Tracking the factors that influence female employment: the albanian case

During the socialist regime in Albania the government policy of full employment boosted female participation and, consequently, employment rates were higher than in most part of OECD countries. Other set of policies, such as the investments in childcare facilities and education, undoubtedly stimulated women to enter and remain in the labour market. Since the beginning of the transition to a market economy, women’s participation in the labour market has consistently decrease, as confirmed by the reduction of the number of employed women, the higher number unemployed and the larger share of housewives. The gap between men and women in productive activities has become larger than during the socialist period, negatively influencing gender equality in the country. The purpose of this paper is to identify and measure the effects of some social, economic, demographic, cultural and regional determinants that influence female employment in Albania. Data are drawn from the last micro-dataset of the European Social Survey (2012). Logistic regression techniques are employed on survey data to estimate the odds ratios of female employment. The econometric findings will be extremely useful to feed knowledge-based policies aimed at increasing female labour force participation in Albania.