The parallel sessions « Labor and Human Development » at the ERF 17th Annual Conference focused on the role of women in the labor market .
In her paper, Fatma El-Hamidi addressed the question “How do women entrepreneurs perform? Empirical Evidence from Egypt”.
Despite the growing number of women entrepreneurs, their share is still disproportionally low when compared to their participation rate. This lethargic growth in such a promising sector has spurred renewed interest in research concerning the gender dynamics of MSEs formation and development. This study is a contribution to the debate surrounding the success or disappointment of female entrepreneurs. Its purpose is to explain how women owned MSEs differ from men owned MSEs in terms of human and financial capital, and to what extent do these differences/similarities affect the performance of the MSE.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsmuLulLDPg]
In the same session, Meltem Dayıoğlu and Murat G. Kırdar presented a paper focusing on “A Cohort Analysis of Women’s Labor Market Participation in Turkey” . This research aims to understand the aggregate labor supply behavior of women over time in Turkey. Among the OECD countries Turkey has the lowest female labor force participation rate currently at 26.7 percent and the largest gender participation gap of almost 50 percentage points. Despite significant gains in education and falling fertility rate, the labor market participation rate of women has continued to decline. The paper addresses the following question: “Is it really the case that despite falling fertility rates and increasing educational attainment, women in Turkey are participating less in the labor market?” The paper makes the point that in countries going through fast compositional changes, cohort analysis might produce more reliable results. Download the paper “A Cohort Analysis of Women’s Labor Market Participation in Turkey” from the ERF website.