A Quantitative Analysis of Female Employment in Senegal

Abstract

Female-to-male employment in Senegal increased by 14 percentage points between 2006 and 2011. During the same period years of education of the working age population increased 27 percent for females and 13 percent for males, reducing gender gaps in education. In this paper, we quantitatively investigate the impact of this increase in education on female employment in Senegal. To that end, we build an overlapping generations model that captures barriers that women face over their life-cycle. Our main findings are: (i) the improvement in years of education can explain up to 44 percent of the observed increased in female-to-male employment ratio and (ii) the rest can be explained by a decline in the discrimination against women in the labor market.

Promoting Inclusive Growth in the Middle East and North Africa

“…7 We calibrate the model to match key variables of Egypt's economy in 2018, both 7 This framework has been applied to previous IMF country work concerning Argentina (IMF 2017), Iran (IMF 2018), Nigeria (IMF 2019a), Lao P.D.R. (IMF 2019b), and Senegal (Malta, Martinez, and Tavares 2019).…”

“…Households pay taxes on the goods and services because of the availability of microdata for Egypt but also because this country scores about the MENA region's average in many of our indexes, suggesting it may be considered a good proxy for the "average" MENA economy in terms of labor market gender gaps. 8 A full and technical description of the model can be found in Malta, Martinez, and Tavares (2019), but here we briefly describe its main features. In each life period, households (comprised of a man and a woman) make decisions about the consumption of goods and services produced in formal and informal sectors, while decisions on labor supply are made separately by men and women.…”

Gender Inequality in the WAEMU

“…Consistently, several theoretical studies and other empirical frameworks estimate large macroeconomic gains from closing gender-based gaps in the WAEMU. Malta et al (2019b) calibrate a micro-founded general equilibrium model to Senegal and estimate that GDP in Senegal can increase up to 10 percent, if gender-based disparities in education and labor market are addressed. Ouedraogo and Gomes (2023) use a similar model for Niger and find that bridging gender-based gaps in education can boost Niger's GDP by around 11 percent.…”

Niger

“…This framework has been applied to previous IMF country work in several EMDEs, including Argentina (IMF, 2017), Iran (IMF, 2018), Nigeria (IMF, 2019a), Lao P.D.R. (IMF, 2019b), Senegal (Malta, Martinez, and Tavares, 2019), and Kenya (IMF, 2021). We calibrate the model to match key variables of Niger's economy in 2018, such as the formal sector's share of GDP, government expenditures as a percentage of GDP, government expenditures on education as a percentage of GDP, the Gini index of household income, and female labor force participation rate, among others.…”