Determinants of Female Labour Force Participation in Nigeria: The Rural/Urban Dichotomy

Cultural and traditional beliefs that determine husband’s willingness to permit their spouse work are predominant in rural areas and this motivated the study to investigate the determinants of labour force separately in urban and rural sectors of Nigeria. The study employed the logistic regression on a house hold survey data of employment and discovered that the determinants of female labour participation were not the same in urban and rural areas. The results suggested that marital status, religion, poverty rate and per capita income were significant determinants in the rural sector, while age and literacy rate were the significant determinants in the urban sector. Since the determinants in the urban and rural regions were completely different, the study recommends that, discriminate policies be encouraged when designing measures to improve female labour participation. Key words: Female, Labour, Participation, Logistic regression, Rural, Urban, Nigeri