Oil and gender relations : a closer look at the labor market -

Abstract

This paper aims at examining the effect of oil wealth on the ratio of female to male labor force participation rate as a measure of gender disparity in the labor market. There has been an ample amount of literature that investigates the resource curse in economic and political contexts. This study, following a few recent ones like that of Ross (2008), extends the literature to a social spectrum and investigates the relation between oil wealth and gender issues, specifically in the labor market. Using a country fixed-effects panel approach on a sample of 176 countries over the period 1990-2017, the results show that oil revenues have a negative effect on the outcome of interest. In particular, a 100 barrels per capita increase in oil production decreases the ratio of female to male labor force participation rate by 6-7percent. This result is highly statistically significant and is robust to alternative specifications and a variety of measures of the variables of interest.