EDUCATION AND WOMEN'S LABOR MARKET OUTCOMES. A CASE STUDY OF EGYPT

Education is actually a key means of empowering women. Investments in women’s general education, is considered one of the most important elements that are considered essential for women’s economic empowerment. Education is necessary to gain skills needed to compete in the labor market.

With respect to Egypt, enhancing the competitiveness of women in the labor market is essential. Young women are the most vulnerable group in the labor market. The transition to a market-oriented economy has significantly affected the labor market. Women are affected more negatively than men by this transition as they used to depend mainly on the public sector employment guarantee. The unemployment rate for women is 2.5 times the unemployment rate of men. This leads to a decline in the labor force participation rate among educated females. It is therefore important to increase women's competitiveness in the labor market now more than ever. This raises questions about female education level and also about the type of education women get and differences in education quality among different types of education.

This study aims to examine association between education and women's labor market outcomes in Egypt and evaluates education as a path to gender equality in the Egyptian labor market, through examining the effect of education on women's ability to get a wage work and the quality of work they get and analyzing the obstacles that hinder women's ability to have access to wage work and whether these obstacles are more related to the availability of education or to the type of education.
The empirical analysis is based on the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey of 2006 which is a nationally representative household survey, carried out by the Economic Research Forum in cooperation with the Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics. The study uses the logistic regression to examine the effects of the level and type of education on women's presence and competitiveness in the Egyptian labor market. With respect to type of education, there are four main types of schools; public regular, public experimental, private regular and private language schools. To measure and compare school quality among these four types of schools, a composite index is constructed of three main indicators; time available for learning during the school day, orderliness, and availability of material inputs mainly new technologies needed to acquire information technology skills.

The study concludes that education has a powerful influence on women's labor market pathways and outcomes. It is found that higher female education levels result in higher presence in the work force and better labor market outcomes; in terms of employability, ability to escape vulnerable employment, overcoming occupational segregation and access to decent work. Women are found to benefit more than men from higher education in terms of improving their labor market outcomes. This in turn reduces the gender gap in the labor market. However, it is also found that raising female education level is not enough to improve young women's labor market outcomes. To strengthen education as a path to enhance women's labor market outcomes, there is an urgent need to focus on improving education quality. The study suggests a number of policy interventions needed to strengthen education as a path to enhance women's labor market outcomes in Egypt.