Economic crisis and women’s employment rate in a Sub-Saharan African country

Focusing on urban Kenya, this paper attempts to identify the sources of the temporal increase in women’s employment rate between 1986 and 1998. The paper relies on labour survey data, household responses to coping strategies and case studies. The analysis presented in the paper shows that the bulk of the increase in women’s insertion into the labour market comes from an increase in the work participation of married women. While women’s higher educational endowments, particularly the increase in secondary education, account for an improvement in their employment prospects, the period also witnesses a sharp decline in the importance given to education in determining employment and by 1998, university graduates were just as likely to be employed as individuals with no education. The period between 1986 and 1998 witnessed civil service reforms, restructuring of the private sector, firm closures and increasing job insecurity. Notwithstanding the role of education, declining opportunities for males, who in 1986 were the primary breadwinners and the accompanying income and employment insecurities within households seem to be the key factors prompting the sharp increase in the labour supply of (married) women. The analysis presented in this paper focused mainly on the period 1986 and 1998 and while more recent data would have provided an updated picture of the issues discussed in this paper, there is little evidence to suggest that the situation of women in Kenya’s labour market has changed substantially in recent years

Determinants of urban job attainment in Kenya across time

Kenya has experienced a sharp decline in formal sector employment and a corresponding increase in informal sector employment. This paper examines the role played by various factors in influencing the sorting of individuals into different sectors of employment in urban Kenya. It examines whether factors influencing the location of individuals in different sectors change over time and differ across gender and thus contributes to an understanding of gender differences in job attainment. The paper complements the issues addressed in two other studies by the author on the remarkable rise in female Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) and on the gender gap in the incidence of unemployment. As may be expected, in both periods, experience and education are highly valued in the formal sector. Over time, the importance of education in securing labour market access increases by about 5 and 16 percentage points for primary and secondary education levels respectively. However, there are sharp gender differences. For men, the importance of education increases while for women it declines suggesting the presence of labour market segregation. Over time, the negative effect of marital status on female formal sector participation declines reflecting the increasing insertion of married women in the labour market. Underscoring the use of the informal sector as a last resort option, I find that declines in husbands’ real earnings are associated with a sharp increase in women’s participation in the informal sector. The increasing participation of women in the vulnerable informal sector is consistent with the feminist version of the structuralist characterisation of the informal sector