Feminization, Defeminization, and Structural Change in Manufacturing

The paper uses accounting decomposition methods to analyze changes in female shares of manufacturing employment for 36 countries at different levels of development from 1981 to 2008, for the manufacturing sector as a whole and within a group of labor-intensive manufacturing industries for selected countries. For the majority of countries, feminizing and defeminizing, labor-intensive industries contributed most to changes in female shares of total manufacturing employment and within-industry effects were more important than employment reallocation effects. Within labor-intensive industries, textiles, and apparel were the largest drivers of changes in female shares of employment and technological upgrading was associated with defeminization.