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Paper prepared for
The Center of Arab Women Training and Research
(CAWTAR)
Mediterranean Development Forum (MDF)
Why Did Economic Liberalization Lead to Feminization of the Labor Force
in Morocco and De-feminization in Egypt?
By Ragui Assaad∗
University of Minnesota
USA
November 2004
∗ Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, 301 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis MN 55455. E-mail:
rassaad@hhh.umn.edu. The author would like to thank Loren DeJonge for her excellent research
assistance in completing this study.
1
I. Introduction
The international literature on economic liberalization and gender emphasizes the
strong link between the labor market deregulation and informalization that accompany
economic liberalization processes and labor force feminization (Standing 1989, 1999;
Cerruti, 2000; Cagatay, Elson and Grown, 1995; Valodia, 2001). Official structural
adjustment programs and unofficial, but typically state-supported, erosions of worker
protection policies are associated with the absolute and relative growth of the female
labor force in the developing world. According to the literature, the feminization trend
has permeated all the regions of the developing world with the possible exception of the
Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which has seen its share of women in the labor
force stagnate over the liberalization period (Horton 1999). Within MENA, Morocco and
Tunisia stand out as exceptions that conform to the feminization trend observed
elsewhere in the developing world (Moghadam 1998). A number of arguments have
been advanced to explain the low and stagnant female labor force participation rates in
MENA, including the obvious argument that cultural and social norms hinder women’s
participation in paid work outside the home.
The purpose of this paper is to explain the different trajectories followed by Egypt
and Morocco with regards to feminization of the labor force. While both have
experienced significant informalization of their labor markets, Morocco has undergone
noteworthy feminization of its work force, while Egypt (excepting the civil service) has
largely de-feminized. Both Egypt and Morocco have embarked on stabilization and
adjustment programs since the 1970s. Since then, employment opportunities in public
service have been curtailed, although more so in the case of Morocco. Both countries
2
share a similar cultural heritage, so that norms about gender roles, in general, and
women’s work, in particular, should be fairly similar in both contexts. Explanations for
their divergent paths with regard to feminization need to be sought, in my view, in the
different economic conditions faced by each country.
Because the international literature makes an explicit connection between female
paid employment and economic liberalization and structural adjustment, the focus in this
paper is on that, rather than on employment as a whole. Moreover, because both
countries have been attempting to constrain the growth their civil service in recent years,
albeit with less success in Egypt than in Morocco, I focus on non-governmental wage
employment, which includes employment in the private sector and in State-Owned
Enterprises (SOEs). Since the start of liberalizing reforms in the 1970s, SOEs have
gradually been given increasing autonomy in hiring, wage-setting, and in general
operations, so that by the 1990s it increasingly makes sense to lump them with private
enterprises, as the non-governmental sector, rather than with the civil service, as the
public sector.
This paper will explore the different economic trajectories in the two countries in
terms of the change of the sectoral composition of employment and how the female share
in each sector changed over time. I will also explore the differences in institutional
arrangements and macroeconomic conditions that encouraged feminization (or de-
feminization) in each country, with particular examination of hypotheses concerning how
the structure of foreign exchange revenues has affected household labor decisions and the
demand for female labor.
3
II. Source Data and Methodology
The empirical analysis that follows is based on two nationally representative
household surveys in Egypt (LFSS 1988 and ELMS 1998) and two surveys in Morocco,
the MLSS of 1990/1991 and LSMS of 1998/1999. The surveys collected similar
information from both populations, ensuring comparable categories for analysis. Each
requested extensive information concerning basic demographics, employment status,
occupation, economic activity, and institutional sector of employment. The Egyptian
LFSS 1988 was conducted on a sample of 9,917 households; the ELMS 1998 was
conducted on a sample of 4,816 households. The MLSS 1990/91 was conducted on a
sample of 3,323 households and the Morocco 1998/1999 LSMS was conducted on a
sample of 5,529 households.
The methodology I propose to use to analyze the feminization/de-feminization
trend in the two countries is to disaggregate wage employment outside the government
into nine job types that employ women disproportionately in either country, and an
additional residual category for jobs where women are under-represented.1 A job type is
defined by a combination of occupation information (professional, white collar, blue
collar) and industry information at the two-digit ISIC level (e.g. agriculture, textile and
garment manufacturing, health and education services).
In conducting data analysis, I examine the share of female employment in each
job type, the job type’s share in overall employment (as well as the changes in each over
time). Let
job of share thebe and t,at time i typejobin females of share thebe t
i
t
iwf
1 The methodology for creating the job types is discussed in an Appendix. In two of the separately
identified job types, namely agriculture and blue collar workers in manufacturing other than food
processing or textiles and garments, women are disproportionately represented in Egypt but not in
Morocco. In all the remaining seven job types, women are disproportionately represented in both
countries.
4
type i in overall employment at time t, where t=0 stands for the beginning of the period
and t=1 stands for the end of the period. The change in the female share of non-
governmental wage employment can be decomposed into three components as follows:
1) The Feminization Effect: , which shows how the overall
female share would have changed had we kept the share of each job type
constant over time, but allowed the individual female shares to change as they
did over the period
∑
=
−
N
iiii ffw
1
010 )(
2) The Composition Effect: , which shows how the overall
female share would have changed had we kept the individual female shares
constant, but allowed the sectoral composition of the economy to shift as it did
over the period
∑
=
−
N
iiii wwf
1
010 )(
3) The Interaction effect:
∑
−− ))(( 0101 iiii ffww , which is the residual effect
due to the interaction between the change in female share and composition
over the period. The latter effect is expected to be a small fraction of the
overall change in female share.
In each case, the individual elements within the summation provide the
decomposition into feminization, composition, and interaction effects of each job type’s
contribution to the change in overall female share. This decomposition reveals the extent
to which the observed trend in the overall female share is due to the feminization/de-
feminization of existing disproportionately female jobs, or to changes in the composition
of the economy toward or away from these sectors. It would also allow us to identify the
specific sectors that are most important in explaining the overall trend.
5
Structural Adjustment in Morocco and Egypt
Both Egypt and Morocco have embarked on liberalization and economic
restructuring programs since the mid to late 1970s. Egypt began pursuing liberalization
policies with its open door policies of the 1970’s and, later, instituted stabilization and
structural adjustment programs in response to the drop in oil prices in 1986 (Abdel-
Khalek 2001). With aid from the World Bank and the IMF, Egypt commenced its most
ambitious structural adjustment program in 1991 (the Economic Reform and Structural
Adjustment Program, or ERSAP). Its goal included eliminating large, unsustainable
fiscal and external imbalances, trade, exchange rate, and financial sector reforms aimed
at liberalizing the economy, and an ambitious privatization program (Assaad and Arntz,
forthcoming). Morocco embarked on similar programs in the 1980s, instituting a
structural adjustment program intended to re-orient the economy to the production of
tradable goods. The first phase emphasized cuts in fiscal expenditure and the institution
of a flexible exchange rate; the second phase focused on trade liberalization and public
sector reform. (Nsouli et. al. 1995).
Since these programs began, employment opportunities in public service have
been increasingly replaced by jobs in the private sector. Structural adjustment is
expected to favor the production of tradables and, in particular, labor-intensive
manufactured exports, such as textile & garments – industries that disproportionately hire
women. Moreover, structural adjustment is said to result in feminization by generating
pressures to cut costs in tradable goods sectors, leading to the substitution of cheap
female labor for more expensive male labor (Standing 1989, 1999).
6
I argue in this paper that developments in Morocco conform to these predictions
fairly well, but that they do not in Egypt. It appears that in Egypt, employment growth
was more rapid in disproportionately male sectors, such as transportation, construction,
utilities, and a variety of service industries, which are typically considered non-tradable.
Moreover, there was no tendency toward the feminization of these male-dominated
sectors in Egypt, while the disproportionately female sectors other than the civil service
de-feminized. Conversely, structural adjustment led to a significant growth of textile and
garment manufacturing in Morocco, which accounts for a significant portion of its
feminization. I explore explanations for these contradictory trends in Egypt and Morocco
in differences in the two countries’ structure of foreign exchange earnings. While
Morocco relied increasingly on the export of labor-intensive manufactured goods, Egypt
became increasingly dependent on service exports, especially tourism.
Data Analysis
We start by examining the overall pattern of employment growth in the periods
under consideration in the two countries, including the evolution of the female share of
employment. As seen in Table 1a and 1b, overall employment grew at 2.5 percent per
annum (p.a.) in Egypt from 1988 to 1998, while it only grew at 1.7 percent p.a. in
Morocco from 1990/91-1998/99. However, the difference can be more than explained by
the difference in the growth of the government sector in the two countries. In Egypt, the
government workforce continued to grow rapidly in the 1990s, at nearly double the rate
of overall employment growth. In Morocco, on the other hand, government employment,
which makes up a much smaller portion of total employment than in Egypt to start with,
remained constant in absolute terms over the period under consideration. In contrast to
7
overall employment and governmental employment, non-governmental wage
employment is growing two and a half times as fast in Morocco than in Egypt. Both
countries experienced a decline in State-Owned-Enterprise employment, but private
sector employment in Morocco has more than made up for the decline of what was a
relatively small SOE sector there.
Table 1a: Egypt Employment Growth by Sector, 1988, 1998
Share in total employment Av Ann. Female Share
1988 1998 Growth 1988 1998
Private Wage Work 23% 25% 3.2% 14% 10%
State Owned Enterprises 9% 5% -2.6% 14% 12%
Non-governmental Wage Work 32% 30% 1.9% 14% 10%
Government 19% 24% 4.8% 29% 31%
Non-wage Work 49% 46% 1.8% 51% 61%
Total 100% 100% 2.5% 35% 38%
Source: Author’s calculations from LFSS 1988 and ELMS 1998
Table 1b: Morocco Employment Growth by Sector, 1990/91, 1998/99
Share in total employment Av. Ann. Female Share
1990/91 1998/99 Growth 1991 1999
Private Wage Work 24% 33% 5.7% 19% 23%
State Owned Enterprises 3% 2% -3.3% 11% 11%
Non-governmental Wage Work 27% 35% 5.0% 18% 22%
Government 10% 9% 0.0% 20% 26%
Non-wage Work 63% 57% 0.3% 41% 41%
Total 100% 100% 1.7% 33% 33%
Source: Author’s calculations based on MLSS 1990/91 and MLSMS 1998/99
The proportion of females in overall employment has increased in both countries
over the respective time periods, with Egypt’s increasing from 35 to 38 percent, and
Morocco’s remained stable at 33 percent. Thus, at face value, women appear to be more
or less equally represented in overall employment in Egypt and Morocco, and the share
of women appears to be rising in Egypt but stable in Morocco. However, upon closer
scrutiny, the relatively high female shares in Egypt and the rising trend there are entirely
due to women’s concentration in the large and still growing civil service. If we limit out
attention to wage employment outside of government, there is a striking difference
8
between the two countries in both the share of female employment and its trend over
time. The female share of non-governmental wage employment in Egypt declined from
14 to 10 percent, whereas that of Morocco increased from 18 to 24 percent. Morover,
this sector makes up a higher proportion of total employment in Morocco in 1998/99 than
in Egypt in 1998 (35% vs, 30%) and is also growing faster in Morocco than in Egypt
(5.0% p.a. vs. 1.9% p.a.).
Given the poor prospects for the growth of the government employment in both
countries in the foreseeable future, Morocco’s labor market appears to be poised for more
rapid employment growth than Egypt’s and is also much more open to women. In what
follows, I propose that this observed difference in the dynamism of non-governmental
employment in the two countries and the greater openness to women of Morocco’s
private sector results from the different ways in which the two economies participated in
world trade post-liberalization. Morocco’s pattern of insertion in world trade relied
increasingly on labor-intensive manufactured exports, and, in particular, on the export of
textiles and garments, whereas Egypt continued to rely on tourism, oil, and remittances as
its main sources of foreign exchange revenues.
To establish this proposition, I undertake a decomposition of the change in the
female share of non-governmental employment in each country to establish the
contribution of various industries to overall feminization or de-feminization. As
explained in the source data and methodology section and in the appendix, I subdivide
non-governmental wage employment into eight job types; seven in which women are
disproportionately represented in either country at either the beginning or end of the
period, and a residual category that lumps together all male-dominated jobs. The female
9
share in each of these job types, as well as the overall female share in both countries, at
the beginning and end of the period are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Female Share of Non-Governmental Wage Employment by Job Type, Egypt and
Morocco
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Blue Collar in agriculture
Blue Collar in food processing
Blue Collar in textile manufacturing
White collar other than trade & services
Workers in trade
Domestic & other service workers
Professionals/managers
Other
Total
Job Type
Percent
Morocco '90/91
Morocco '98/99
Egypt '88
Egypt '98
Source: Author’s calculations from LFSS 1988 and ELMS 1998 (Egypt) and MLSS
1990/91 and MLSMS 1998/99 (Morocco)
As shown in Figure 1, the female share in Morocco has increased in nearly all job
types, except for the residual category. Moreover, in all job types, except workers in
trade, the Morocco has a higher female share than Egypt. In Egypt, there was de-
feminization in all of the job types shown, including the residual male-dominated “other”
category. This shows that women have lost “market share” across the board, including in
jobs that were disproportionately female to start with.
The change in the overall female share is not only affected by changes in female
shares in each job type, but also by the growth of each job type over time. Figure 2,
10
shows the average annual growth rate of employment in each job type in Morocco and
Egypt.
Figure 2: Average Annual Growth Rate of Non-Governmental Wage Employment
Morocco (1990/91 to 1998/99) and Egypt (1988 to 1998)
-2.0%
0.0%
2.0%
4.0%
6.0%
8.0%
10.0%
12.0%
14.0%
16.0%
Blue Collar in agriculture
Blue Collar in food processing
Blue Collar in textile manufacturing
White collar o/trade & services
Workers in trade
Domestic and other service workers
Professionals/Managers
Other
Total
Job Type
Growth Rate
Morocco
Egypt
Unlike the female share graph where the feminization pattern in Morocco and the
de-feminization pattern in Egypt are fairly uniform across job types, the growth trends
reveal a fairly mixed pattern. Employment in trade and services and in blue collar textile
and garments manufacturing jobs grew more rapidly that overall employment in the non-
governmental wage work in both countries, albeit the latter grew much more slowly in
Egypt than in Morocco. Employment in agriculture and in white collar jobs outside trade
and services grew more slowly than average in both countries. In general, however, there
isn’t an easily observed pattern of growth rates that would explain feminization/de-
feminization in either country.
11
In what follows I decompose the change in the overall female share over the
period under consideration -- +4.5 percentage points in Morocco and -3.8 percentage
points in Egypt—into the contribution of each job type to the change and further into a
component due to the feminization of the job type (the feminization effect), a components
due to the growth of the job type (the growth effect), and a residual interaction effect.
The results of these decompositions are shown in Table 2a for Morocco and Table 2b for
Egypt.
In Morocco, 87 percent of the change in female share is due to the feminization
effect. In other words, had the sectoral composition of the Moroccan economy remained
fixed, 87 percent of the observed change in female share would have occurred. Similarly,
in Egypt de-feminization accounted for 110 percent of the overall de-feminization. The
change in the sectoral composition favored feminization, but was too small to counteract
the de-feminization of the job types we identified. As mentioned earlier, all of the
disproportionately female job types in Morocco were further feminized, but women did
not make important inroads in male-dominated jobs as indicating by the low and slightly
falling proportion of females in the “other” category. Two job types account for the bulk
of feminization in Morocco. “Blue collar in textile and garment manufacturing” and
“domestic and other service workers” together make up more than two-thirds of the
Moroccan feminization effect. When growth is taken into account, these two job types
account for 116 percent of the total change in female share in Morocco. In Egypt, all the
job types listed in the table de-feminized, with the exception of the category “blue collar
workers in food-processing industries”, which maintained a constant female share. The
four job types that account for most of the de-feminization in Egypt are “blue collar in
12
Table 2a Morocco: Decomposition of Change in Female Share of Non-Governmental Wage Employment, 1991, 1999
1990-91 1998-99
female
share
share in
overall
employment female
share
share in
overall
employment Total
Effect Feminization
Effect Growth
Effect Interaction
Effect
Blue Collar in agriculture 15.2% 19.2% 15.7% 15.2% -0.5% 0.1% -0.6% 0.0%
Blue Collar in food processing 24.6% 4.1% 27.6% 2.7% -0.3% 0.1% -0.4% 0.0%
Blue Collar in textile manufacturing 38.7% 7.7% 62.7% 10.0% 3.3% 1.8% 0.9% 0.6%
White collar other than trade & services 24.6% 10.0% 32.6% 7.8% 0.1% 0.8% -0.6% -0.2%
Workers in trade 9.9% 3.0% 12.2% 6.6% 0.5% 0.1% 0.4% 0.1%
Domestic & other service workers
43.4% 11.6% 50.6% 13.7% 1.9% 0.8% 0.9% 0.2%
Professional/managerial
24.1%
7.7% 26.7% 4.8% -0.6% 0.2% -0.7% -0.1%
Other 3.5% 36.8% 3.4% 39.1% 0.0% -0.03% 0.1% 0.0%
Total 17.8% 100.0% 22.3% 100.0% 4.5% 3.9% 0.1% 0.5%
Table 2b: Egypt: Decomposition of Change in Female Share of Non-Governmental Wage Employment, 1988, 1998
1988 1998
female
share
share in
overall
employment female
share
share in
overall
employment Total
Effect Feminization
Effect Growth
Effect Interaction
Effect
Blue Collar in agriculture 15.9% 19.1% 8.7% 16.2% -1.6% -1.4% -0.5% 0.2%
Blue Collar in food processing 13.0% 3.3% 11.7% 4.1% 0.1% 0.0% 0.1% 0.0%
Blue Collar in textile manufacturing 17.4% 5.9% 15.3% 5.9% -0.1% -0.1% 0.0% 0.0%
White collar o/trade & services 25.0% 8.7% 19.2% 7.7% -0.7% -0.5% -0.3% 0.1%
Workers in trade 22.0% 7.5% 18.4% 9.8% 0.2% -0.3% 0.5% -0.1%
Domestic and other service workers
19.7% 7.1% 8.9% 9.1% -0.6% -0.8% 0.4% -0.2%
Professionals/Managers 22.9% 12.3% 19.7% 13.2% -0.2% -0.4% 0.2% 0.0%
Other 3.5% 36.1% 1.6% 34.0% -0.7% -0.7% -0.1% 0.0%
Total 13.8% 10.0%100.0% 100.0% -3.8% -4.2% 0.4% 0.0%
Source: Author’s calculations.
13
agriculture”, “white collar other than trade and services”, “domestic and other services” and
“other”. In the case of “blue collar in agriculture”, “white collar other than trade and
services” and “other” the negative feminization effect was reinforced by a negative growth
effect. In the case of “domestic and other services” de-feminization was partially countered
by a positive growth effect.2
To summarize, the results of the decomposition show that had Morocco not seen
feminization and growth in production jobs in textile and garments manufacturing, nearly
three quarters of the feminization that occurred in the Moroccan labor market would not have
occurred. The female share in that sector increased from 39 percent in 1990/91 to 63 percent
in 1998/99. The feminization and growth of domestic and other service jobs in Morocco
accounted for the bulk of the rest of the feminization of non-governmental wage employment
in Morocco. In contrast, Egypt experienced average growth in textiles and garment over the
relevant period and some de-feminization in the sector. Although the domestic and other
service workers sector grew more rapidly than average in Egypt, it de-feminized
significantly. In both countries, women did not increase their share of male-dominated jobs,
suggesting that the labor market continues to be gender segregated in both contexts. The
main exception is the increase in female share in trade-related jobs, which had been a male-
dominated sector in Morocco.
In what follows I seek explanations of the divergent feminization trends in the way
the two countries have been integrated in world trade following the structural adjustment
period.
2 The “interaction effect” is a residual effect in the decomposition of each job type’s contribution to the change
in overall female share into a “feminization” and a “growth” effect. It is usually small compared to the other
two effects and results from the interaction between a change in female share and a change in the job type’s
share of total non-agricultural wage employment.
14
An Analysis of Foreign Exchange Revenues in Morocco and Egypt
In the following sections, I explore hypotheses concerning the macroeconomic
conditions that induced the economic shifts favoring de-feminization in Egypt and the
opposite in Morocco. Specifically, I investigate the composition of foreign exchange
earnings and their share in GDP, and the effect of oil and oil related revenues on the
economy. One hypothesis advanced in the literature is that the presence of substantial
revenues from oil and remittances, which tend to flow to male members of the household,
either directly or through government subsidies, reduce female labor supply by reinforcing
the patriarchal household model of male bread-winner and female housewife ((Moghadan
2001, Karshenas and Moghadan 2001). Another well-documented contention is that oil and
remittance revenues, have a distorting effect on the exchange rate, causing the so-called
“Dutch Disease” phenomenon whereby traditional tradable industries, such as agriculture and
manufacturing contract, and non-tradables, such as construction, transportation, and services,
expand. These hypotheses suggest that Egypt, which has relied much more on oil and
remittance revenue than Morocco would be more affected by these two phenomena.
Morocco, which relied more for its foreign exchange revenues on traditional export
industries, such as textile and garment manufacturing, would conform more to the
feminization trends observed elsewhere in the world post-liberalization.
In its post-liberalization period in the 1980s and 1990s, Morocco experienced a
relatively steady increase in the share of foreign exchange earnings relative to GDP, which
went from 27 percent in 1977 to 43 percent in 2002 (See Figure 3). In contrast, Egypt’s
15
foreign exchange earnings have been more volatile overall, and have followed a generally
declining trend relative to GDP since the late 1970s. There was an exceptional increase in
the share of foreign exchange earnings to GDP in the early 1990s as a result of the impact of
the First Gulf War on foreign aid to Egypt and on remittances as Egyptian workers in Iraq
and Kuwait repatriated their savings. This increase was fairly short-lived, however, and was
followed by a return to the long-run declining trend. Thus, the Egyptian economy does not
conform to the standard pattern of economies becoming more opening after the
implementation of structural reforms. If anything, the share of foreign exchange revenues to
GDP has declined steadily since the adoption of reforms in 1991.
Figure 3: Share of Foreign Exchange in GDP, Egypt and Morocco
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Share in GDP
Egypt
Morocco
Source: Author’s calculations from the World Bank World Development Indicators CD, 2004 edition.
An examination of the composition of foreign exchange revenues in both countries
further supports the argument that Morocco has placed greater emphasis on manufactured
exports than Egypt. As shown in Figure 4, in Morocco, manufactured exports have had a
16
steadily growing share of total foreign exchange earnings going from 7 percent in 1975 to 33
percent in 2002. They currently constitutes the largest fraction of foreign exchange earnings
in Morocco, followed by service exports (mostly tourism), and labor remittances.
Manufactured exports have been the only component of foreign exchange earnings in
Morocco to increase steadily in relative terms over time. The declining importance of
phosphates in Morocco’s exports is indicated by the steadily declining share of “fuels, ores,
and metals.”\
Figure 4 - Morocco: Composition of Foreign Exchange Receipts
0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
25.00%
30.00%
35.00%
40.00%
45.00%
50.00%
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Share in Foreign Exchange
Food and agriculture
Fuel, ore and metal
Manufacturing
Workers remittances
Foreign Aid
Income receipts
Service Exports
Source: Author’s calculations from World Bank World Development Indicators CD, 2004 edition.
Alternatively, Egypt’s manufactured exports make up a relatively small part of its
foreign exchange revenues. As seen in Figure 5, Egypt’s foreign exchange revenues are
derived primarily from services, almost half of which consist of international tourism.
Service exports have increased significantly as a share of the total over time, going from 23
percent in 1977 to 45 percent in 2002. Workers’ remittances, though far behind services, has
17
the second highest share in foreign exchange earnings at 14% in 2002. Their share increased
significantly in the 1970s, peaked in the 1980s, and declined in the 1990s, after a brief period
of recovery right after the First Gulf War. Manufacturing only made up 12.2% of foreign
exchange earnings in 2002, up from a low of 3.1 percent in 1982.
Figure 5 - Egypt: Composition of Foreign Exchange Receipts
0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
25.00%
30.00%
35.00%
40.00%
45.00%
50.00%
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Share in Foreign Exchange
Food and agriculture
Fuel, ore and metal
Manufacturing
Workers remittances
Foreign Aid
Income receipts
Service exports
Oil exports, which are included in “fuel, ore, and metal” were still a larger share of Egypt’s
foreign exchange revenues in 2002 (13 percent) despite declining significantly from the high
of 27 percent reached in 1981.
Oil and oil-related revenues, such as worker remittances (in Egypt’s case), are argued
to reduce female labor force participation by reducing female labor supply. By accruing to
male household members, they reduce labor supply by reinforcing a “patriarchal gender
contract”, where men are the primary wage-earners and women assume the role of
homemakers (Moghadan 2001, Karshenas and Moghadan 2001). Since migrants to oil-rich
countries, which are the majority of migrants from Egypt, are almost universally male,
18
remittance revenues, according to this argument, give households the “luxury” of keeping
“their women-folk” at home (Karshenas and Moghadan 2001). The higher income levels
associated with the oil sector are believed to make it unnecessary for families to have more
than one wage-earner. This ostensibly raises women’s reservation wage at a point in time
when most employment offered to females are significantly low-paying jobs. This is
construed as a constraint on the supply of women’s labor and an explanation for the lower
female participation rates in Egypt. Proponents of this theory would argue that Morocco has
not experienced a similar supply constraint because of its economic emphasis on exportable
goods instead of mining or oil-related industries.3
I argue that the effect of oil and oil-related revenues on the structure of labor demand
is a more compelling explanation of feminization/de-feminization of the labor force. Rent-
based external revenues (such as oil and remittances in Egypt), through their effect on the
real exchange rate, harm the labor-intensive export-oriented sectors, which tend to favor
women workers, by making them less competitive internationally. Oil and remittances may
therefore be far more limiting on the demand for female labor in Egypt than constraining on
female labor supply.
Although oil and remittances are a smaller share of foreign exchange revenues than
they were in the 1980s, they were mainly replaced by service exports rather than
manufacturing exports. Service exports in Egypt are made up for the most part of tourism
services and Suez Canal tolls. For a variety of reasons having to do with the location of
many of Egypt’s tourist attractions in remote and lightly populated areas, tourism in Egypt is
an industry that is heavily male-dominated. This is even true of jobs that are usually heavily
3 One can further argue that Moroccan migration, which is mostly to Western Europe, is more gender-balanced
than migration to the oil-rich countries of the Gulf. Remittances in Morocco do not accrue exclusively to male
household members.
19
feminized like housekeeping jobs. According to the LFSS 88 and ELMS 1998 data,
restaurants and hotels, which may be the most important constituent of the tourism industry,
was only 6.4 percent in 1988 and dropped to 3.4 percent in 1998. Transportation, another
important constituent of tourism, was 6.1 percent female in 1988 and dropped to 3.3 percent
female by 1998. Thus Egypt’s mode of incorporation into the international economy in the
1990s did not spur significant demand for female labor.
Morocco’s focus on labor-intensive manufactured exports and its increasingly more
limited reliance on mining revenues, has led to a liberalization experience that was a spur to
greater female employment. As I showed above, the bulk of Morocco’s feminization is due
to the growth and feminization of the textile and garment manufacturing sector, a sector that
supplied most of Morocco’s manufactured exports. The second largest contribution to
Morocco’s feminization was the service sector. Service exports, mostly tourism, were also
the second largest contributors to Morocco’s foreign exchange earnings in the 1990s. Like in
Egypt, the restaurant and hotels sector was male-dominated in 1990/91, with only a 7.4
percent female share. However, by 1999, its female share had soared to 23 percent. The
Moroccan transportation sector continued to be male-dominated in both years. Thus
Morocco’s mode of incorporation into the world economy in the 1990s, whether through
manufactured exports or tourism, spurred employment in sectors that were undergoing
significant feminization.
Conclusion
I argued in this paper that mode in which Morocco and Egypt were integrated in the
world economy after they adopted economic liberalization and structural adjustment
20
programs determined the opportunity structure facing women in the labor market outside the
government sector. Although Egypt’s labor market had actually feminized in the 1990s,
most of that feminization occurred as a result of the rapid growth of the government sector,
which hired women disproportionately. During a similar time period, the Moroccan labor
market as a whole maintained a constant female share. I argue however, that the
employment prospects for women are much brighter in Morocco than in Egypt, because of
what is happening outside the government sector, where most employment growth is likely to
occur in the foreseeable future. Not only does non-governmental wage employment in
Morocco have a higher female share than in Egypt, it also feminizing significantly over time
as compared to Egypt’s which is de-feminizing. Although these opposite trends cut across
all job types in both Morocco and Egypt, two disproportionately female job types in
Morocco, namely blue collar work in textile and garment and domestic and other service
work, explain virtually all the feminization that occurred in Morocco. In contrast, the textiles
and garments and service sectors in Egypt contributed to the de-feminization that occurred
there. I relate these contrasting trends to the main mode of earning foreign exchange in the
two countries since the mid 1970s. Morocco became less and less reliant on phosphates
exports and more reliant on manufactured exports and tourism revenues; two industries that
feminized significantly over time in Morocco. Egypt, on the other hand, continued to rely on
oil and remittances as major sources of foreign exchange. Although, tourism and other
service exports took over from oil and remittances as the main sources of foreign exchange
earnings in Egypt in the 1990s, employment in these industries became less rather than more
feminized during this period. Despite economic liberalization and structural adjustment, the
21
contribution of manufactured exports to Egypt’s foreign exchange earnings continued to be
quite limited in the 1990s.
I do not wish to suggest that the mode of incorporation into the world economy and
its effect on labor demand is the only reason for the contrasting trends in Egypt and Morocco.
In other work, I explored the role of women’s constrained geographical mobility in Egypt
during the structural adjustment period that prevented from taking advantage of employment
opportunities that demanded increasing commuting on the part of men (See Assaad and
Arntz 2005). Because of their need for female labor, Moroccan employers in the textiles and
garments industry may have been more willing to provide transportation to work and thus
alleviating this constraint (Cairoli 1998). It also appears that employment in domestic
services was becoming less socially acceptable over time in Egypt, but that it was increasing
over time in Morocco. Even if this is true, this can only explain a small part of the difference
in feminization trends in the two countries. The bulk of the difference can be accounted for
by the different trajectories of the textile and garments and service sectors in the two
countries, both of which have been strongly affected by the way each country was
incorporated in world trade.
22
References Cited
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Appendix: Typology Formation
The job types used for this analysis were determined by combining economic occupation and
activity variables into nine jobs types that capture the jobs where women are disproportionately
represented. Occupations were divided into three categories: blue collar workers, white collar
workers, and professional/managerial workers. Economic activities were initially subdivided
into the following categories: (i) agriculture, fishing, mining, (ii) food and beverage
manufacturing/processing, (iii) textile, garments, and shoe manufacturing, (iv) manufacturing
other than textiles and garments and food processing, (v) utilities, (vi) construction, (vii) retail
and wholesale trade and repair, (viii) restaurants and hotels, (ix) transportation, (x) finance &
insurance, real estate & business services, (xi) administration, (xii) education, (xiii)health, (xiv)
personal, community & social services, (xv) domestic services, and (xvi) undeclared. These
occupation and economic activity categories were combined to form nine types of jobs as shown
in Table A1 below.
Table A1: Job Typology for Analysis of Feminization/Defeminization in Egypt and
Morocco Job Type Occupation Economic Activity
1- Blue collar in agriculture Blue collar Agriculture
2- Blue collar in Food Processing Blue collar Food & Beverage Processing
3- Blue collar in Textile Manufacturing Blue Collar Textile, garment & Shoe Mfg.
4- Blue collar in Other Manufacturing Blue Collar Manufacturing other than
textile & garments and food
processing
5- White Collar other than Trade and
Services White Collar Anything outside trade,
restaurants and hotels,
personal/community/social
services and domestic services
6- BC and WC workers in Trade White and
blue collar Retail and wholesale trade and
repair
7- Domestic and other service workers White and
blue collar Hotels and restaurants,
personal/community/social
services, domestic services
8-Professionals and managers Professional/
managerial All activities, including
education and health, etc.
9- Other All other occupation/activity cells not
previously mentioned
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26
