Abstract
Over the past two decades, issues related to strong gender disparities have gained prominence in the labor market in developing countries. Most previous studies have addressed the issue of women’s discrimination in terms of the gender pay gap without addressing the real impact of women’s promotion to formal employment on economic growth. The objective of this paper is to examine the effect of an increase in the proportion of women in formal employment on GDP per capita. To understand this relationship in sufficient depth, we used data for 40 African countries over the period 2000 to 2019 from the World Bank database using the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Granger causality test procedure and the GMM model. The results show a causal relationship between the labor force, investment, human development index, trade openness and the proportion of women in formal wage employment and the GDP per capita of African countries. The results of the GMM model show that investment, trade openness and the proportion of women in formal employment have positive and significant effects on GDP per capita. In terms of policy implications, African countries should invest more, develop regional integration, and promote women’s formal wage employment for sustainable and inclusive development.
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