Trade Liberalisation and Women’s Employment Intensity: Analysis of India’s Manufacturing

In the context of increasing contribution of developing countries in world trade, an important question is whether trade can be used as an instrument to stimulate higher participation of women in the labour market? Trade and industrial liberalization undertaken during the 1990s and 2000s marked the end of India's nearly four decade experiment with state directed, heavy industry based, and import substituting industrialization. In this context, the role of various trade and technology related factors in determining female employment intensity (FEI) is analyzed, in a panel of India's manufacturing industries for the period 1998-2008.