The Female Labor Force in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay

Abstract

The objective of this essay is to suggest an interpretation of the economic behavior of women in three developing economies; this involves an evaluation of the role of the sociodemographic determinants of the female labor supply vis-à-vis the role of the variables that affect the demand for their labor. A comparative study of the female labor force in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay constitutes the basic source of empirical evidence for this paper; the purpose here is to integrate into a more general framework some of the findings of that study and infer more general propositions regarding the patterns of female employment in structurally heterogeneous economies.