Research

This paper studies the effects of capital account liberalization on female employment and its implications for structural change in developing countries. Using a large industry-level panel of 88 low and middle-income countries, we provide evidence that episodes of financial liberalization lead to large declines in female employment in tradable sectors. These declines are driven almost entirely by structural reallocation effects between sectors and not by changes in the gender composition of employment within sectors. Based on this evidence, we build a stylized model of a small open economy with tradable and nontradable sectors featuring occupational segregation across genders. We use this framework to study the impact of capital inflows and the female wage penalty on the real exchange rate and female employment in tradables. Our model also implies that when the female burden of non-market home production is sufficiently large, capital inflows will disproportionately hurt female employment relative to male employment.

(Journal of Globalization and Development)

This paper examines the dynamic impacts of fiscal consolidation on the ratio of female employment rates to male employment rates using a narrative dataset for 17 OECD countries over the period 1978-2009. Using a local projections method, I show that fiscal consolidation has a disproportionate impact on female employment rates 3-6 years after the policy change. The impact is driven by the effect of spending-based fiscal consolidation on female employment rates. The results are robust to controlling for female labor force participation rates, the sectoral structure of the economy, and female employment shares in different economic activities. I also find evidence of asymmetries between expansions and recessions. Fiscal consolidation affects female employment rates more than male employment rates during recessions; however, I do not find such an effect during expansions. 

The paper constructs a structuralist macroeconomic model that explores channels whereby fiscal and monetary policies impact women’s paid and unpaid work. I discuss two factors related to labor market segregation that can explain differential effects of macroeconomic policies on male and female employment: the labor intensity of female-dominated sectors, and different responses of capacity utilization to aggregate demand shocks in male and female-dominated sectors. In addition, a decline in output resulting from aggregate demand shocks may increase women’s unpaid work burden when households cannot afford to buy substitutes for the output of unpaid care work. This can also create a labor supply constraint for female employment.  

I examine the dynamic effects of inflation-reduction policies on female and male employment rates in 23 OECD-European countries over the period 1998-2018 using quarterly panel data. The findings suggest that an increase in short-term interest rates, as a proxy for the monetary policy rate, leads to a decline in both female and male employment rates but the difference in effects across genders is not statistically significant. I do, however, find evidence of disproportionate effects on female employment rates in specifications controlling for female employment shares by broad areas of activity.