Globalization and the Gender Earnings Gap : Evidence from Sri Lanka and Cambodia

Savchenko, Yevgeniya ; Lopez Acevedo, Gladys ; Robertson, Raymond

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: globalization;    gender wage gap;    gender;    apparel;    Multi-Fibre Arrangement;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7930
RP-ID  :  WPS7930

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Disasters in Bangladesh and protestselsewhere have created an intense debate about the value,particularly to women, of apparel employment in developingcountries. This paper focuses on how the forces ofglobalization, specifically the Multi-Fibre Arrangement(MFA), have affected women's wages in the apparelsector in developing countries. The paper uses household andlabor force surveys from Cambodia and Sri Lanka to estimateboth apparel wage premiums relative to other industries andthe male-female wage gap before and after the end of theMFA. The approach builds on new models that applytraditional trade theory (e.g., the Heckscher-Ohlin andStolper-Samuelson theorems) to analyze the effect ofglobalization on gender-based earnings. The authors findlarge positive wage premiums and a closing of themale-female wage gap during the MFA period, but smallerpremiums and a widening wage gap after the end of the MFA.The results suggest that the benefits of apparel exports forwomen in developing countries remain significant post-MFA.They also model an approach for studying the effects ofglobalization that differentiates males and females asseparate factors. This may be a fruitful alternative todiscrimination models or those that analyze the effects ofglobalization on women in terms of skill. Further researchis necessary to identify the potential development effectsof post-MFA apparel employment and to thoroughly compare thebenefits documented in this paper with the costs that maycome with apparel jobs.