Education and female labour market participation in Uganda

Abstract

Female labour force participation in Uganda is an issue that has picked considerable attention as the country aims to achieve the MDG on gender equity and women empowerment. Though female labour force participation has been on a rise, there seems to be a persistent gender gap in paid employment. This paper employed a probit model using data from two nationally representative household surveys for Uganda covering a period of sustained economic growth (2002-2006). The objective is to identify the major factors predicting female participation in paid employment,• with emphasis on the role of education during this period. The probit regression results indicated that among factors that predict female participation in paid work, education is a prime factor with a statistically significant positive influence on the probability of females being in paid employment in Uganda. Education is positively related to female participation in paid work, and as the education level increases, the chances of a woman in Uganda being in paid work increases. Furthermore, the role of education in accessing paid jobs seems to have been stronger in 2005/06 than in 2002/03. The results also indicate that the age of a woman is another influential factor on participation in paid work. Participation increases with age, peaks and then starts to decline with age. Other factors were found to reduce the probability of a woman being in paid employment, although not significant. The study findings offer strong support for human capital theory which predicts that education and experience (proxied by age) are key factors driving labour market outcomes.