Abstract:

In most of the South Mediterranean countries, female labour force participation rates are far behind developing or developed countries. Since 2011, the most important demands of civilian uprisings against authoritarian regimes in the region have been towards creating social and economic reforms and employment opportunities. In this paper, we studied the causal relationship between female labour force participation and economic growth in 10 South Mediterranean countries within 1990-2018. We employ Toda-Yamamoto and Fourier Granger causality tests to the model to account for gradual/smooth structural shifts. The findings indicate that accounting for gradual structural shifts matter for the causality between female labour force participation and GDP per capita. The causality analysis without structural changes supports a causality between two variables only in four countries out of 10 while with structural changes seven countries out of 10 Mediterranean countries. This finding is consistent with the fact that Mediterranean countries have experienced structural changes in either female labour force participation or economic growth or both. It contains hope that social and economic development will be promoted, with the removal of regional-specific barriers such as cultural factors and family norms.

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