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Globalisation and Female Economic Participation in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Abstract

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. EPW is measured with 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. 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 with some emphasis on how to elevate women’s social status and potentially reduce their victimisation to male dominance.

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Fig. 1

Source and note Computed from the sample. There is a common bandwidth of 0.8 for the four graphs

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Notes

  1. The term vulnerable is employed because of the concerns that may limit access to mainstream economic systems by specific factions of the population, which include: traditions, customs and other issues of structural nature.

  2. The two indicators (female labour force participation and female unemployment rate) measure different aspects of EPW. The first measure considers the participation rate of women in the labour force, while the second measure considers the unemployment rate. The pairwise correlation between these two variables shows about 40 percent percentage association.

  3. The 47 countries include: “Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo Democratic Republic, Congo Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe”.

  4. Instead, the Hadi technique suggests that KOF indexes are collineared. Hence, we estimated the regression by including each of the indexes one at a time.

  5. See Tseloni et al. [71] for further discussion on the negative relationship between democracy and women economic participation.

  6. Since this variable consistently remained non-significant across the estimations in Tables 4.1 and 4.2.

  7. In terms of trade, foreign direct investment, portfolio investment and income payments to foreign nationals.

  8. Such as telephone traffic, transfers, international tourism, foreign population and international letters per capita.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of South Africa (UNISA), P. O. Box 392, 0003, Pretoria, South Africa

    Simplice A. Asongu

  2. Department of Economics and Development Studies, Centre for Economic Policy and Development Research (CEPDeR), Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria

    Uchenna R. Efobi & Evans S. Osabuohien

  3. Department of Analysis and Economic Policies, Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development – Cameroon, Yaoundé, Cameroon

    Belmondo V. Tanankem

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  1. Simplice A. Asongu
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SAA participated in the writing of the manuscript and data analysis. URF participated in the writing of the manuscript and data analysis. BVT participated in the writing of the manuscript and data analysis. ESO participated in the revision of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 7 and 8.

Table 7 List of sampled countries
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Table 8 Pairwise correlation
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Asongu, S.A., Efobi, U.R., Tanankem, B.V. et al. Globalisation and Female Economic Participation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Gend. Issues 37, 61–89 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-019-09233-3

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