Does Gender Equality in Labor Participation Bring Real Equality? Evidence from Developed and Developing Countries

Drawing on various macro- and micro-data sources, the authors present robust evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between female labor force participation inequality. Overall, is found to have a strong significant dis-equalizing impact in at least three groups developing countries with relatively low initial levels participation. A decile-level analysis shows that has higher returns among top deciles compared lower analyzed. This focuses attention importance policies specifically targeting women income distribution.