Globalization and Female Labor Force Participation in Developing Countries: An Empirical (Re-)Assessment

We investigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade, as two measures of globalization, on female labor force participation rate in a sample of 80 developing countries over the time period 1980–2005. Contrary to the mainstream view in the literature, which is mainly based on country-case studies or simple cross-country variation, we find that both, FDI and trade have a generally negative impact on female labor force participation. While the impact is of negligible economic size, it is stronger for younger cohorts, possibly reflecting a higher return to education in open economies. We further find a large degree of cross-regional heterogeneity and that the effect of globali…