Publication: Globalization and the Gender Earnings Gap: Evidence from Sri Lanka and Cambodia
Date
2016-12
ISSN
Published
2016-12
Author(s)
Abstract
Disasters in Bangladesh and protests
elsewhere have created an intense debate about the value,
particularly to women, of apparel employment in developing
countries. This paper focuses on how the forces of
globalization, specifically the Multi-Fibre Arrangement
(MFA), have affected women's wages in the apparel
sector in developing countries. The paper uses household and
labor force surveys from Cambodia and Sri Lanka to estimate
both apparel wage premiums relative to other industries and
the male-female wage gap before and after the end of the
MFA. The approach builds on new models that apply
traditional trade theory (e.g., the Heckscher-Ohlin and
Stolper-Samuelson theorems) to analyze the effect of
globalization on gender-based earnings. The authors find
large positive wage premiums and a closing of the
male-female wage gap during the MFA period, but smaller
premiums and a widening wage gap after the end of the MFA.
The results suggest that the benefits of apparel exports for
women in developing countries remain significant post-MFA.
They also model an approach for studying the effects of
globalization that differentiates males and females as
separate factors. This may be a fruitful alternative to
discrimination models or those that analyze the effects of
globalization on women in terms of skill. Further research
is necessary to identify the potential development effects
of post-MFA apparel employment and to thoroughly compare the
benefits documented in this paper with the costs that may
come with apparel jobs.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Savchenko, Yevgeniya; Lopez Acevedo, Gladys; Robertson, Raymond. 2016. Globalization and the Gender Earnings Gap: Evidence from Sri Lanka and Cambodia. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7930. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25833 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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