Import Competition and the Gender Employment Gap in China

Abstract

Combining data from China’s population and firm censuses between 1990 and 2005, this paper relates prefecture-level employment by gender to the regionalized measure of exposure to tariff reductions. We find that increasing import competition kept more females in the workforce, reducing an otherwise growing gender employment gap in the long run. These dynamics were present both in local economies as a whole and among private firms in the formal industrial sector. The gendered employment effects of trade-induced competitive pressures can be attributed to an expansion of female-intensive industries, a reduction in gender discrimination, and technology upgrades through computerization.