Differential Labor Force Participation of Women in Latin American and Middle Eastern Countries: The Influence of Family Characteristics

Abstract

The relative importance of marital and fertility characteristics upon female employment rates is tested in an attempt to explain the significant differential in women's nonagricultural participation rates between Latin American and Middle Eastern countries. Despite the striking differences in characteristics between the two populations with respect to variables centrally related to woman's employability, there is not enough evidence of the influence of these differences upon female employment rates. When the female population in Chile is subjected through standardization analysis to the same marital and fertility characteristics of Egypt, they continued to manifest high overall participation rates. Estimation of the womanpower potential in three Middle Eastern countries given their present marital characteristics shows that if women in these societies had the same propensity to be employed as women in Latin America, the overall nonagricultural female activity rate would increase threefold in Morocco, fivefold in Egypt and sevenfold in Pakistan. It is suggested that the explanation for the regional differential has to be sought in a comparative study of family and kinship organization between Latin American and Middle Eastern societies with special reference to the role of the kinship unit in the system of social control.

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