera and Natraj (2011) for a summary of existing studies on gender inequality and
development, and their limitations. These authors suggest that most of the existing literature does
not adequately address issues related to reverse causality and omitted variables.
The gender gaps in education and labour force participation 175
Research background and rationale

It has been suggested that educating girls and achieving the MDG on gender
equality in education will lead to a range of improved economic and social
outcomes for developing countries (Schultz, 2002). Evidence from recent em-
pirical work, focusing primarily on developing countries, shows that there are
indeed positive economic consequences and social externalities from improv-
ing women’s education. For example, increases in women’s education have been
associated with reductions in fertility (e.g. Osili and Long, 2008), decreases in
infant mortality and increases in life expectancy (see Dancer, Rammohan and
Smith, 2008; Behrman and Deolalikar, 1988). Overall, it appears that educating
women has beneficial effects on children’s health (see Glewwe, 2000), school-
ing, and adult productivity (Lam and Duryea, 1999; Strauss and Thomas, 1995).
The beneficial effects are greater than those produced by the same level of
education for fathers (see Schultz, 2002). Moreover, studies have shown that
the benefits gained from expanding female education are far greater than the
benefits gained from other public interventions, such as improving family plan-
ning service provision or increasing the number of physicians in the population
(Kingdon, 2002). Empirical evidence also shows that gender equality in edu-
cation leads to higher economic growth (e.g. Abu-Ghaida and Klasen, 2004),
while low investment in women’s education leads to slower economic growth
and reduced income levels (Dollar and Gatti, 1999; Klasen, 1999).
Why would increases in women’s education produce improvement in
other indicators of gender equality and socio-economic development? In an
attempt to answer this question, we now discuss the theoretical reasoning be-
hind the potential effect of narrowing the gender gap in education on women’s
labour force participation generally, on the participation of married versus un-
married women, and on the participation of those with children versus those
without children.
Education and labour force participation

The theory of human capital investment relates differences in earnings to dif-
ferences in schooling, training, and other assets (Mincer, 1974; Becker, 1991).
Specifically, it relates expected lifetime labour force participation to one’s in-
centive to acquire education and training. According to this theory, education
increases the productivity and, thus, the earnings of individuals. And existing
studies have indeed established a strong causal relationship between educa-
tion and income at the individual level.5
Human capital theory explains why women have traditionally had fewer
incentives to invest in education and training given their shorter expected la-
bour force participation (Becker, 1992). Many factors have been put forward
5
At the macro level, however, the cross-country evidence linking education to growth is
inconclusive (Pritchett, 2001 and 2006). The factors that may explain the discrepancy between
macro and micro analyses include measurement error in macro regressions and issues related to
the quality of education.
to explain why this has changed over time and why the gender gap in educa-
tion has closed and even reversed in many countries. In the case of the United
States, for example, the factors include the technological change that led to the
use of mechanical power rather than human energy in workplaces (Galor and
Weil, 2000), the rapid expansion of the service sector (Becker, 1992), the allevi-
ation of household chores through the use of piped water, electricity and appli-
ances (Killingsworth and Heckman, 1986; Greenwood, Seshadri and Yorukoglu,
2005; Goldin, 2006), greater ability to control pregnancies through access to birth
control technology, and lower “effort costs” of college preparation and attend-
ance for girls than for boys (Goldin, Katz and Kuziemko, 2006). The increase
in divorce rates and the decline in family size have also been suggested as cor-
relates and possible determinants of the reversal of the gender gap in education.
Higher educational attainment has allowed women to increase their ex-
pected lifetime labour force participation, shifting their time horizon. Accord-
ingly, their expected benefits from an increased investment in education have
led them to plan careers instead of “having jobs” and being the “secondary
worker” within the household (Goldin, 2006). Indeed, research shows that re-
turns to women’s education are in many countries either equal to or higher
than those accruing to men. Consequently, the opportunity cost of staying at
home increases with women’s level of educational attainment. It is important
to acknowledge the fact that cultural, social and political factors may also affect
women’s labour force participation, beyond. economic forces. Specifically, social
barriers (idem, 1990), cultural factors (e.g. Ilkkaracan, 2012; Beblo and Ortlieb,
2012), particular views on the role of women in society (e.g. Folbre, 1994) and
within the household (Badgett and Folbre, 1999), or formal restrictions (e.g.
Boserup, 1970) may limit women’s labour supply, even in situations where la-
bour market outcomes and returns to education are expected to be high.
Marriage and labour force participation

Married women’s labour force participation has been the subject of much de-
bate in the literature. Mincer’s (1962) model was the first that tried to explain
the apparent puzzle of the increase in married women’s labour force participa-
tion in spite of steady increases in men’s real earnings in the United States. Ac-
cording to this pioneering work, household income and wages have two effects
on female employment status. On the one hand, the income effect suggests that
wages are negatively related to labour supply: as wages increase and income
goes up individuals may decide to spend less time working in the labour market
and devote more time to leisure. On the other hand, the substitution effect sug-
gests that as wages increase, the opportunity cost of not working also increases,
thereby prompting individuals to increase their labour supply. Mincer found the
positive substitution effect of general wage increases on women’s employment to
be greater than the negative income effect through the husband’s wage, with the
difference being large enough for increases in women’s wages to explain much
of the increase in married women’s labour force participation.
Goldin (1990) shows how changes in income and wage elasticities can
affect women’s labour force participation, while Blau and Kahn (2007) exam-
ine trends in married women’s own-wage and cross-wage elasticities. They find
that in the United States from 1980 to 2000, married women’s own-wage elas-
ticity fell by about half and that their responsiveness to their husbands’ wages
declined by about 40 per cent. Heim (2007) also examines married women’s
labour supply elasticities in the United States, over the period 1979–2002, find-
ing that their wage and income elasticities for both participation and hours
decreased dramatically in absolute terms over the period.
Juhn and Murphy (1997) examine women’s employment and earnings
at different points of their husbands’ wage distribution from 1959 to 1989 and
find an increasingly weak relationship between women’s labour force partici-
pation and their husbands’ earnings. They also confirm a positive relationship
between women’s wages and labour force participation, casting doubts on the
idea that married women’s labour force participation increased to compensate
for slow growth in their husbands’ earnings. In addition to economic factors,
Fernandez (2007) shows how changes in culture and social norms, as part of
a rational intergenerational learning process, may have contributed to the in-
crease in married women’s labour force participation.
Motherhood and labour force participation

In the neoclassical model of the family, women tended to specialize in do-
mestic production, including child rearing and traditional household activities,
whereas men were the primary earners and specialized in formal production
through labour market activities (Mincer, 1962; Becker, 1981 and 1991). More-
over, even among women in the labour force, the early years of child rearing
were associated with a decrease in working experience and wages. However,
the neoclassical model was found to be inadequate in explaining the rise in
married women’s employment, so subsequent models focused on other deter-
minants of mothers’ labour force participation (e.g. Bowen and Finegan, 1969;
Smith and Ward, 1985).
First, the expansion of education appears to be related to a decline in fer-
tility rates (Caldwell, 1982; Galor and Weil, 1996 and 1999) and postponement of
motherhood (see Strauss and Thomas, 1995, for a review of the literature). Ac-
cording to Caldwell (1982), education influences fertility by increasing the cost of
children and the perceived importance of investing in children’s human capital,
leading women’s optimal fertility choices toward “higher quality” (Becker and
Lewis, 1973; Willis, 1973). Becker, Murphy and Tamura (1990) show how higher
levels of human capital lead to an increase in the returns on human capital, as
well as fewer children. Galor and Weil (1996) relate increases in women’s wages
to the decline in fertility, which, in their theoretical framework, is a consequence
of the increase in the cost of children more than the increase in household in-
come. Several recent contributions to the literature have tried to establish a
causal relationship between education and fertility, addressing issues of reverse
causality and possible omitted variables (e.g. Breierova and Duflo, 2004;
McCrary and Royer, 2011; Duflo, Dupas and Kremer, 2010).
Second, advances in household production technology have reduced the
time required for domestic production. In addition, advances in medical technol-
ogy have reduced the time budget associated with childbirth and parenting, while
effective birth control allows women to determine the size and timing of their
families and to respond rationally to market signals (Barker and Feiner, 2004).
Third, the shift of economic activity towards the service sector, the con-
sequent introduction of scheduled part-time employment, which is more “fe-
male friendly”, and the increase in returns to education have led to growth
in the labour force participation of married women and mothers (Goldin,
2006; Goldin, Katz and Kuziemko, 2006). This too has increased educated
women’s opportunity cost of staying out of the labour force (Attanasio, Low
and Sánchez-Marcos, 2009).
Expected relationship between education and labour force

participation gaps
Based on the literature reviewed above, we would expect an increase in
women’s educational attainment to be associated with increased labour force
participation – both among women generally and among wives and mothers6 –
and with lower fertility rates and smaller wage gaps between men and women.
In other words, empowering women with more education should increase their
economic participation and give them greater access to economic resources,
leading to improvements in many other spheres. Following previous empir-
ical analyses (mainly country-specific studies or studies focusing on a limited
number of countries), we expect to observe a U-shaped relationship between
women’s participation and development, as documented by Goldin (1994) and
Mammen and Paxson (2000). When women have low levels of education, they
are employed in low-skilled, often manual activities for which a social stigma
exists, but when they are educated, they find employment in more socially
acceptable labour market activities.
There has so far been no large cross-country analysis of the reversal of
the educational gender gap and the inequalities attaching to women’s labour
force participation. Accordingly, the remainder of this article provides evidence
on the dynamics of these gaps, relating them to factors such as levels of GDP,
urbanization and labour market rigidity.
6
We acknowledge that there may be social norms which prevent women from working
outside the household, in which case an investment in women’s education could not increase their
labour force participation. Moreover, gender inequalities can be multidimensional. For example,
Sundaram and Vanneman (2008) find that in Indian districts featuring a higher share of women in
employment, girls’ literacy lags further behind boys’. Their suggested explanation is that in this con-
text, where more mothers work outside the household, more girls have to work to help the family. It
would also be important to examine women’s participation by sector with a focus on employment
status categories. Due to data limitations, we are unable to do this here (for an interesting analysis
on India, however, see Huisman and Smits, 2009).
Data
The primary source we used to construct our data set is the International
Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, IPUMS-International (Minnesota
Population Center, 2009). This is the largest publicly available compilation
of individual-level census data, consisting of decennial records of individuals
and households. Our analysis is thus based on micro-level data for a selection
of 40 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, as available, draw-
ing upon the two most recent waves of the census for each country.7 In most
cases, the interval between the two waves of the census is ten years. Appendix
table A1 lists the countries in our analytical samples and the census years for
each country. Our analysis focuses on the cohort of women and men aged
35–44 in order to concentrate on individuals who have finished their studies
and made their decisions on marriage, fertility and labour market participation.
Using the census data for each country, we measure several gender gaps,
namely:
• the education gap, defined as the difference in average years of education
between men and women;
• the labour force participation gap, defined as the share of men who are in
the labour force minus the share of women who are in the labour force –
i.e. employed or unemployed and job-seeking – or, where expressly noted
for the purposes of our analysis, as the ratio of those shares;8
• the marriage gap, defined as the difference in employment rates between
women who are married (or living in cohabitation) and single women
or, where expressly noted for the purposes of our analysis, as the ratio of
those rates;
• the motherhood gap, defined as the difference in employment rates be-
tween women without children and women with three or more children.9
7
We acknowledge that our sample is biased towards developing countries. However, we
were unable to add more developed countries by relying on other data sources because aggregate
statistics consistent with the variables and demographic groups we use are not available.
8
We use the employment status variable (EMPSTAT) from the IPUMS data set. Although
the variable has been harmonized to make work status comparable across countries and over time,
some differences remain in regard to terms of classification and reference group. A detailed descrip-
tion for each country and census wave is available at: https://international.ipums.org/international-
action/variables/EMPSTAT#comparability_tab [accessed 26 May 2014].
9
We also calculate an alternative measure of the motherhood gap defined as the differ-
ence in employment between women with children and women without children. Other studies
have examined the “family gap” by looking at the difference in earnings between women with
children and women without children, but all of them have focused on developed countries,
where the average number of children is lower (e.g. Sigle-Rushton and Waldfogel, 2007; Ander-
son, Binder and Krause, 2002; Waldfogel, 1998; Harkness and Waldfogel, 1999). Our measure
based on three or more children is intended to reflect the higher number of children born to
mothers in developing countries, which make up the majority of our sample, so that we have a
more comparable share of women in each group. However, robustness checks showed that the
basic results do not change depending on which definition of the motherhood gap we use in
terms of the number of children.
We supplement the measures constructed from the IPUMS census data

with country-level variables from the World Development Indicators, includ-
ing measures of GDP per capita and urbanization rates. We also include meas-
ures of labour market rigidity extracted from the World Bank’s (2011a) Doing
Business data set.
The education gap

Figure 1 shows the year of birth of the first cohort for which the education gap
was closed according to the most recent available wave of the census. In most
countries, this wave was administered in the early 2000s (see Appendix table A1).
Of the 40 countries in our sample, 27 have closed the gap, while men still aver-
aged more years of schooling than women in the remaining 13 countries at
the time of the census. The first country where the gap was closed is Belarus,
for the cohort born in 1945, and the last two are South Africa and Romania,
for the cohort born in 1975. In the United States, the gap was closed for the
cohort born in 1956. Interestingly, ten developing countries closed the gender
gap in education earlier than the United States.10 In countries where the gap
was closed in the 1950s, two generations have already experienced gender
equality in years of schooling, while in those countries where the gap was
closed in the 1970s, only one generation has experienced such equality.
Most developed countries and some developing countries have not only
closed the gender gap in education, but also significantly reversed it in favour
of women (see Hausmann, Ganguli and Viarengo, 2009). Except for Austria, all
of the countries where the gap remains in men’s favour are developing coun-
tries. As table 1 shows, however, the gap at age 25 is still very wide in 11 of the
13 countries that have yet to close it, ranging from 0.6 to 2.1 years of school-
ing, but much smaller in Austria and Mexico, at 0.1 years. The gap has closed
in Viet Nam, and it has reversed significantly in Mongolia, Portugal, the Boliv-
arian Republic of Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and Greece, where 25-year-old
women have between 0.8 and 1.2 more years of schooling than men. In Latin
America, the gap has been reversed in most countries (eight out of ten). Only
Mexico and Bolivia exhibit a persistent gap disfavouring women, still signifi-
cant in the case of Bolivia.
Figure 2 relates women’s average years of education to the current size
of the gender gap in years of education. Interestingly, several of the coun-
tries where the gap has reversed are not among those where women have the
highest average levels of education (e.g. Argentina and Brazil). In Rwanda
and Guinea, where women have the lowest average levels of education, the
gender gap is between 1.2 and 2.3 years of schooling. In countries where the
10
Admittedly, the United States has had a more complicated history in this regard: be-
tween 1900 and 1930, women had roughly the same level of education as men (Goldin, Katz and
Kuziemko, 2006), then the gap widened and subsequently closed again for the cohorts born in the
1950s. None of the other countries in our sample displays such a reversal over time.
Figure 1. Year of birth of the first cohort to close the gender gap in education
Belarus (BY) 1945
Argentina (AR) 1946
Panama (PA) 1949
Colombia (CO) 1949
Philippines (PH) 1953
France (FR) 1953
Brazil (BR) 1953
Mongolia (MN) 1954
Kyrgyzstan (KG) 1955
Armenia (AM) 1955
Venezuela (VE) 1955
United States (US) 1956
Portugal (PT) 1956
Israel (IL) 1958
Costa Rica (CR) 1960
Canada (CA) 1961
Hungary (HU) 1963
Greece (GR) 1964
Spain (ES) 1967
Slovenia (SI) 1970
Chile (CL) 1972
Malaysia (MY) 1973
Viet Nam (VN) 1974
Jordan (JO) 1974
Ecuador (EC) 1974
Romania (RO) 1975
South Africa (ZA) 1975
Ghana (GH)
Uganda (UG)
Cambodia (KH)
India (IN)
Guinea (GN)
Bolivia (BO)
Iraq (IQ)
China (CN)
Occupied Palestinian Territory (PS)
Kenya (KE)
Rwanda (RW)
Austria (AT)
Mexico (MX)
1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980
Notes: The gender gap in education is calculated as men’s average years of education minus women’s average
years of education for individuals born in a given year. The year of birth of the first cohort to have closed the
education gap in the most recent available wave of the census is indicated for each country. For countries where
no year is indicated, the gender gap in education was not yet closed at the time of the latest census for which
data are available.
Source: Authors’ calculations based on IPUMS-International data.
Table 1. The reversal of the gender gap in education

Country Birth year of cohort in which Gap in years of schooling
gap reversed or closed at age 25
Belarus 1945 −0.4

Argentina 1946 −0.8
Colombia 1949 −0.7
Panama 1949 −0.6
Brazil 1953 −0.8
France 1953 −0.7
Philippines 1953 −0.6
Mongolia 1954 −1.2
Venezuela, Bolivarian Rep. of 1955 −0.9
Armenia 1955 −0.5
Kyrgyzstan 1955 −0.1
Portugal 1956 −1.0
United States 1956 0.0
Israel 1958 −0.1
Costa Rica 1960 −0.4
Canada 1961 −0.5
Hungary 1963 −0.3
Greece 1964 −0.8
Spain 1967 −0.7
Slovenia 1970 −0.6
Chile 1972 −0.1
Malaysia 1973 −0.2
Ecuador 1974 −0.3
Jordan 1974 −0.2
Viet Nam 1974 0.0
South Africa 1975 −0.4
Romania 1975 −0.1
Mexico 0.1
Austria 0.1
Rwanda 0.6
Kenya 0.6
Occupied Palestinian Territory 0.8
China 0.8
Iraq 1.1
Bolivia, Plurinational State of 1.2
Guinea 1.3
India 1.5
Cambodia 1.6
Uganda 1.6
Ghana 2.1
Figure 2. Women’s average years of education and the educational gender gap,
most recent census wave
14
Women’s average years of education
CA US
12
HU AT
MN GR
PA IL RO
10
AR FR ES CL
CO US PH ZA
8 CR
PT EC MX
BR MY VE CN BO
6
IN
KE
4
UG
RW
2
GN
0
–0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Gender gap in education
Notes: The gender gap in education is calculated as described in figure 1, and averaged for individuals
aged 35–44. The country coding is given in figure 1.
Figure 3. Change in the educational gender gap between the last two census waves
0.2
Initially narrow and widening Initially wide and widening
Gender gap change between
the last two census waves
UK IN
0
PH CL
PA AT
–0.2
AR CA ZA UG
FR GR MX
–0.4
BR CR HU CN
CO ES VE BO
–0.6 US EC
IL
PT MY
–0.8
RO
Initially narrow and narrowing Initially wide and narrowing
–1.0
–0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Gender gap in education (penultimate census)
Notes: The education gap is calculated as the difference in average years of schooling between men and women
aged 35–44. Two outliers, Guinea and Mongolia, have been excluded. The last two census years for each country
are given in Appendix table A1. The country coding is given in figure 1.
gender gap is around two years or more (i.e. Uganda, Kenya, Bolivia and
India), women average 4–6 years of education. In some countries, like Bo-
livia and Mexico, where the gender gap has reversed in urban areas, it per-
sists among the indigenous population and in rural areas (Duryea et al., 2007).
Turning to the dynamics underlying these patterns, figure 3 plots the gen-
der gap in average years of schooling for the age group 35–44 in the penulti-
mate wave of the census against the change in the gap reflected in the most
recent wave of the census. The gap is narrowing in the majority of countries.
One exception is India, where the initially wide gap does not appear to be nar-
rowing.11 Elsewhere, the reduction in the gender gap over the course of the
decade-long interval between the two waves of the census ranges from close
to zero to −0.8 years. Only Mongolia experienced a narrowing of the gap by
more than a year; we therefore excluded it from figure 3.
The labour force participation gap

The labour force participation gap is defined as the difference between the
proportion of men and the proportion of women in the labour force. When
interpreting our results, it should be remembered that this measure is based
on the harmonized employment status variable of the IPUMS, which may not
accurately take account of the household work, self-employment and informal
activities that women are more likely to engage in than men, particularly in
developing countries. The resulting bias may thus be more significant for devel-
oping countries, and there may be heterogeneity across countries that we can-
not quantify. However, this should only affect the static analysis of the labour
force participation gap (i.e. for a given wave), but not the dynamic analysis
(changes across census waves), since the definition of the employment status
variable does not change across waves.
Figure 4 shows the gender gap in labour force participation in the most
recent wave of the census. Rwanda is the only country where women’s labour
force participation is higher than men’s, though it is important to note that
this cohort lived through the country’s 1994 genocide, which has likely af-
fected gender roles in the household and women’s labour force participation.
Other African States (e.g. Ghana, Kenya and South Africa) have female labour
force participation rates as high as those observed in our sample of developed
countries. Belarus exhibits equal labour force participation between men and
women; and other former or current communist countries also exhibit high
female labour force participation rates, with participation gaps below 20 per
cent in Cambodia, Romania, Mongolia, Hungary, China and Viet Nam. Latin
American countries have wider participation gaps, ranging from 29 per cent
in Argentina to 53 per cent in Costa Rica. The Arab countries – Jordan, Iraq
and Occupied Palestinian Territory – exhibit very large gaps, above 60 per
cent. Among the developed countries, southern European countries (Greece,
Spain and Portugal) have comparatively lower levels of women’s labour force
participation relative to men’s.
Figure 5 shows the change in the labour force participation gap between
the penultimate and latest waves of the census, plotting the initial gap (hori-
zontal axis) against the change in the gap (vertical axis). The change has been
inconsistent across those countries which had wide initial gaps in labour force
11
India’s most recent census, conducted in 2011, could present a shift in this pattern as the
gap appears to have narrowed in aggregate terms.
Figure 4. Labour force participation gap

Rwanda (RW)
Belarus (BY)
Ghana (GH)
Hungary (HU)
Mongolia (MN)
Kyrgyzstan (KG)
China (CN)
Armenia (AM)
Canada (CA)
United States (US)
Viet Nam (VN)
Kenya (KE)
South Africa (ZA)
France (FR)
Cambodia (KH)
Austria (AT)
Portugal (PT)
Israel (IL)
Romania (RO)
Uganda (UG)
Guinea (GN)
Argentina (AR)
Spain (ES)
Brazil (BR)
Bolivia (BO)
Greece (GR)
Venezuela (VE)
Colombia (CO)
Panama (PA)
Chile (CL)
Philippines (PH)
Ecuador (EC)
Mexico (MX)
Malaysia (MY)
India (IN)
Costa Rica (CR)
Jordan (JO)
Iraq (IQ)
–20 0 20 40 60 80 100
Notes: The labour force participation gap is calculated as the share of men in the labour force (employed or
unemployed and job seeking) minus the share of women in the labour force for the age group 35–44.
Figure 5. Change in the gender labour force participation gap between

10
Initially narrow and widening Initially wide and widening
VN
ZA
LFP gap change between
US RO MX
0
HU KE UG
CN PA MY
UK IN
CA CL
RW FR CR
–10 BO CO EC
AT PT AR VE
GR IL
–20
BR ES
Initially narrow and narrowing Initially wide and narrowing

–30
–10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Gender gap in LFP (penultimate census)
Notes: The labour force participation (LFP) gap is calculated as described in figure 4. The last two census years
for each country are given in Appendix table A1. The country coding is given in figure 1.
participation in the 1990s. In Brazil and Spain, the gap narrowed by more than
20 percentage points, displaying the greatest reductions observed across the
countries in the sample. Among the other countries with initial participation
gaps in excess of 30 per cent, Argentina, Venezuela, Israel and Greece experi-
enced reductions in the gap between 10 and 20 percentage points, whereas
Panama, Malaysia, India, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia witnessed
more limited reductions, below 10 percentage points. Mexico, by contrast, ex-
perienced a widening of its labour force participation gap. Rwanda, which had
already closed its participation gap in the early 1990s, saw further reversal
of the gap in favour of women. In Viet Nam, Romania, South Africa and the
United States, the gap is widening, while it narrowed by less than 10 percent-
age points in the remaining countries.
Figure 6 suggests a U-shaped relationship between per capita GDP and
female labour force participation: women’s labour force participation rates
are indeed high (above 70 per cent) in countries like Rwanda, Guinea, Ghana
and Cambodia, whose annual GDP per capita is below US$1,500, but also in
countries like Austria, France, the United States and Canada, whose GDP per
capita exceeds US$22,000. Meanwhile, most middle-income countries exhibit
female labour force participation rates below 60 per cent. The level of GDP
per capita at which women’s participation is at its lowest is approximately
US$2,800.12 Iraq’s GDP per capita was close to US$2,747 in this period and
its female labour force participation was the lowest among the countries in
our sample, close to 14 per cent.
12
This observation is supported by the regression analysis results reported in Appendix
table A2.
Figure 6. Women’s labour force participation and GDP per capita (PPP)
100
CN BY
RW
90 GH KE
VN KG AT
KH AM FR
80 MN HU PT CA US
GN RO
ZA
70
IL
Women’s LFP rate
UG ES BR AR
60
GR
BO PA VE
50
CL
IN EC CO MX
PH MY
40
CR
30
JO
20
IQ
10
0
6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10 10.5 11
ln (GDP per capita)
Notes: The labour force participation rate (LFP) is calculated for women aged 35–44. The country coding is given
in figure 1.
Sources: Authors’ calculations based on IPUMS-International data. GDP data are from the World Development
Indicators.
Similarly, if we plot GDP per capita against the labour force partici-
pation gap, as shown in figure 7, we observe that the gap is smaller at lower
and higher levels of GDP per capita. Appendix table A2, however, provides
evidence that the relationship between female labour force participation and
GDP per capita is weaker after controlling for urbanization. These results
are consistent with earlier empirical studies which find that during the early
stages of economic development women’s labour force participation declines
as a result of the structural change (e.g. Sinha, 1967; Goldin, 1990 and 1994).
Specifically, the shift from an agriculture-based economy to expansion of the
modern sector leads to a decline in female participation in market-oriented
activities.13 Nevertheless, low-income countries with high female labour force
participation rates (e.g. Ghana, Guinea, Rwanda and Uganda) still exhibit a
gender gap in education (figure 1), while developed countries with equally
high female labour force participation rates have reversed the gender gap in
education and have a greater share of women employed in high-skilled urban
occupations (Canada, France and the United States).
We formalize this analysis by means of regressions that explore the rela-
tionship between GDP and the labour force participation gap. We also examine
13
In this case, labour force participation does not include home-based production of non-
marketed services.
Figure 7. The labour force participation gap and GDP per capita (PPP)
100
80
LFP gap (men–women)
IQ
JO
60
IN CR MY
PH CO MX
EC CL
40 PA
BO VE GR
GN UG KH ES BR AR
KE AT
20 RO IL
CN VN ZA CA
KG AM PT FR
GH HU US
0 MN
RW BY
–20
6 7 8 9 10 11
ln (GDP per capita)
Notes: The labour force participation (LFP) gap is calculated as the difference between the percentages of men
and women aged 35–44 who are in the labour force. The country coding is given in figure 1.
Sources: Authors’ calculations based on IPUMS-International data. GDP data are from the World Development
Indicators.
the relationship between the labour force participation gap and the share of
the population living in urban areas, and a measure of labour market rigidity.
In table 2, column 1 shows that the log of GDP per capita and the log of GDP
per capita squared are significantly related to the gender gap in labour force
participation, confirming the relationship suggested by figure 7.14 Column 2
shows the regression results predicting the change in the gap from the previ-
ous census. As shown by the descriptive analysis above, the size of the gap in
the penultimate census is negatively related to subsequent change in the gap,
so that countries with a wider initial gap experience a narrowing of their gen-
der gap, indicating convergence. Change in the labour force participation gap
and the log of GDP per capita are positively related, suggesting a U-shaped
relationship between these two measures. Surprisingly, the regressions also
show that the gender gap in participation is narrowing more rapidly in coun-
tries with more rigid labour markets, suggesting that labour market policies
may have an impact on the speed at which this gap is changing – albeit not in
the direction that might have been expected.15
Finally, the gender gap in education is decreasing more rapidly in coun-
tries where a greater share of the population lives in urban areas (figure 8).
This appears to be related to the fact that after an initial decline in female la-
bour force participation, as economies develop further and become urbanized,
women’s education and the opportunity cost of staying out of the labour force
increase. Also, fertility rates decline, as do social barriers to market-based work,
The inclusion of urban-squared in the regression does not change the results.
14
The mean of the Employment Rigidity Index is 37.9 and the standard deviation is 16.9.
15
An increase in the Employment Rigidity Index of one standard deviation would lead to a reduc-
tion in the gap by 0.027 per cent, so the effect is relatively small.
Table 2. Gender gap regressions

(1) (2) (3) (4)
LFP gap Change in LFP gap Marriage gap Motherhood gap
Log GDP 1.146** 0.801*** −0.700 −0.228

(0.537) (0.261) (0.710) (0.554)
Log GDP-squared −0.0685** −0.0442*** 0.0434 0.00805
(0.0305) (0.0149) (0.0412) (0.0323)
Rigidity −0.000105 −0.00158** −0.00153 0.000740
of Employment Index (0.00185) (0.000705) (0.00243) (0.00191)
Share urban 0.287 −0.232** −0.422 −0.0521
(0.217) (0.0922) (0.260) (0.216)
LFP gap, −0.223**
penultimate census (0.0794)
Women’s LFP 0.919*** 0.212
(0.0974) (0.165)
Constant −4.613** −3.365*** 3.907 1.113
(2.260) (1.088) (2.948) (2.329)
Notes: Regressions are based on the gender gap measures described in the data section. Standard errors are
given in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. The Rigidity of Employment Index measures the reg-
ulation of employment, specifically the hiring and firing of workers and the rigidity of working hours. It is the aver-
age of three indexes: a difficulty of hiring index, a rigidity of hours index, and a difficulty of firing index. The results
do not change when including “Share of urban-squared”.
Sources: Authors’ calculations from IPUMS-International data. GDP per capita and level of urbanization are from
the World Development Indicators. The Rigidity of Employment Index (0=less rigid, 100=more rigid) is from the
World Bank’s “Doing Business” data set.
Figure 8. The labour force participation gap and the rate of urbanization
100
80
LFP gap (men–women)
IQ
JO
60 EC
IN CR MX
PH MY PA CO CL VE
40
GR BO
GN ES BR AR
UG RO PT
20 IL
KH KG CN GH ZA AT FR
MN US
KE VN AM HU CA
0
RW BY
–20
0 20 40 60 80 100
Urbanization rate
Notes: The labour force participation (LFP) gap is calculated as the difference between the percentages of men
and women aged 35–44 who are in the labour force. The country coding is given in figure 1.
Sources: Authors’ calculations based on IPUMS-International data. The percentages of the population living in
urban areas are from the World Development Indicators.
so women’s labour market participation increases (Goldin, 1990 and 1994;

Mammen and Paxson, 2000). Importantly, even though this pattern is widely
acknowledged in the literature, existing empirical cross-sectional studies are
mainly descriptive and cannot identify the causal effect of development and
Figure 9. The marriage gap and the female employment rate

1.2
MN GH SI CN
UK
HU CA
RO RW
1 GN KE
AM ZA KG BY
IL FR US VN
UG PT AT KH
GR NL
Marriage gap (ratio)
0.8
AR IT
EG ES BR
IN BO
EC VE
0.6
CL CO PA
PH
MY
IQ JO CR MX
0.4
PS
0.2
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Female employment rate
Note: The marriage gap is calculated as the ratio of married to single women’s employment rates for the age
group 35–44. The country coding is given in figure 1.
urbanization on women’s labour force participation. Besides, countries may

follow different development patterns and, accordingly, different trajectories
in women’s labour force participation.
The marriage gap

We now examine the gap in employment rates between married women and
single women – the “marriage gap”.16 By plotting the marriage gap against the
female employment rate, figure 9 shows that in countries where women’s over-
all employment rate is low (below 20 per cent), the ratio of married to single
women’s employment rates is low. In other words, where a smaller proportion
of women work, fewer married women work relative to single women. This
pattern is clearly reflected in the Arab countries, where the marriage gap is
the widest (Occupied Palestinian Territory, Iraq and Jordan). But as the female
employment rate rises, the employment differential between married and sin-
gle women decreases.
There are several countries where female employment rates are high
(above 60 per cent) and married women work more than single women (Mon-
golia, Ghana, China, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Rwanda, Belarus,
Canada, and Romania). Interestingly, these countries include both developed
16
This is based on the IPUMS marital status variable, MARST, for which we use “married/
in union”. Our definition of “marriage” thus also includes cohabitation.
Figure 10. Change in the marriage gap over time

25
Initially wide and narrowing Initially narrow and narrowing
AR
Marriage gap change between
20
BR
ES
15 GR
IL
10
AT FR ZA
CL EC
5 PT
VE IN BO RO
PA UG CA UK MN
CR CO CN
0
KE RW
MY GN
MX VN
–5
US
Initially wide and widening Initially narrow and widening
–10
–40 –35 –30 –25 –20 –15 –10 –5 0 5
Marriage gap (penultimate census)
Note: The marriage gap is the difference in employment rates between single and married women aged 35–44.
The change in the marriage gap is the percentage change in the marriage gap between the last two censuses,
for women aged 35–44. The country coding is given in figure 1.
and developing countries, and communist and former communist countries

alike. The results of our regression analysis confirm the relationship between
the marriage gap and overall female labour force participation (see table 2,
column 3). The results also show that other variables which might play a role
in the marriage gap – GDP, urbanization and labour market rigidity – do not
significantly explain the size of the marriage gap across countries.
Figure 10 presents the dynamics of the marriage gap by plotting the
initial marriage gap (from the penultimate wave of the census) on the hori-
zontal axis and the change in the gap a decade later on the vertical axis.
Here, the marriage gap is calculated as the difference in employment rates
between single and married women aged 35–44. Countries that started with
a small marriage gap witnessed small changes in the gap. But the picture is
less clear for countries that had a large initial gap. Some – e.g. Argentina,
Brazil and Spain – experienced significant narrowing of the gap. Others, like
Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, India, Colombia and Panama, saw small reduc-
tions in the gap. Meanwhile, the marriage gap widened in Costa Rica, Ma-
laysia and Mexico.
The motherhood gap

We now turn to the gap in employment between women with three or more
children and women without children. Earlier studies that have examined the
motherhood gap or “family gap” by looking at earnings differentials have
been motivated by the fact that, in many countries, women tend to bear pri-
mary responsibility for childcare and unpaid household work (Elson, 1999; for
examples of such studies, see note 9 above). Empirical evidence has been
mainly limited to developed countries, where findings indicate that there is
a persistent family gap, though its size varies across countries (Harkness and
Waldfogel, 1999). Women with children are also less likely to work outside of
their home; and those who do so, work fewer hours.
Figure 11 ranks countries according to the size and sign of their mother-
hood gap. In most of the countries in our sample, women with children tend
to work less than women without children (hence the negative values of the
Figure 11. The motherhood gap (most recent census wave)

Chile (CL)
Costa Rica (CR)
Argentina (AR)
Austria (AT)
Mexico (MX)
Hungary (HU)
Colombia (CO)
Ecuador (EC)
Greece (GR)
Panama (PA)
Venezuela (VE)
Brazil (BR)
Philippines (PH)
Romania (RO)
Armenia (AM)
Bolivia (BO)
Slovenia (SI)
Cambodia (KH)
Kyrgyzstan (KG)
Guinea (GN)
South Africa (ZA)
Iraq (IQ)
Israel (IL)
China (CN)
Belarus (BY)
Uganda (UG)
Viet Nam (VN)
Ghana (GH)
Kenya (KE)
Rwanda (RW)
–30 –25 –20 –15 –10 –5 0 5 10 15
Motherhood gap
Notes: The motherhood gap is the difference between the employment rate of women with three children and the
employment rate of those with no children, for women aged 35–44.
Figure 12. Change in the motherhood gap over time

15
Motherhood gap change between
Initially wide and narrowing Initially narrow and narrowing

BR BO
10
AT GR
KE
5 RW
CL VE UG
CO IL
0 PA
AR ZA
EC VN
CR CN
–5
RO
–10
HU
Initially wide and widening Initially narrow and widening
–15
–35 –25 –15 –5 5 15
Motherhood gap (penultimate census)
Notes: The motherhood gap is the difference between the employment rate of women with three children and the
employment rate of those with no children, for women aged 35–44. The country coding is given in figure 1.
motherhood gap).17 The gap is widest in Chile, followed by Costa Rica and Ar-
gentina. However, there are several countries with a positive motherhood gap,
meaning that women with children work more than women without children.
In Rwanda, the positive gap is almost 10 per cent. Interestingly, Iraq and Oc-
cupied Palestinian Territory, which have the lowest female employment rates,
have positive motherhood gaps. Table 2, column 4, shows the regression re-
sults for the motherhood gap: there is no significant relationship between the
motherhood gap and GDP, urbanization, labour market rigidity, or women’s
overall labour force participation.
Lastly, figure 12 shows the changes in the motherhood gap across the
two census waves. Countries with a larger initial gap saw large changes in the
gap (e.g. Austria, Brazil and Greece) while countries with a positive mother-
hood gap in the penultimate census, like China, Viet Nam and South Africa,
witnessed very small changes.
Relationships between the gaps

This section examines the relationships between the gaps we have discussed
thus far, namely, the gender gaps in education and labour force participation,
and the marriage and motherhood gaps. Figure 13 plots the gender gap in
17
Appendix figure A1 shows the motherhood gap based on an alternative definition – the
difference in employment rates between women with any children and women without children.
As noted earlier, we chose our three-child threshold because most of the countries in our sample
are developing countries where the average number of children is higher. Also, since the costs of
having children increase with the number of children in the household, women with three or more
children are a useful group to examine comparatively. Figure A1 shows that a few countries move
in the ranking depending on which definition is used, but the original and alternative definitions
of the motherhood gap produce very similar results for most countries and, on average, the differ-
ence between the measures is zero.
Figure 13. The gender gaps in education and labour force participation
120
RW
110
100
MN HU CN
CA
90
LFP gap (women/men)
US VN KE
PT ZA AT
FR
80
IL RO GN
UG
70
BR ES
AR GR BO
60
VE PA
CO CL
50
PH EC MX MY IN
CR
40
30
20
–0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Gender gap in education
Notes: The gender education gap is the difference between men’s and women’s years of schooling for those aged
35–44. The labour force participation (LFP) gap is calculated as the proportion of women in the labour force
divided by the proportion of men in the labour force for individuals aged 35–44 (expressed as a percentage). The
country coding is given in figure 1.
education on the horizontal axis and the gender gap in labour force partici-
pation on the vertical axis. There is no clear relationship between these gaps:
although the educational gender gap has reversed in many countries, the la-
bour force participation gap remains. For example, Argentina, Brazil, Colom-
bia, the Philippines, Panama and Venezuela have all reversed their educational
gender gap, but all of them still have labour force participation gaps between
40 and 70 per cent. Meanwhile, countries like China, Viet Nam and Kenya
have large education gaps, but small labour force participation gaps. Rwanda,
where women work more than men, has not reversed its gender gap in edu-
cation. The country-level regression results reported in column 1 of table 3
confirm that that, after controlling for other factors, the education gap is not
significantly related to the labour force participation gap.
As discussed earlier, these patterns may be explained by greater labour
force participation among low-skilled women in these countries. As mentioned
above, existing studies suggest that women’s labour supply follows a U-shaped
pattern during economic development (Sinha, 1967; Schultz, 1988; Goldin, 1990
and 1994; Mammen and Paxson, 2000). At very low levels of income, women
tend to have low-skilled jobs and long working hours; they are typically the
secondary earners in the household; and their work often plays the role of an
insurance. There is some disutility and social stigma attached to labour force
Table 3. Regressions showing the relationships between gaps

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
LFP gap Change Marriage Marriage Motherhood Motherhood Motherhood
in LFP gap gap gap gap gap gap
Log GDP 1.535*** 0.386 −0.215 −0.0154 −0.198 −0.00976 −0.0421

(0.532) (0.399) (0.268) (0.371) (0.540) (0.501) (0.495)
Log GDP- −0.0894*** −0.0202 0.0125 0.00239 0.00617 −0.00310 −0.00175
squared (0.0303) (0.0222) (0.0156) (0.0214) (0.0314) (0.0288) (0.0285)
Rigidity of −0.000632 −0.000482 0.000852 0.000935 0.00100 0.000307 −0.000126
Employment (0.00174) (0.000814) (0.000929) (0.00128) (0.00187) (0.00172) (0.00172)
Index
Share urban 0.287 −0.336*** 0.00282 0.0205 −0.0309 0.0408 0.00642
(0.246) (0.108) (0.103) (0.168) (0.208) (0.227) (0.220)
Education gap 0.0739 0.0459 0.0539 0.0322
(0.0566) (0.0441) (0.0595) (0.0593)
Change in −0.0173
education gap (0.0622)
LFP gap −0.985*** −0.989*** −0.283 −0.500**
(0.0823) (0.159) (0.166) (0.215)
Marriage gap 0.444**
(0.189)
Constant −6.422*** −1.668 1.955* 0.954 1.187 0.247 −0.0191
(2.238) (1.707) (1.112) (1.576) (2.242) (2.124) (2.149)
Observations 27 22 28 19 28 19 19
R-squared 0.425 0.505 0.907 0.865 0.518 0.751 0.753
Notes: Standard errors are given in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Regressions are based on the meas-
ures described in the data section. The results do not change when including “Share urban-squared”.
Sources: Authors’ calculations from IPUMS-International data. GDP per capita and rates of urbanization are from the World
Development Indicators. The Rigidity of Employment Index (0=less rigid, 100=more rigid) is from the World Bank’s “Doing
Business” data set.
participation that helps to understand why women’s labour force participation

goes down as GDP per capita goes up. At high levels of income per capita,
however, women are educated and more likely to have “careers”. They are also
less likely to be the “second earner” and tend to have more decision power
within the household. In this context, women form their identity first, invest in
their education and only then make decisions related to marriage and fertil-
ity. Descriptive evidence consistent with our results is provided in the World
Bank’s (2011b) World Development Report 2012, which documents women’s
U-shaped labour force participation curve relative to economic development.
Figure 14 plots the relationship between changes in the education and la-
bour force participation gaps. In no country have both gaps increased. In India,
the gender gap in education has not changed while the gender gap in labour
force participation has narrowed by around 4 percentage points.18 In Romania,
Viet Nam, Mexico, South Africa and the United States, by contrast, the gap
18
As mentioned in note 11 above, the latest wave of the Indian Census (2011) could show
a different pattern.
Figure 14. Changes in the education gap and in the labour force participation gap
10
5
RO VN
MX
ZA US
0
KE HU UG
Change in LFP gap
MY PA
CN CA IN
–5
CR
BO FR
EC CL
–10
CO
PT VE AR AT
–15
IL GR
–20
ES BR
–25
–1.2 –1 –0.8 –0.6 –0.4 –0.2 0 0.2
Change in education gap
Notes: The gender education gap is the difference between men’s and women’s years of schooling for those aged
35–44. The labour force participation (LFP) gap is calculated as the male participation rate minus the female
participation rate for individuals aged 35–44. This graph is presented for those countries for which we have
information on both the education and the labour force participation gaps. The country coding is given in figure 1.
in labour force participation is widening, while the gap in education is either

shrinking or unchanged. In the majority of countries, however, both gaps nar-
rowed between the two census waves. The most significant reductions in the
labour force participation gap occurred in Brazil and Spain, while the great-
est decreases in the education gender gap occurred in Kenya, Romania and
Malaysia. There is heterogeneity across the remaining countries. Our regres-
sion analysis shows no significant relationship between change in the labour
force participation gap and change in the education gap (table 3, column 2).
Columns 4 and 6 of table 3 show that the labour force participation
gap is significantly associated with both the motherhood gap and the mar-
riage gap. However, reduction of the educational gender gap has not gener-
ally been associated with narrowing of the marriage and motherhood gaps.
These gaps have responded instead to other factors that have affected the
overall gender gap in labour force participation. Except in Iraq and Occu-
pied Palestinian Territory, there appears to be a positive relationship between
these gaps: the smaller the employment rate differential between married
and single women, the smaller the differential between women with children
and women without (figure 15). We imagine that many of the factors making
marriage more compatible with work also tend to make motherhood more
compatible with work. A better understanding of the interactions between
household and market production and intra-household decision-making
and bargaining power can shed more light on the labour supply decisions
of wives and mothers (Benería and Sen, 1986 and 1982; Folbre, 1986). Column 7
of table 3 confirms the positive relationship between the marriage and
motherhood gaps after controlling for other factors.
Figure 15. The motherhood gap and the marriage gap

1.6
PS
1.4
IQ
Motherhood gap (ratio)
1.2
KE RW
EG UG ZABY
VN CN
KH GN IL GH
1 KG SI
BO
AR
PH BR RO
PA VE
0.8
EC GR AT FR HU
MX CO AR
CR
0.6
CL
0.4
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
Marriage gap (ratio)
Notes: The motherhood gap is the ratio of working women with three children to working women with no children,
for women aged 35–44. The marriage gap is the ratio of married to single women’s employment rates, for women
aged 35–44. The country coding is given in figure 1.
How much of the labour force participation gap

can be accounted for?
Finally, we consider how much of the gender gap in labour force participation
can be explained by size of the education, marriage and motherhood gaps. In
the spirit of an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, we present a descriptive ana-
lysis of what women’s labour force participation would be if the different groups
we are studying all had the same level of education. Following Blinder (1973)
and Oaxaca (1973), this approach has typically been used to study mean out-
come differences between groups (e.g. wage gaps by sex or race). Specifically,
it decomposes a differential between two groups into a part that is “explained”
by group differences in observable characteristics, such as education or work
experience, and a residual part that cannot be accounted for by observable dif-
ferences. In this approach, a counterfactual wage equation is created in which,
say, women are given the characteristics of men. The “unexplained” part is then
often used as a measure of discrimination, though it also includes the effect of
differences between the groups in unobserved characteristics. Most applica-
tions of this decomposition approach can be found in the labour market and
discrimination literature (for meta-studies, see, for example, Stanley and Jar-
rell, 1998; Weichselbaumer and Winter-Ebmer, 2005); and more recent studies
have developed alternative approaches for creating counterfactuals (e.g. For-

tin, Lemieux and Firpo, 2010; Machado and Mata, 2005).
Here, we seek to calculate how much of the labour force participation
gap between men and women is explained by the other gaps we have analysed
thus far (education, marriage and motherhood) and how much of the labour
force participation gap is left unexplained. To do this, we create counterfac-
tual labour force participation gaps by running regressions of women’s labour
force participation as a function of years of education, age, and dummies for
married women and those having three or more children. Accordingly, we run
the following regression for women only (aged 35–44) for each country sep-
arately, using the full individual-level census sample:
FemaleLFPi = + 1educationi + 2 agei + 3 marriedi + 4 childreni + i
Still following the Oaxaca-Blinder approach, we then create counterfac-
tual levels of women’s labour force participation by “predicting” their partici-
pation using the estimated regression coefficients above if (1) if they had men’s
average level of education, all other variables being equal; (2) if they did not
display a “marriage gap”, all other variables being equal (i.e. omitting the co-
efficient on marriage); and (3) if they did not display a “motherhood gap”, all
other variables being equal (i.e. omitting the coefficients on having children).
We then use these counterfactual levels of women’s labour force participation
to create counterfactual labour force participation gaps by calculating the dif-
ference between men’s actual labour force participation and the counterfactual
participation rate for women. Lastly, we subtract the counterfactuals based on
hypothetical scenarios (1), (2) and (3) from the actual labour force participa-
tion gap. This leaves us with the portion of the participation gap that is unex-
plained by the education, marriage and motherhood gaps, showing how much
of the actual gap in labour force participation between men and women is re-
duced in each hypothetical case.
Table 4 reports the results of this analysis. Column 1 gives the actual size
of the labour force participation gap for each country. Column 2 shows how
much women’s labour force participation would change if women had men’s
average level of education for those countries where the gender gap has not
reversed. Assigning male levels of education to women leads to reductions of
the labour force participation gap by several percentage points in some African
and Arab countries including Guinea, Iraq, Kenya, Occupied Palestinian Terri-
tory and Uganda. For other countries, the reduction is modest. India is a unique
case: here, the labour force participation gap increases because of this coun-
try’s negative relationship between education and labour force participation.19
Column 3 of table 4 shows how the labour force participation gap would
change if the marriage gap were eliminated. For many countries, the reduction
is large, particularly in Bolivia, Cambodia, Chile, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia,
Panama, Spain and Venezuela. In China, Ghana, Mongolia and Slovenia, the
19
As previously mentioned, however, this negative relationship may no longer hold in the
light of the results of the 2011 wave of the census.
Table 4. Counterfactual analysis of the labour force participation gap
Country (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
(census wave) Actual LFP Gap w/o Gap w/o Gap w/o Residual
gap education marriage motherhood percentage
gap gap gap of actual gap
Argentina (2001) 29.17 – 19.61 25.95 56

Armenia (2001) 9.88 – 6.94 – 70
Belarus (1999) 0.28 – – –
Bolivia, Plurinational
State of (2001) 34.12 33.61 20.51 – 59
Brazil (2000) 29.96 – 19.04 – 64
Cambodia (1998) 14.23 14.93 5.54 – 44
Canada (2001) 10.85 – 9.62 – 89
Chile (2002) 45.48 45.04 26.36 38.33 41
China (1990) 9.27 8.81 – – 95
Colombia (2005) 30.81 – 25.15 – 82
Costa Rica (2000) 53.38 – 31.34 52.37 57
Ecuador (2001) 51.25 50.26 34.79 – 66
Ghana (2000) 5.74 5.58 – – 97
Greece (2001) 34.5 33.8 23.55 34.28 66
Guinea (1996) 21.37 18.7 16.43 – 64
Hungary (2001) 7.55 7.09 7.17 3.99 42
India (1999) 52.89 – 34.57 – 65
Iraq (1997) 73.21 62.91 65.62 67.55 68
Israel (1995) 16.94 16.8 12.96 – 76
Jordan (2004) 64.87 62.54 41.22 – 60
Kenya (1999) 13.38 11.07 7.31 – 37
Kyrgyzstan (1999) 8.39 – 3.34 – 40
Malaysia (2000) 52.91 51.45 19.8 – 35
Mongolia (2000) 7.89 – – –
Occupied Palestinian
Territory (1997) 84.15 79.11 70.86 74.53 67
Panama (2000) 40.96 – 24.04 39.85 56
Portugal (2001) 15.63 – 12.13 – 78
Romania (2002) 18.02 16.22 17.04 16.17 74
Rwanda (2002) – – – –
Slovenia (2002) 3.44 3.26 – – 95
Spain (2001) 29.38 – 16.73 – 57
Uganda (2002) 20.02 17.25 13.75 – 55
United States (2005) 15.74 – 9.48 – 60
Venezuela, Bolivarian
Rep. of (2001) 38.66 – 21.98 37.75 55
Viet Nam (1999) 13.58 13.82 7.47 – 57
Notes: (1) is the labour force participation gap calculated as the proportion of men in the labour force minus the
proportion of women in the labour force for individuals aged 35–44. For (2)–(4), a counterfactual gap is calculated
based on a regression of women’s labour force participation as a function of years of education, age, dummy
for married and dummies for children (0–6+). Women’s labour force participation is then predicted as if they had
men’s level of education, all other variables being equal, in (2); as if they if they did not display a “marriage gap”, all
other variables being equal (omitted coefficient on marriage), in (3); as if they did not exhibit a “motherhood gap”,
all other variables being equal (omitted coefficients for children 3+), in (4). (5) is the share of the actual gap left
after subtracting (2)–(4) from the actual gap. If a cell is blank, the relevant gap has reversed or is 0, or increases
the LFP gap, as noted in the text. In some cases, a cell is blank because variables are missing, namely: the num-
ber of children ever born for Canada, India, Jordan, Mongolia, Portugal, Spain, Uganda and the United States;
and labour force participation for Mexico.
Source: Authors’ calculations from IPUMS-International data.
labour force participation gap increases in the hypothetical scenario, indicat-

ing that marriage is associated with greater labour force participation among
women in these countries.
Column 4 shows what happens to the labour force participation gap
when we assign to each mother with three or more children the labour force
participation of a woman without children. For many of the countries with
a motherhood gap, the cells are blank because the gap actually increases in
this counterfactual. In Argentina, Chile, Iraq, Occupied Palestinian Territory
and Hungary, the labour force participation gap narrows significantly when
mothers are assigned the labour force participation of non-mothers.
Finally, in column 5, we report the residual, i.e. the share of the actual la-
bour force participation gap that is not explained by the counterfactuals based
on eliminating the education, marriage and motherhood gaps. For most coun-
tries, a large share of the labour force participation gap remains unexplained
after we eliminate these other gaps. For a few countries, notably Cambodia,
Chile, Hungary, Kenya and Malaysia, less than half of the gap is left unexplained
after the other gaps have been eliminated, suggesting that in these countries,
reducing the education, marriage, and motherhood gaps will contribute signifi-
cantly to reducing the overall labour force participation gap. However, in line
with our previous analysis at the country level, other factors besides the educa-
tion, marriage and motherhood gaps appear to explain the largest share of the
overall gender gap in labour force participation for most countries.
Conclusion and discussion

Signed by the leaders of 189 countries, the Millennium Development Goals
have prioritized the beneficial effects of educating girls and achieving gender
equity in education. Our analysis has shown that this goal has now been at-
tained in many countries. All the countries in our sample where the gender
gap in education has not closed are developing countries. Yet, while the edu-
cation gap has thus closed or even reversed in a majority of countries, other
gaps affecting women’s employment remain, particularly the differences be-
tween married and single women, and between mothers and non-mothers.
We have documented significant heterogeneity in terms of the size
of these gaps, the speed at which they are closing, and how they are inter-
related. In contrast to the many country studies that have been carried out on
this topic, primarily on developed countries, we have provided cross-country
comparisons of these gaps in a large number of developing countries. Our
main conclusion is that there is no systematic pattern to how these gaps have
changed over time and that further study is needed to explain the divergent
paths countries have taken. So while the closing of the educational gender gap
would seem to promise further reductions in the gender gap in labour force
participation, it does not appear to be significantly related to the employment
gaps between married and single women, and between women with and with-
out children.
In 22 of the 35 countries in our counterfactual analysis, the gap in labour

force participation between men and women was found to exceed 15 per cent
in the latest census wave we considered. Our counterfactual analysis shows that
closing the gender gap in education would narrow the labour force participa-
tion gap to less than 15 per cent for ten of those 22 countries. Eliminating the
marriage gap would do so for only four of the 22 countries, and eliminating
the motherhood gap would do so for seven of them. Thus, even after “clos-
ing” all of the gaps we examined in our counterfactual analysis, a large share
of the labour force participation gap remains unexplained – over 60 per cent
on average across the countries in our sample. This suggests that other factors
– beyond education, marriage and motherhood – are playing a significant role
in determining the size of the labour force participation gap in most countries.
The differences we observe among these countries in the size of the mar-
riage and motherhood gaps are likely related to how compatible work is with
marriage and children. We show that reductions in these gaps would reduce
the overall gap in labour force participation significantly in several countries,
but this would not be the case in many others.
Much of the development policy aimed at achieving the Millennium De-
velopment Goals on gender equity has focused on reducing gender gaps in
schooling through policies that change the costs or benefits of education (see, for
example, Glick, 2008). In the light of our findings, however, we argue that focus-
ing on education alone is not enough. The focus should be broadened to include
other policies as well, notably initiatives aimed at making work more compat-
ible with marriage and motherhood. In fact, such changes might also encourage
further educational investments by women. Cultural attitudes, the availability of
day care or in-home help, urban transport and other factors may indeed play a
role in whether women with children work, and more analysis of this impact is
needed. However, it is clear that even after eliminating labour force participation
gaps associated with marriage and motherhood, female labour force participa-
tion remains low in many countries for other reasons that require further study.
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Appendix
Table A1. Analytical sample
Sample 1 Sample 2
Latest wave of the census Penultimate and latest waves
of the census
Argentina 2001 1991, 2001

Armenia 2001
Austria 2001 1991, 2001
Belarus 1999
Bolivia, Plurinational State of 2001 1992, 2001
Brazil 2000 1991, 2000
Cambodia 1998
Canada 2001 1991, 2001
Chile 2002 1992, 2002
China 1990 1982, 1990
Colombia 2005 1993, 2005
Costa Rica 2000 1984, 2000
Ecuador 2001 1990, 2001
France 1999 1990, 1999
Ghana 2000
Greece 2001 1991, 2001
Guinea 1996
Hungary 2001 1990, 2001
India 1999 1987, 1999
Iraq 1997
Israel 1995 1972, 1995
Jordan 2004
Kenya 1999 1989, 1999
Kyrgyzstan 1999
Malaysia 2000 1991, 2000
Mexico 2005 1995, 2005
Mongolia 2000
Occupied Palestinian Territory 1997
Panama 2000 1990, 2000
Philippines 2000
Portugal 2001 1991, 2001
Romania 2002 1992, 2002
Rwanda 2002 1991, 2002
Slovenia 2002
South Africa 2007 2001, 2007
Spain 2001 1991, 2001
Uganda 2002 1991, 2002
United Kingdom 2001 1991, 2001
United States 2005 2000, 2005
Venezuela, Bolivarian Rep. of 2001 1990, 2001
Viet Nam 1999 1989, 1999
Table A2. Women’s labour force participation regressions

(1) (2) (3) (4)
Women’s LFP Women’s LFP Women’s LFP Women’s LFP
Log GDP −1.506*** −1.070** −1.096** −1.127*

(0.444) (0.500) (0.526) (0.559)
Log GDP-squared 0.0868*** 0.0647** 0.0661** 0.0680**
(0.0258) (0.0282) (0.0296) (0.0316)
Share urban −0.368* −0.241 −0.247
(0.213) (0.712) (0.723)
Share urban-squared −0.112 −0.106
(0.600) (0.610)
Rigidity of Employment Index 0.000353
(0.00187)
Constant 7.086*** 5.216** 5.301** 5.416**
(1.884) (2.130) (2.208) (2.324)
Observations 38 38 38 38
R-squared 0.251 0.311 0.312 0.313
Notes: Standard errors are given in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
Sources: Authors’ calculations from IPUMS-International data. Regressions are based on the gender gap meas-
ures described in the data section. GDP per capita and level of urbanization are from the World Development
Indicators. The Rigidity of Employment Index (0=less rigid, 100=more rigid) is from the World Bank’s Doing Busi-
ness data set.
Figure A1. Alternative definition of the motherhood gap (latest census wave)
Argentina (AR)
Chile (CL)
Costa Rica (CR)
Mexico (MX)
Panama (PA)
Ecuador (EC)
Venezuela (VE)
Philippines (PH)
Colombia (CO)
Brazil (BR)
Austria (AT)
Greece (GR)
Bolivia (BO)
Armenia (AM)
Iraq (IQ)
Hungary (HU)
Romania (RO)
Israel (IL)
Guinea (GN)
Cambodia (KH)
South Africa (ZA)
Uganda (UG)
Viet Nam (VN)
Slovenia (SI)
Kyrgyzstan (KG)
China (CN)
Belarus (BY)
Ghana (GH)
Kenya (KE)
Rwanda (RW)
–0.25 –0.20 –0.15 –0.10 –0.05 0 0.05 0.10 0.15
Notes: For this definition of the motherhood gap, we calculate the difference between the employment rate of
women with any children and the employment rate of those with no children, for women aged 35–44.
Source: Authors’ calculations from IPUMS-International data.
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International Labour Review, Vol. 153 (2014), No.

Closing the gender gap in education:

Abstract. The educational gender gap has closed or reversed in many coun-

E liminating differences in education between men and women has been

* SITE, Stockholm School of Economics and Harvard University, email: ina.ganguli@

Copyright © The authors 2014

Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against

Research background and rationale

Education and labour force participation

Marriage and labour force participation

Motherhood and labour force participation

Expected relationship between education and labour force

We supplement the measures constructed from the IPUMS census data

The education gap

Table 1. The reversal of the gender gap in education

Belarus 1945 −0.4

The labour force participation gap

Figure 4. Labour force participation gap

Figure 5. Change in the gender labour force participation gap between

Initially narrow and narrowing Initially wide and narrowing

Table 2. Gender gap regressions

Log GDP 1.146** 0.801*** −0.700 −0.228

so women’s labour market participation increases (Goldin, 1990 and 1994;

Figure 9. The marriage gap and the female employment rate

urbanization on women’s labour force participation. Besides, countries may

The marriage gap

Figure 10. Change in the marriage gap over time

and developing countries, and communist and former communist countries

The motherhood gap

Figure 11. The motherhood gap (most recent census wave)

Figure 12. Change in the motherhood gap over time

Initially wide and narrowing Initially narrow and narrowing

Relationships between the gaps

Table 3. Regressions showing the relationships between gaps

Log GDP 1.535*** 0.386 −0.215 −0.0154 −0.198 −0.00976 −0.0421

participation that helps to understand why women’s labour force participation

in labour force participation is widening, while the gap in education is either

Figure 15. The motherhood gap and the marriage gap

How much of the labour force participation gap

have developed alternative approaches for creating counterfactuals (e.g. For-

Argentina (2001) 29.17 – 19.61 25.95 56

labour force participation gap increases in the hypothetical scenario, indicat-

Conclusion and discussion

In 22 of the 35 countries in our counterfactual analysis, the gap in labour

Argentina 2001 1991, 2001

Table A2. Women’s labour force participation regressions

Log GDP −1.506*** −1.070** −1.096** −1.127*

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Log GDP 1.146 0.801* −0.700 −0.228

Log GDP −1.506* −1.070 −1.096** −1.127*