• ICT and education

ICT and education

Creation of wage jobs has not kept up with rapid growth in the workforce in sub-Saharan Africa. In Kenya, since the 1990s employment has become dominated by the informal sector, particularly for women. How has this affected the gender gap in employment? Does education increase women’s participation in the labour force?

A recent study showed that in five African countries – Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa – growth in employment opportunities has largely taken place in the non-wage sector, particularly in self-employment outside of farming.

This general pattern also seems to be true for Kenya. An estimate for Nairobi in 1969 showed that wage employment in the formal sector accounted for 65 per cent of men and 22 per cent of women aged over 14. The remainder was allocated to self-employment, informal employment and miscellaneous. By 1997, these figures had declined to only 42 percent of men and 18 percent of women in the urban sector, highlighting the extent to which the informal sector had grown in importance.

It has become important to understand the potential for employment creation outside of the wage sector, especially for women, who are far more dependent than men on informal employment. A study by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Global Poverty Research Group uses a labour force survey carried out in Kenya in the late 1990s to examine the impact of education on women’s involvement in the labour market and how different levels of education and work experience affect choices in the formal and informal sectors. It should be noted that the researchers counted people occupied with unpaid family labour as part of the workforce.

The study found that:

• A rise in education levels increased participation in the labour force, more so for women than for men.
• Differences were reported between the public and formal private sectors: women with very high levels of education were more likely than men to be employed in the public sector; higher levels of education increased the probability of employment in the private formal sector; but the gap between employment opportunities for men and women in this sector widened as educational levels increased.
• With completion of only primary schooling, women were less likely than men to be working in the informal private sector and are far more likely to be an unpaid family worker.
• There is no evidence of the gap between employment of men and women decreasing with an increase in work experience.
• The gender gap in unpaid family labour increases substantially over 10 to 20 years’ experience in the workforce.

The study identifies two implications for policy. Firstly, it was only in the public sector that education proved to be enough to ensure equal employment for women. As policy reform is focused on reducing the public sector and expanding the private sector, the finding that there were substantial differences in the gender gap between the two sectors has implications for the effect that the continued expansion of the private sector in its current form will have.

Secondly, the rise of the informal sector has not increased women’s participation in paid employment in this sector. As far more women than men are involved in unpaid family work, women’s labour involvement is much more likely than men’s to be both informal and unpaid. Kenya’s economy has failed to provide more waged employment in the private sector. Further, if present outcomes continue, increasing education levels for women will not reduce the gender gap in employment.

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