Gender Disparities in Africa's Labor Market (Africa Development Forum)

Gender inequality in the labor market remains a pressing problem of contemporary Africa. Notwithstanding the existence of large variations across countries with regard to male and female labor market outcomes, available evidence shows that in several countries of the region women are less likely to be in paid work, they are disproportionately concentrated in informal and precarious employment, and they are paid substantially less. Assessing and comparing the extent and the nature of women disadvantages in Africa's labor markets remains a challenge, however. In-depth comparative analyses are lacking, largely because reliable and comparable comprehensive data have been for a long time hardly available.

The objective of this study, a collaboration between the World Bank and the Agence française de développement (AFD), is to contribute to fill-in an important knowledge gap regarding the extent and the nature of gender disparities in Africa’s labor markets. The study is novel in providing a comparative analysis based on standardized nationally representative survey-data for several Sub-Saharan Africa countries and one North Africa country: The countries are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. It also offers a more in-depth gender analysis by using a comprehensive set of labor market indicators disaggregated by location, age groups and consumption quintiles, and several sophisticated micro and macro techniques.