On Women Participation and Empowerment in InternationalTrade: Impact on Trade Margins in the MENA Region

This paper investigates the contribution of female labor participation as well female ownership/management to trade margins using firm-level data for 18 manufacturing and services sectors in 8 MENA countries for 2013. This topic is innovative, and critical for the MENA region where female participation in the export sector is shy, at a time the region is looking for new sources of competitiveness to boost its exports. Our results show that first, female labor participation has a positive a significant impact on both the probability of export and export volume, with the effect on the probability of the firm to export being lower for small firms relatively to large firms. Female labor participation matters in traditional sectors where the MENA region has a comparative advantage. Second, while female ownership or management is not significant in its impact on trade margins, it seems to be positively correlated with the probability of large firms to export. Furthermore, this positive effect is mainly driven by female ownership and not management, highlighting the importance of female empowerment in international trade. Third, there is no statistical evidence that femaleowned/managed firms face more financial constraints to export than their male counterparts. The effect of other regulatory barriers on exports, such as having a website for the company, is more pronounced for female-owned/managed firm, with respect to a men-owned/managed firm.