Determinants of Female Labour Force Participation in Cameroon

Abstract

Recently, women have become relatively more engaged in the labour market and this increasing trend toward women’s participation in jobs in the third world countries has drawn both social and academic attention. It is on the bases of this context, that this paper purports to empirically investigate the determinants of female labour force participation in Cameroon. Specifically, the study attempts to scrutinise the effect of: (a) spouse working status, (b) mothers/household characteristics, and (c) the type of religion practiced, on female labour force participation. To ascertain these objectives, data is sourced from the 2011 Cameroon Demographic Health Survey data collected by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) and used is made of both descriptive and inferential statistics. The logit regression model is employed to test the objectives. The empirical findings, among others suggested that, a woman with a non-working husband, an increase in age, presence of woman in the household increases the likelihood of women participating in the labour market. Contrarily, the presence of young children aged 0-5 years in the household and being a Muslim reduces the likelihood of women participating in the labour market. Policy wise, it is important for policy makers to understand women’s decision to supply labour in the labour market as well as the factors that enable them to either participate or not in the job market.