Labor Force Participation Rates by Gender

Rates of Participation

The proportion of women who work varies enormously around the world, but almost without exception, more women enter the paid workforce with each passing year. Several international agencies collect data on labor and women's role in the economy. According to the latest figures by the World Bank, in 2006, across the globe, 58 percent of women age 15 to 64 are engaged in paid work. Rates of participation range from a low of 11 percent in the West Bank/Gaza to a high of 93 percent in Burundi.

There is no simple explanation for the variation among countries, because it has complex sources. Women's choices about work depend on national, local, cultural, religious, and personal factors. However, different areas of the world show varied rates of labor. While in the Middle East and North Africa, about 30 percent of women work, in Latin America, Europe, Central Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, closer to 60 percent of women work. In the United States and East Asia, participation is the highest, around 70 percent. The more proscribed role of women in many communities in the Middle East keeps larger numbers of them in the private sphere of home and family. The region, however, also does not have the severe financial pressures that may push some women into work even when traditionally they have not been expected to. The World Bank data also show that among countries that are heavily in debt, two thirds of women are in the labor force, suggesting that economic necessity may override other characteristics of a country. A complex interplay of cultural and economic factors is evident in these statistics.

Even within these geographic regions, though, there is substantial variation that can be explained only through a detailed analysis of the particular culture and history of each place. Though there is variation, Harvard's Project on Global Working Families notes that over the last 50 years, female labor participation rates have increased significantly in all of these [Page 482]regions. The amount of the increase is smaller in some places than others, but the trend is universal. The trend toward more female participation in the workforce has been so pronounced that social scientists have described the phenomenon as the “feminiza-tion of labor.”

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