Work Participation of Currently Married Women in Pakistan: Influence of Socio-Economic and Demographic Factors

The study of trends and structure of female labour force participation in -developing countries has attracted considerable attention over the past few years. Several international comparisons based on religious as well as socio-cultural and demographic differentials have been made. See, for example, Youssef [23, 24 and 25], Denti [6] and Boserup [4]. The primary focus of most of such studies consists of analysing female labour force participation rates and structure by controlling for one or two background factors like age or family structure. Fong's study [9] of West Malaysian women seems to be one of the few studies that have concentrated on analysing in a detailed and exhaustive manner the social and economic correlates of female work participation. Among the studies relating to labour force participation of Pakistani women, historical trends (Farooq [7]), structural set up (Farooq [8] and Bean |1 and 2]), and socio-cultural factors (Papanek [15], Pastner [16] and Saeed "[17]) have been analysed. Attempts have also been made at studying the cor¬relates of labour force participation, both for males and females [26 and 8].1 These studies have been referred to in the following sections wherever felt relevant.