Assessing The Effect of Gender Composition of Workforce on Productivity of Iranian Manufacturing Industries

Abstract   The purpose of this article is to identify the effect of gender composition of the workforce on productivity in Iranian manufacturing industries. For this purpose, while using the data of four-digit ISIC codes of the comprehensive plan of statistics from manufacturies with more than ten employees of the Statistics Center, the productivity of manufacturing industries is evaluated. Levinson and Petrin approaches are used to evaluate the factors affecting productivity in order to avoid the problem of simultaneity in the production function. According to the test results related to the data type, it was determined that the data are panel type. The results of the research indicate that, firstly, the estimation of productivity by Levinson and Petrin method is valid. Second: Although increasing gender equality among administrative-financial staff increases productivity, but the relationship between productivity and the employment share of skilled and unskilled female employees is negative at low levels of the employment distribution and positive at high levels of this distribution. Third, increasing women’s participation in light industries improves productivity. In addition, in small firms, gender equality among skilled workers and in large firms, gender equality among unskilled workers increases productivity.