The Effect of Capitals on Female Labour Force Participation: a Comparative Study on European ::::union:::: and Middle East Countries

Expended Abstract Introduction:In modern development literature, there are a lot of discussions about participation, especially economic participation. Economic participation is the essential part of economic development and lack of plating the participation backgrounds will challenge social system, as well as economic system. Labour force is main stimulus and jmpetus for developing societies, so that the production of value and cumulatjon of capital, and in general, development without labour force participation is impossible. According to functional viewpoint, economic participation is the background of survival and development of social system. Inasmuch as one of the signs of development of societies is female economic participation, and their access to economic opportunities and employment represents their social status in different countries, so the status of women as half of the labour force potential of societies has made their economic acts to be of high importance, The statistical analyses indicate that female economic participation rate is very heterogeneous and has a wide range. According to International Labour Organization estimates in 2016, the average of economic participation rate in women aged 15 years and older is 52.3%, and its maximum and minimum values are respectively 86.3 and 12%. Furthermore, the investigation of female economic participation rate in developing and developed countries shows that European developed countries (European ::::union::::: EU) have high economic participation rate, but the Middle East countries such as Iran have quite lower level of the participation. Although female participation in labour market is affected by agency and structural factors, it seems that the wide range of changes of this rate accents the role of major and structural variables. Therefore, the major aim of this paper is to study the impact of capital construct (economic, institutional and social capitals) on female economic participation. Method: This paper was done using documentary method and secondary analysis of existing data. The statistical society of the research is European ::::union:::: and Middle East countries. The data published by Legatum Institute and International Labour Force Organization (ILO) were used. Besides, the level of observation and unit of analysis in this project is major. Findings: According to the results, European countries have higher female economic participation rate than Middle East countries. The average of this rate in European and Middle East countries is respectively 50.4% and 29.3%. Indeed, although the average of total capital index in EU countries is 65.8%, it is 49.1% in Middle East countries, and there is a big difference between them. This condition, more or less, occurs in all subindexes and indicators of this index. Segregaton of two studied countries groups on scattergram chart indicates that Middle East countries in capital index and its subindexes are poorer than EU countries. This result is in line with the theoretical viewpoint, and it refers to the classification of the developing degree of the countries according to economic participation rate. The study of distribution of capital kinds also shows that the highest difference belongs to institutional capital and the next levels belong to social and economic capitals respectively, and all declared differences were found to be statistically significant. Analytically, there is a positive and significant correlation between female economic participation rate in the studied countries and total capital index and its sub-indexes.The amount of this correlation with total capital index, institutional capital, economic capital, and social capital is respectively .794, .793, .765 and .688.Moreover, linear regression analysis represents that about 70% of female economic participation rate in the studied countries is explained by capital kinds, and only the remained 30% will be explained by the other variables unnoticed in this project. This result clearly emphasizes the impact of major and constructional variables on female economic participation in labour market. Standardized coefficient (β) amount also suggests that institutional capitals have more important role for declaring the female participation in labour market (0.746). The next levels for declaring the female economic participation in labour market belong to economic (0.613) and social (0.526) capitals. Discussion: Female labour force participation is one of the signs of development and due to its own reasons and outcomes it can be regarded as an economic-social phenomenon. As mentioned earlier, both economic and non-economic factors affect this subject. Therefore, the aim of this project is to investigate the role of capital construct on female labour force participation in European ::::union:::: and Middle East countries. Economic participation is a field in which actors act in it in proportion to have some kinds of capital. Therefore, capital is the positive capacity and potential for facilitating the economic actions. In other words, good institutional, financial, and social conditions can be suitable backgrounds for people and female economic participation as well. Whereas, in societies where wealth capitals, gender inequalities such as unequal access to capitals is low or paralle to Lerner and World Economic Forum findings, high gender inequalities and discriminations, such as inequality in access to resources and capitals in developing countries of Middle East is supposed to exist. Therefore, affluence of capital kinds and also decrease of gender inequalities will increase women’s inputs to economic fields and facilitate their economic participation. By preparing these facilities, it is hoped that unused human resource capacity in Middle East countries will be used in the future. In comparison with pervious researche studies, the results of this project are in accordance with development and economic participation hypothesis which focuses on U-form relation between entering the women to labour market and development in a passing society from tradition to modernity, and Lerner’s findings (2004) that insist on limited social attendance and economic participation of women caused by capital leakage and gender inequality in Middle East countries. Also the observed strong and positive relationship between economic capitals and female labour force participation in the present research confirms the asserted relationsships between economic capacities and female labour force participation in the previous studies (Seraj, 1984; Clark et al., 1991; Bloom & Brender, 1993; Safai Pour & Zadvali Khajeh, 2016). the positive relation between education and female labour force participation documented in static study of Yakubu (2010) and the findings of the panel study of Klasen and Lamanna (2009) was supported by the results of this project. The first innovation of the present study is the empirical documentation of the effect of institutional capitals on female labour force participation in the studied countries. In general, excellent institutional and economic conditions make the society grow and social capitals facilitate the female labour force participation. Another innovation is doing an international comparative- analytical investigation in two groups of countries with very different conditions for female labour market. The previous studies conducted at international level were simply descriptive, without purposeful classification of the different groups of countries, and the number of variables was limited. Ethical Considerations Authors’ contributions All authors contributed in producting of the research. Funding In the present study, all expenses were borne by the author and he did not have any sponsors. Conflicts of interest The authors declared no conflict of interest. Acknowledgments In this article, all rights relating to references are cited and resources are carefully listed.