الفهرس 
تحرير التجارة الخارجية والفجوة بين الجنسينيوجد فقط 14 صفحة متاحة للعرض العام
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المستخلص
The thesis aimed to analyze and estimate the effects of trade liberalization on the gender gap in ESCWA Countries during the period (2006-2018) by focusing on the wage and employment gap. This is done by testing the following hypotheses: (1) an increase in the degree of trade labialization leads to a decline in the gender wage gap in ESCWA Countries, (1) an increase in the degree of trade labialization leads to a decline in the gender employment gap in ESCWA Countries, (3) economic sectors have different impact on influencing gender wage and employment gaps in ESCWA Countries.
The analytical approach has been applied in analyzing the performance of the most important economic indicators in the ESCWA Countries, which include GDP, GDP per capita, employment and unemployment rates, as well as educational attainment rates in addition to the degree of trade openness and other related variables. Furthermore, the thesis analyzed the indicators of the gender gap, which are the opportunities and economic participation gap, the educational attainment gap, the health gap, and the political participation gap. Moreover, the thesis investigated the most important indicators of foreign trade such as trade openness, logistic performance index, and average tariff rate. In addition, wage levels, the contribution of different economic sectors in total, male and female employment as well as the gender wage and employment gaps has been examined.
Concerning the econometric methodology, the thesis employs a panel data by estimating three models, namely, fixed effects, random effects, and pooled models to estimate the impact of foreign trade liberalization on gender wage and employment gaps in ESCWA Countries. This is done by utilizing two dependent variables, namely, gender wage gap and gender employment gap. In addition, five explanatory variables are included: trade openness, and average tariff rate which are used to express the effect of trade liberalization, in addition to the percentage of female employment in the agricultural, industrial and services sectors to estimate the ability of these sectors to influence the gender wage and employment gaps. The results showed that the fixed effects model is the best model to investigate the gender wage gap model, while the random effects model is more appropriate in explaining the gender employment gap.
The results showed that there are many obstacles that hinder the reduction of the wage gap, which include that the female participation in the labor market is quite low and they are mostly employed in a limited number of jobs as well as the prevailing traditions that limit their ability to make decisions to work in specific fields, and working conditions in the region. Other factors include the weakness of economic structure in the studied countries as well as the small size of the public sector and inability of the private sector to absorb more labor especially female workers. These factors decrease women participation in the labor market which in turn implies the persistence of gender gap moreover, gender-based wage discrimination that still exists and cannot be explained by differences between male and female workers in labor market experience and in the characteristics of jobs they hold.
Concerning the dissertation hypotheses, the first and second hypotheses were rejected, as it was found that there is no link between trade liberalization represented
in trade openness and the rate of tariffs, and the gender wage and employment gaps. In other words, the results showed that there is no significant impact of the trade openness and the average tariff rate on the employment and wage gap. These results are consistent with the analytical results of that exhibited that the effect of trade liberalization on gender wage and employment gaps is indecisive. This result was based on the analysis that some countries that witnessed more trade openness, have witnessed a decline in the gender wage gap, such as the UAE, Bahrain and Oman, while this gap increased in some Other countries, such as Mauritania and Libya, despite their high degree of trade liberalization. On the other hand, in some countries that witnessed a decrease in the degree of trade openness, the gender wage and employment gap have been increased. Furthermore, more trade liberalization led to a decrease / no change in both gaps in some other countries.
Regarding third hypothesis, which states that the economic sectors vary in their ability to affect the wage and employment gaps in the ESCWA Countries, it cannot be rejected. the results confirm that there is a significant impact of the percentage of female employment in both the industrial and services sectors have significant impact on the gender wage gap while there is no significant influence of female labor percentage in the agricultural sector. Specifically, according to the fixed effect model, an increase in female employment in the industry’sector by 10% leads to an increase of 3.8% in the gender wage gap, while 10% increase in female employment in services sector leads to 22.1% increase in gender wage gap. These results can be explained by the fact that women are usually employed in low-wage jobs. For example, women are often hired in fields such as health, retail and social work which are characterized by low earnings. Furthermore, even when some women are hired in the industrial sector, they choose to work in jobs with shorter working hours or more flexible compared with those jobs accepted by men, such as heavy industry and construction. This results in widening the gender pay gap.
Finally, Regarding the gender employment gap, the results showed that it is significantly affected by percentage of female employment in both the industrial and services sectors whereas the percent of women’s employment in agriculture sector has no impact. Specifically, the results of the of random effects model reveal that 10% increase in female employment in industry sector leads to a decrease of about 5% in gender employment gap, while a 10% increase in employment rate of women in service sector leads to a 1% decrease in the gender employment gap. This implies that the industrial sector can contribute more than other sectors in reducing employment gap.
Key Words: Trade Liberalization, Gender Employment Gap, Gender Wage Gap, Gender Gap, Panel Data.