Socio-Demographic Determinants of Female Labour Force Participation in Ethiopia: Evidence from Gondar City, Amhara Region

Gebreyes, Bisrat Worku. 2019. ‘Socio-Demographic Determinants of Female Labour Force Participation in Ethiopia: Evidence from Gondar City, Amhara Region’. Journal Of Development in Social Sciences and Humanities 8 (8): 165-183

The writer commenced his writing by indicating the general fact that women are half of any country’s population size. However, when it comes to their contribution to a country’s economic growth, they are less active in labour forces and productivity. In Ethiopia, according to the Ethiopian Central Statistical Agency Report, women make up 52% of the total population and only 40.5% of them were employed in the public and private sectors (CSA 2018). The author emphasised that female labour participation is a very crucial thing for the advancement of economic and social aspects. Moreover, it has a great contribution to facilitate equity and women economic empowerment.

The author had used a purposive sampling and limited the age of the study participants to women who are between the age of 15-49, the largest age group in the study area. Accordingly, 390 women were selected to participate in the study. For data analysis, both descriptive and inferential statistics are used. Moreover, as the study aimed at analysis of the socio-demographic determinants of women labour force participation, the logistic regression model was estimated using the enter method of Maximum Likelihood Estimation.

The author found out that Age, Family Size, Education, and Household Head position were found to be strongly associated with women labour market participation, whereas Marital status, Husbands education, and religion shows relatively weak association with women labour market participation. Age has been found to be one of the determining factors for women Labor force participation in the study area. It’s noted that those women aged 25 to 39 were more likely to participate in the labour market when compared with the other age groups. This means that when the age of the women increases the probability of participation in the labour force decreases. Marital status of the women is also found to determine women Labor Force participation in the study areas. Accordingly, non-married women including single, widowed, or divorced women were 83.5% more likely to engage in the labour market than married women. Coming to education, the study found that education had strong results on the employment of women. Accordingly, as educational attainment increases women employability also increases. Regarding household size, the author indicated that as household size increases the likelihood of women participation in the labour force increases. Finally, the study demonstrated that women with the family head position are more likely to engage in the Labor force when compared with the others. Hence, as decision making roles increase, women labour force engagement also increases.

Generally, the author concluded that much is left to be done, to encourage female labour force participation, and the government, stakeholders and policy makers shall contribute their roles. Among other things, education opportunities, support of the informal sector, financial support, and childcare facilities shall be provided to empower women economically.