Investigating the Factors Affecting Women's Participation in Labor Market: A Case Study of Syria

Since Women are the foundation of economic development in any society, nowadays the world is more focused on their role in economic activity. Therefore, considering women as an active and constructive sector will certainly have a great impact on the development and increase of human resources in that society in terms of quality and quantity. The participation rate of women in Syria, like many countries in the Middle East, is lower than developed countries and even some developing countries. In this study, the effects of education, fertility rate, school enrollment rate, and migration rate on the rate of female labor force participation in the Syrian economy during the period 2000-2019 have been studied by using the auto-regressive distributed lag model. The results indicate that the variables of education and migration rate (where men make up most of the migrants) have a positive and significant effect on women's economic participation rate. However, fertility rate and school enrollment rate have a negative effect on Syrian women's economic participation.