Female Labor Force Participation in Asia: Key Trends, Constraints, and Opportunities

This brief reports on findings from four country studies and a companion macroeconomic study calibrated using an average Asian economy. Almost 28% of the world’s working-age women are accounted for in the four selected countries:2 Pakistan, where female labor force participation is rising but remains very low at 25%; Indonesia, where it is relatively high for Asia but still stagnant at 51%; the People’s Republic of China (PRC), where women’s participation in the labor force has fallen in recent years to about 64% from 73% in 1990; and the Republic of Korea, where female labor force participation remains low at 50% despite high levels of economic growth and per capita income.3 In all these countries, male labor force participation hovers around 80% for individuals 15 years and older, except for the Republic of Korea, where male labor force participation was 72% in 2013. For males of prime working age (25–54), these figures are all very close to 100%.