IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbecrv/v30y2016i3p501-521..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bridging the Gender Gap: Identifying What Is Holding Self-employed Women Back in Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Republic of Congo

Author

Listed:
  • Emily Nix
  • Elisa Gamberoni
  • Rachel Heath

Abstract

Quantile decomposition methods are used to study the determinants of the gender gap in self-employment earnings across the earnings distribution of four Sub-Saharan countries: the Republic of Congo, Ghana, Rwanda, and Tanzania. Techniques developed by Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2007) are used to decompose the gap into a compositional effect (the part of the earnings gap that can be explained by observable factors) and a structural effect (the part of the gap that can be explained by returns to those factors, suggestive of discrimination) at various quantiles of the income distribution. While, in all countries and all points of the wage distribution, compositional effects help explain gender gaps in self-employment earnings, the majority of the wage gap is due to structural effects (with the exception of low-income earners in the Republic of Congo). Still, the relative importance of specific compositional factors and the specific contribution of structural factors varies across countries and at different points of the income distribution within countries. There is some evidence of a glass-ceiling effect in the Republic of Congo and Tanzania but not in Ghana and Rwanda. These results suggest that discrimination is influenced by local conditions and that there is no single model of earnings gaps that can explain gender gaps in earning in sub-Saharan Africa.

Suggested Citation

  • Emily Nix & Elisa Gamberoni & Rachel Heath, 2016. "Bridging the Gender Gap: Identifying What Is Holding Self-employed Women Back in Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Republic of Congo," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(3), pages 501-521.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:30:y:2016:i:3:p:501-521.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lhv046
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anna Fabry & Goedele Broeck & Miet Maertens, 2022. "Gender Inequality and Job Satisfaction in Senegal: A Multiple Mediation Model," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(5), pages 2291-2311, June.
    2. Madhurima Basu & Anubha Shekhar Sinha, 2021. "The Glass-Ceiling Phenomenon: A Literature Review and Research AgendaAbstract: In a patriarchal society with values that are mostly male-dominated, it is indeed difficult for a woman to secure a deser," Working papers 425, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode.
    3. Livini Donath & Oliver Morrissey & Trudy Owens, 2021. "Pay period and the distributional effect of education on earnings: Evidence from recentered influence function," Discussion Papers 2021-02, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.
    4. Islam, Asif M. & Amin, Mohammad, 2023. "The gender labor productivity gap across informal firms," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    5. Van Den Broeck, G. & Kilic, T., 2018. "Dynamics of Off-farm Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 276988, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Lang, M & Seither, J, 2022. "The Economics of Women s Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Building Skills in Uganda," Documentos de Trabajo 20563, Universidad del Rosario.
    7. Kehinde F. Ajayi & Nana Akua Anyidoho, 2022. "Self‐employment preferences among university graduates in Ghana: Does gender make a difference?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 40(2), March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D04 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Policy: Formulation; Implementation; Evaluation
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:30:y:2016:i:3:p:501-521.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.