How Do Women Decide to Work in Pakistan? [with Comments]

This paper attempts to identify household-related factors leading to women's participation in economic activities and relates such participation to their economic empowerment. A Probit and a Multinomial Logit model, respectively, is estimated to look at women's participation in economic activities and to evaluate the determinants of decision-making regarding own employment, using the Pakistan Integrated Household Survey 1998-99. The results are indicative of the observed bi-modal distribution of women's participation in the labour force. At the upper end, educated women are more likely to be involved in economic activity, whereas at the lower end the chances of a woman to be involved in economic activity increase if she lives in rural areas, if the head of the household is illiterate or employed as an unpaid family helper. We find that women who are older, better educated, head the household, or come from smaller, better-off urban families are more empowered to take employment decisions on their own. The results reinforce the importance of educating women to improve their economic participation rates and their economic empowerment.