Conference Agenda

This paper analyses the process of structural transformation within the manufacturing and focuses on the evolution of gender sectoral shares in employment shifts and value-added gains in subindustries of the manufacturing sector. In this paper we aim at providing new evidence on how structural transformation draws on compositional shifts within the manufacturing, and what these shifts imply for gender equality in manufacturing employment.

Manufacturing plays a pivotal role in economic development and compositional shifts of structural change. However, little is known about which sectors within the manufacturing are more relevant for sustainable economic development. At the same time, our understanding of the gendered implications of structural transformation is limited. We draw on the works of Seguino and Braunstein (2019), Tejani and Kucera (2021), Dinkelman and Ngai (2022), and Arora, Braunstein and Seguino (2022), to further accrue scientific knowledge on how gender is related to macroeconomic structure in general, and specifically, how sectoral productivity gains are related to female and male employment shifts within manufacturing.

This paper brings together the literatures on gender-aware macroeconomics and structural transformation to advance our knowledge of gendered shares of employment and the evolution of value added from a sectoral perspective. We provide gender decomposition analyses that allow for simultaneously identify the gender distribution of sectors, and employment shifts and value-added gains from within or between productivity changes. To do so, we construct a database with information on value added and employment shares of 23 2 digit-level ISIC rev3 industries in 80 countries during 1980 to 2022 collected from UNIDO. We exploit the data on female shares of employment to trace the evolution of female manufacturing employment within and across industries. Specifically, this paper draws on the methods of structural transformation McMillan, Sepulveda and Rodrik (2017), measurements and indices of industrial productivity (Tregenna, 2016), and complements the work of Braunstein and Arora (2022) by focusing on manufacturing and expanding the country coverage to developed and developing countries. Ultimately, this paper aims at providing policy recommendations as well as provide a gender-aware analysis of structural transformation within the manufacturing sector.

Background

International trade has emerged as one of the important channels of economic growth in developing countries in recent decades. Nonetheless, the distributional impact of trade is widely conflicted and an ever-evolving subject. In this context, whether trade explains gender inequality is a pertinent question that has garnered interest among academics and policy makers.

The trade and gender linkage remain comparatively unexplored in the Indian context. The literature though indicates an association between trade openness and gender gap, none of the work to the best of our best knowledge has explored capital intensity as the channel of impact. The aim of this paper is twofold, one, we study the association between export orientation of manufacturing firms in India and gender gap in employment and wages. Second, we investigate capital intensity in exporting firms as the potential channel of impact. We establish linkages through which trade induced technological changes lead to changes in the gender inequality at establishment level.

Methodology

We use repeated cross-section data from Annual Survey of Industries, 2010-2019. We use the following regression model:

Y_it= β_0+β_1 〖ExpShare〗_it+β_2 〖K_intensity〗_it+β_3 〖ExpShare*K_intensity〗_it+θ_t+γ_n+δ_s+X_it+Y_st+ε_it

Y_it is the vector of dependent variables, female employment share and wage gap in plant i at time t. ExpShare is share of final product directly exported and K_intensity is capital intensity of plant. θ_t , γ_n and δ_s refers to year, sector, and state fixed effects, respectively. X_it and Y_st includes control variables at plant and state level. ε is error term.

Capital Intensity is instrumented using electricity consumption per worker to address potential endogeneity.

Results

We find positive (significant) impact of export share on female employment share and negative (significant) impact on wage gap at the establishment level. A unit rise in capital intensity is found to reduce female employment share and widening of the wage gap. The interaction between exports and capital intensity is negative (significant) for female employment share and positive (significant) for wage gap. This suggests that capital intensive production process hurts female workers in manufacturing firms in India and larger negative effect is observed in capital-intensive exporting firms potentially due to skill gaps in female workers.

Conclusion

Results suggest that policies in favour of export-oriented industries would help bridge gender gaps in the India manufacturing sector. However, investment in skill enhancement and related programmes for females is important to improve women economic participation and trade induced gains in the economy.

Infrastructure development in cities is the bedrock for achieving inclusive growth as it provides direct access to education, work, and other services. However, inadequate mobility infrastructure is often considered a serious problem that exacerbates inequalities by reducing the opportunities for women to realise their full potential. Pakistan ranks among the worst performers globally regarding gender equality as the country joins the bottom bracket of nations in the Global Gender Gap Report (2022). The country slipped from 112th (2006) to 145th (2022) rank in economic participation and opportunities. A crucial factor that can ensure equal participation in the labour force is the access to opportunities that come with ease in mobility. The three things to consider while addressing women mobility constraints include affordability, accessibility, and safety. Public transport provides an affordable option for women to commute. However, research shows that in Pakistan, women deal with various challenges concerning safety, harassment and worries about their social reputation while travelling by public transport. On the contrary, private transportation services provide accessibility and safety, but are not affordable. Using a synthetic control method, the study provides a quantitative assessment of the provision of public and private transportation services on female labor force participation in Lahore, Pakistan. To assess the impact of public transport services, the study uses a large public infrastructure project, ie, the ‘Lahore metro’, which started its operation in 2013. The digital platform-based transportation service ‘Uber and Careem’ (started in 2016) are chosen as the private service providers. Furthermore, using a thematic analysis, the study identifies the challenges faced by women in accessing and using public and private transportation services that directly affect their participation in the labor force and how provision of metro and ride-hailing has helped to overcome those challenges. The results affirm that the provision of public and private transportation services is associated with ease in mobility, hence increased participation of the female labor force in Lahore, Pakistan. Among the main themes, accessibility to different modes of transportation turns out to be the most important factor affecting the inclusion of women in the labor market and is directly linked to their spatial position. However, qualitative analysis also points to the need for gender-sensitive transport planning in Pakistan. Therefore, to solve the urban mobility challenge of women commuters, coordination is necessary between public and private sector service providers to increase the range and features of mobility choices for female commuters.