Working and Women’s Empowerment in the Egyptian Household: The Type of Work and Location Matter

Clémentine Sadania (1)

1 GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille

This paper explores the impact of women’s work on empowerment in Egypt. Existing evidence suffers from several limitations, which I attempt to address. First, I develop an instrumental variable strategy to account for the endogeneity of work. Second, I allow for a heterogeneous impact of work, distinguishing between working in the public sector, outside work in the private sector and home-based work. Third, women’s empowerment is directly measured as their participation in household decisions. Outside work has the greatest impact. Interestingly, home-based work enhances joint decision-making. Distinguishing between urban and rural residence reveals distinct patterns of impact on decision-making.

Mots clés: women’s empowerment; employment; household decision-making

Domaines: Economies et finances

Clémentine Sadania. Working and Women’s Empowerment in the Egyptian Household: The Type of Work and Location Matter. 2016. ⟨halshs-01525220⟩