Trade Liberalization and Women's Employment: Case Study of Large Manufacturing Industries

Trade liberalization is one of the policies which has been enforced in most of the countries and has some effects on women's employment, hence this research has been engaged to survey the relationship of trade liberalization & women's employment in Iranian manufacturing industries. This research has used the panel data method over the 1373-85 period and the classification industrial activities based on the two digits ISIC code (totally 104 observations). The results have confirmed that the trade liberalization is a window of opportunity for women's employment. The result showed that the ratio of the physical capital to the value added and the ratio of women's wage to men's wage has a negative relationship with the share of women's employment while the ratios of research and development, capital to the value added, exports to the value added and imports to the value added has a positive relationship with women's employment. In other words, women's labor has a complementary relationship with technological capital and has a substitution relationship with physical capital.