Exploring gender digital divide and its effect on women's labour market outcomes in South Africa

Author(s):  
Kehinde Oluwaseun Omotoso ◽  
Jimi Adesina ◽  
Ololade G. Adewole

Technology plays a significant role in bridging gender gap in labour market outcomes. This paper investigates gender differential in broadband Internet usage and its effects on women‘s labour market participation. Employing an instrumental variable approach, findings suggest that exogenously determined high-speed broadband internet usage leads to increases of about 14.1 and 10.6 percentage points in labour market participation for single women and married women with some level of education, respectively. Moreover, further analyses suggest that married women are generally less likely to use the Internet to search for job opportunities and this could partly explains their low labour market participation rate. The findings suggest that more policy effort is required to bridge gender differentials in digital technologies and employment opportunities in South Africa.

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-355
Author(s):  
Jannike Gottschalk Ballo

To what extent does higher education promote labour market participation for disabled people in school-to-work transitions and early career trajectories? This article argues that the effect of higher education on labour market outcomes for disabled people must be studied in correlation to gender. Intersectional theory warns against the generalisability of the female and male experiences, and predicts that disability may influence sexism, and that gender may influence disableism. Norwegian full-population register data on recipients of disability benefits are used to explore the effect of higher education on three labour market outcomes for men and women with disabilities. Contrary to common intersectionality expectations, the results show that men experience more extreme employment disadvantages related to their disabilities than women. Higher education has a stronger effect on participation for disabled women than for disabled men. However, gender differences in participation are smaller for people with disabilities than for the general population.


Author(s):  
Francesco Fasani ◽  
Tommaso Frattini ◽  
Luigi Minale

Abstract This article investigates the medium to long-term effects on refugee labour market outcomes of the temporary employment bans being imposed on asylum seekers in many countries. Using a newly collected dataset on employment restrictions together with individual data for refugees entering European countries between 1985 and 2012, our empirical strategy exploits the geographical and temporal variation in employment bans generated by their staggered introduction and removal coupled with frequent changes at the intensive margin. We find that exposure to a ban at arrival reduces refugee employment probability in post-ban years by 15%, an impact driven primarily by lower labour market participation. These effects are not mechanical, increase non-linearly in ban length and last up to 10 years post arrival. The detrimental effects of employment bans are concentrated among less educated refugees, translate into lower occupational quality, and seem not to be driven by selective migration. Our causal estimates are robust to several identification tests accounting for the potential endogeneity of employment ban policies, including placebo analysis of non-refugee migrants and an instrumental variable strategy. We estimate a EUR 37.6 billion output loss from the bans imposed on asylum seekers who arrived in Europe during the so-called 2015 refugee crisis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 1375-1389
Author(s):  
Elena Lagomarsino ◽  
Alessandro Spiganti

Abstract Accounting for endogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and sample selection in an unified framework, we investigate the effect of psychological well-being on wages and labour market participation using a panel from the British Household Panel Survey. We find the effect of psychological well-being on labour market outcomes to differ across gender. In particular, psychological distress significantly reduces participation across genders, but, conditional on participation, has a significant negative effect on hourly wages only in the female sample.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-356
Author(s):  
Kari Kristinsson ◽  
Margret Sigrun Sigurdardottir

Research on immigration has emphasized the role that statistical discrimination plays in hiring decisions. A better understanding of how immigrants overcome this type of discrimination might lead to better interventions to improve their labour market participation. In this paper, we use qualitative interviews to examine how immigrants can reduce statistical discrimination by signalling their similarity to employers in their job applications. Specifically, we find that immigrants who demonstrate signal similarity to employers in the type of education, job experience and religion tend to reduce their statistical discrimination by employers. We suggest how further research can build on these results to provide possible tools for immigrant integration.


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