Closing the Gender Gap in Education: What is the State of Gaps in Labor Force Participation for Women, Wives and Mothers?1

  1. Ina Ganguli1,
  2. Ricardo Hausmann2 and
  3. Martina Viarengo3

DOI: 10.1111/j.1564-913X.2013.00007.x


Additional Information

Author Information

  1. 1

    SITE, Stockholm School of Economics, Sveavägen 65, SE-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden and Harvard University

  2. 2

    Harvard University, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

  3. 3

    The Graduate Institute, Geneva Avenue de la Paix 11A, 1202 Geneva and Harvard University

  1. †

    Corresponding author is Martina Viarengo (martina.viarengo@graduateinstitute.ch). We gratefully acknowledge support received from the Women and Public Policy Program and the Women's Leadership Board at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Center for International Development at Harvard University. We would like to thank Iris Bohnet, Claudia Goldin, Marcela Escobari, Victor Lavy and Lant Pritchett for helpful discussions.

Publication History

  1. Accepted manuscript online: 8 APR 2013 09:35AM EST

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Keywords:

  • development;
  • gender gap;
  • education
  • O12;
  • J16;
  • I2

ABSTRACT:

The education gap between men and women has closed, or has even reversed in many countries. Have countries also made progress in closing other gaps facing women? Using micro-level Census data for close to 40 countries, we examine several dimensions of gender disparity: we compare men and women's labor force participation (the labor force participation gap), married and single women's labor force participation (the marriage gap), and mothers' and non-mother's labor force participation (the motherhood gap). We show that there is significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of the size and the speed at which the gaps are changing.

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