Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Encouraging more women to participate in the labor market is not only important toward reduce gender inequality, but also has significant effects on accelerating economic growth. Previous studies show that average national levels of education attainment of women, fertility rate and parental leaving policy have significant effects on female participation in the job market. However, the effects of women’s political participation are less discussed; in order to study how women in decision-making processes could reduce gender bias in the labor market, the author of this paper investigates the association between female seats in national parliament and the labor force participation gap associated with gender, by comparing developed and developing countries. Results from quantitative analyses show that the increase of women’s seats in parliament could reduce the gap between male and female labor force participation rate in developing countries. Particularly, the increase of female political representatives has a more immediate effect on reducing the gender gap in the labor market in less developed countries, compared to developed countries. These new findings on the women’s political participation may suggest some new policy recommendations for developing countries to reduce gender inequality in the labor market.