Job Creation and Employment-Gender-Gap among Micro and Small Enterprises.

Abstract

Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) sector play a key role in creating jobs in developing countries like Zambia. The sector accounts for more than eighty percent of the total employment. The main motivation behind this paper was to quantify changes in employment by size of the firm across time and to assess the gender differences in employment. For this purpose, survey data collected from two provinces of Zambia is used. Although the gender gap in the labor market is a well-established fact, the patterns of gender-employment gap is not much researched at the micro level. This paper poses two questions. To start with, is there any long haul relationship between firm age and employment. Also, to what degree micro and small scale enterprises shorten the gender employment gap across time. Persistent gender gaps in employment are not only unethical or immoral, but it is also a challenge to economic prosperity. In developing countries like Zambia, women are underrepresented in the formal sector. To answer the research questions, both descriptive statistics and Non-parametric model is used as part of the analysis. The results demonstrate that there is persistent gender-employment gap in the labor market and over the life-cycle of the micro and small enterprises. However, it is found that there is no statistically significant difference between mean employment levels and firm age.