On the Relationship between Globalisation and the Economic Participation of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study assesses the relationship between globalisation and the economic participation of women (EPW) in 47 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1990-2013. Two indicators are used to measure EPW, namely, the: female labour force participation and employment rates. The empirical evidence is based on Panel-corrected Standard Errors and Fixed Effects regressions. The findings show that the positive effect of the overall globalisation index on EPW is dampened by its political component and driven by its economic and social components, with a higher positive magnitude from the former or economic globalisation. For the most part, the findings are robust to the control for several structural and institutional characteristics: varying conditioning information sets, changes in the growth of urban population, government consumption, legal systems, resource wealth, health, technological advancement, political strife and conflicts, income levels and levels of industrialisation. An extended analysis by unbundling globalisation shows that the positive incidence of social globalisation is driven by information flow (compared to personal contact and cultural proximity) while the positive effect of economic globalisation is driven by actual flows (relative to restrictions). Policy implications are discussed.