Selecting a research question

Selecting a dataset

After reviewing the Gapminder codebook, I have decided that my point of focus will be female employment rates in different countries. My personal codebook will include the following variables: female employ rate and employ rate. It would be interesting to look at the female employment rate in the context of the overall employment rate.

In recent years, the free market global economy has led to increased industrialization and the mobility of populations to urban centers in search of improved standards of living (Kim, 2007). I am interested in researching whether urban rates have had an impact on female employment rates and observing the distribution of the impact (if any) among different countries. I will add the following variable to my codebook: urban rate.

Gapminder Codebook
Unique Identifier: Country
Variable Name	Description of Indicator	Main Source
Female Employ Rate	2007 female employees age 15+ (% of population) Percentage of total population, age above 15, that has been employed during the given year.	International Labor Organization
Employ Rate	2007 total employees age 15+ (% of population) Percentage of total population, age above 15, that has been employed during the given year.	International Labor Organization
Urban Rate	2008 urban population (% of total) Urban population refers to people living in urban areas as defined by national statistical offices (calculated using World Bank population estimates and urban ratios from the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects)	World Bank

Literature Review

Tacoli, Ceclia (March 2012). Urbanization, gender and urban poverty: paid work and unpaid carework in the city. International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

The paper notes that women tend to concentrate in lower-quality, more precarious forms of paid work, partly because they need to reconcile paid work with their primary responsibility for unpaid domestic and care work within households. One consequence of this gender segmentation of labor is that it prevents women from entering better paid and more protected work.

International Labor Organization, ILO (March 2008) Global Employment Trends for Women.

The paper reviews global labor market indicators between 1997 and 2007, including the labor force, employment and unemployment rates, and the labor force participation rates. It notes that in 2007, 1.2 billion women around the world worked, almost 200 million or 18.4 per cent more than ten years prior. However, the number of unemployed women also grew from 70.2 to 81.6 million over the same period and women at the global level still had a higher likelihood of being unemployed than men.

Kemal, Bicerli Mustafa and Naci, Gundogan (2009) Female Labor Force Participation in Urbanization Process: The Case of Turkey. MPRA Paper No. 18249.

The paper discusses the characteristics, causes and dimensions of female labor force participation in urbanization process of Turkey. It reveals factors impacting women’s employment rates, including cultural values against women’s participation in market work, women’s lack of education and marketable skills, unfavorable labor market conditions and increases in enrollment rates in all levels of schooling.

Hypothesis formulation

Based on the research review, it appears that while more women have joined the labor force thanks to urbanization, they have encountered several cultural and social obstacles that have negatively impacted their employment rates. It would be interesting to study the correlation between urbanization and the female employment rate in the Gapminder dataset. Hypothesis:  

Higher urbanization rates lead to lower female employment rates.

Reference

Sukoo Kim (February 2007) Immigration, Industrial Revolution and Urban Growth in the United States, 1820-1920: Factor Endowments, Technology and Geography