ACDE seminar: Trade and gendered labor outcomes: Evidence from changing export demand in Indonesia

The seminar by Joseph Marshan will examine the gendered labor market consequences of international trade in Indonesia.

We present new evidence on the gendered consequences of trade, explicitly examining shifts in foreign demand. We construct panel mean-aggregated local labor-market outcomes for women at the provincial level. Our two-stage least-squares (2SLS) approach suggests that an increase in foreign demand shock has a limited impact on reducing gender gaps and minor adverse effects on total employment. Resource-based sectors, typically male-dominant industries, primarily drive this adverse employment effect. Further investigation reveals that the most affected women workers are characterized as married and less educated. These results offer crucial insights into trade and women’s empowerment: relying on resource-based commodities does little to empower women, and trade policies should not focus solely on export activities in their narratives.