This study is motivated by the recognition that increasing women’s access to employment is
necessary to increase human capital and capabilities within households. It is also acknowledged that
Sri Lanka’s economic growth prospects in the future will be heavily dependent on a greater number of
women engaging in market work. The study seeks to inform policy-making aimed at encouraging
women to join the work force, and does so by reviewing the literature and drawing on a background
study of the views of stakeholders to investigate the factors associated with the probability of
women’s participation.
In particular, the study looks at the extent to which differences in individual characteristics, and
household characteristics, socio-economic class, and familial responsibilities are associated with
whether women work for pay or not. It also adds to the econometric literature on women’s labour
force participation in Sri Lanka by looking at the impact of broader employment and unemployment
outcomes on discouraging participation. As far as we are aware, this is the first time that this issue has
been looked at in Sri Lanka in the context of a representative sample survey. The econometric
analysis also decomposes the likelihood of participation into contributing factors, in order to inform
the process of prioritizing and targeting policies.
The study finds important differences in the factors that appear to enable and constrain married and
single women, and female heads of households, from participating in the labour market. It is probable
that these factors derive from the different roles that they are expected to play in the household as
suggested by Malhotra and Degraff (2000). Contrary to the predictions of the static labour supply
model, expected wage is not a good predictor of female labour force participation, but receiving
remittances from abroad appears to obviate some of the financial need to work.
Of the explanatory variables constructed with the information available in the survey data, the positive
drivers of married women’s participation decision appear to be: age; educational attainment from
GCE Advanced Level and beyond; higher per capita household consumption; availability of domestic
help; a higher share of employed females relative to males with the same educational attainment as
the individual in the district; and whether they live within the estate sector. Having children later
rather than earlier is also likely to be important. The drivers of single women’s participation are: age;
all levels of education above primary; the presence of other adult women in the household; a higher
share of employed females in the district relative to males in the same education category as the
individual; and whether they live within the estate sector. Factors associated with the participation of
female heads of household in market work are: age; level of education; a large informal sector in the
district; and whether they live within the estate sector. The study also identified barriers to participation. Receipt of remittances from abroad constrained the
labour force participation of married women and female heads of households, and a larger proportion
of household expenditure accounted for by the earnings of male members of the household made it
unlikely that female heads participated. Islamic Moor ethno-religious identity and disability
constrained the participation of all women of working age. Education up to GCE Ordinary Level held
back married women, and a relatively higher status of household consumption held back single
women from participating. Meanwhile, the employment and education characteristics of male
household members and male head of household mattered for the participation of married women. Among local labour market conditions, more people being employed in manufacturing and services
relative to agriculture in the district was associated with reduced participation of married women and
female heads of households. On the other hand, a higher rate of unemployment appears to discourage
xii ILO DWT for South Asia and the Country Office for India
the participation of single women. Residence in Central, Eastern and North Western Province
constrained the participation of married women female heads of households residing in all provinces
outside Western Province were less likely to participate than those living in Western Province. The decomposition analysis suggests that the most important contributors to the probability of married
women’s participation are spatial variables, demographic characteristics and education characteristics,
which together account for 68 per cent of the likelihood ratio (LRI). The discouragement variables
account for 15 per cent of the total while household characteristics constitute 10 per cent. In contrast,
demographic characteristics account for half the LRI of the sample of single women. These results
appear to be driven mainly by the variables, Islamic Moor and disabled. Education accounts for 24 per
cent and household characteristics a further 11 per cent of the LRI of this group. Among female heads
of households, the most important contributors are income effect of variables in the static labour
supply model and demographic variables, which together account for just over 50 per cent of the LRI.
Spatial variables (16 per cent) and household characteristics (11 per cent) are somewhat less
important.
The participation decision of married women is particularly complex, depending on a variety of
factors. Since most Sri Lankan women end up being married (in the sample, 79 per cent of women in
the reference age group who are not household heads are married, while roughly 20 per cent are
single), the challenge for policy makers, who are inclined to increase women’s engagement in the
market economy, is to address the factors that keep women from the workforce after they get married.
These constraints include cultural and status-related perceptions and attitudes about what sort of role
married women should play within the household and the gender division of household and care
labour within the family unit. But even while better education and higher socio-economic status
encourage married women to seek market work, the legal framework governing work in the private
sector imposes constraints that prevent women taking up night work or part-time work in rapidly
growing and socially-acceptable service sectors. At the same time, many observers point out that the
Sri Lankan law, governing maternity benefits, makes employers bear its entire cost, encouraging them
to discriminate against the hiring of women (Ranaraja 2013). Meanwhile the lack of family-friendly
policies in private institutions and perceived difficulties in finding employment encourage women to
seek work in the public sector, which appears more family-friendly by default, rather than by policy, because work norms are less rigidly enforced there than in the private sector.
We need to emphasize here that equalizing women’s access to paid employment will surely increase
their total workload and commensurately the stress associated with it, if the current division of paid
and unpaid work between husbands and wives remains unchanged. An analysis of the time use of
husbands and wives in Sri Lanka, based on a survey of about 300 individuals working in Colombo
district, conducted more than 13 years ago, found that entering the workforce increases the time that
women spend working by three hours per day to 16 hours a day, compared with the time that
unemployed wives of married men spend (Satharasinghe 1999). In contrast, husbands’ total work time
remained close to 14 hours, regardless of whether their wives were employed or not. Thus, any policy
strategy that seeks to enhance women’s participation in market work also needs to address the issue of
the unequal division of unpaid work between men and women.
The findings of the present study highlight the importance of better education for female labour force
participation. The critical stage in the education cycle for participation appears to be secondary
education, beyond which the likelihood of participation rises, certainly more so for single women than
for female heads of households and for married women. In terms of policy, however, the findings
suggest that investment in skills training beyond secondary education is critical, and it is imperative to
ILO DWT for South Asia and the Country Office for India xiii
encourage women to engage in market work. Thus, it is at this point that girls who do not continue in
general education should be given the opportunity to acquire job-oriented technical and vocational
skills through the vocational education system. The next point at which alternative employment skills
need to be provided is after the GCE Ordinary Levels, for those who do not continue to study for the
Advanced Levels. Acquiring some marketable skills at this stage in the education cycle is vital to
enable women to engage in paid work, even after they are married. This training can equip women for
higher skilled occupations in IT, the hospitality industry and the health, day-care/nursery and
geriatric-care industry. On the other hand, the economy also needs to generate enough job
opportunities for graduates outside the public sector. Currently, the public sector remains the
employment sector of choice for many educated women.
Implementing measures to enhance skills is also likely to delay marriage and encourage women to
postpone having children, enabling them to acquire some job experience which will increase their
chances of finding employment once they return to the labour market after raising children. As de
Silva et al. (2010) have pointed out, the recent rise in fertility foretells a difficult situation, where the
ageing of the population will continue along with an increase in child dependency, thus increasing the
dependency burden for the working population at both ends of the population pyramid. Hence,
policies that enable women to remain or return to the workforce will help the country to bear the
increasing dependency burden that has been projected. At the same time, considering the particular
disadvantages faced by female heads of households who are often single parents, training
opportunities and opportunities for flexible working arrangements should also be targeted towards this
group of women.
The empirical results of this study also highlighted cultural and household-based constraints,
particularly to married women’s participation in the work force. A key factor is household work and
the care burden on women deriving, on the one hand, from the lack of institutional support for the
care of young children and elderly people and, on the other hand, social norms that impose on women
the larger burden and responsibility for the care of children and household work. The policy
implications of these findings are, firstly, the encouragement and implementation of family-friendly
policies that encourage a more equitable sharing of the burden of care and household chores between
males and females. Secondly, policies that enable more flexible work arrangements such as part-time
work, and work that can be done online need to be implemented. Amending the legislation allowing
night work in better-paying service industries is also important. Other measures facilitating night- work and more flexible work arrangements should also be implemented, for example, developing the
telecommunications and other infrastructure necessary to support online working arrangements and
safe and efficient transport to and from work. A secure environment for women to travel to and from
work at different hours of the day requires the efficient and impartial maintenance of law and order. A
vigilant and well-trained police force and an effective justice system are essential. Policy makers may
also need to explore options for socializing the cost of providing maternal benefits, so that employers
are not compelled to bear its entire cost, which creates incentives against hiring women. Thirdly,
policy makers can provide incentives for the setting up of well-monitored crèches for young children
and day care centres for the elderly which can, in turn, provide more job opportunities for women.
Some schools in Colombo, for example, already provide day boarding facilities for children after
school, and the children are cared for by trained personnel until their parents pick them up after work.
Similarly, existing class-room infrastructure in other schools can be utilized after hours to provide
reliable child care in a familiar environment.
The empirical results of this study highlighted the role that prevailing inequalities in opportunities and
outcomes in the labour market play in discouraging women from entering the workforce. These
results suggest that policies that discourage sexism and gender stereotyping in the workplace are
likely to have a positive impact on female labour force participation, and that if the state’s legal and
xiv ILO DWT for South Asia and the Country Office for India
institutional infrastructure to handle issues of discrimination and sexual harassment is strengthened,
this too will serve to encourage women to engage in market work.
While the National Human Resources and Employment Policy (Secretariat for Senior Ministers 2012)
already refers to many of these policies, the findings of the present study provides the empirical
evidence to underline them. Nevertheless, Ranaraja’s (2013) consultations with stakeholders suggests
that while existing policies are appropriate, their implementation is unsatisfactory. A case in point is
the revision of the legal framework to enable women to undertake night work in service occupations,
despite the fact that employers’ and employees’ representatives have agreed on this amendment.
Another is the promotion of social dialogue between the industrial partners to create a working
environment that will be more conducive to women’s participation in the work force. Weak implementation of existing policies may be due to a combination of factors, such as the lack of
capacity in the public sector, and insufficient pressure and lobbying to force implementation, due to
the dearth of women and more enlightened legislators in Parliament.
The findings of the present study also suggest directions for future research which can inform the
formulation of specific policies within the parameters of the National Human Resources and
Employment Policy. First, an up-to-date, detailed analysis of men’s and women’s time use in different
cultural and locational contexts would be extremely informative, not only to find out their relative
contribution in paid and non-paid work, but also to find out how processes can be made more
efficient. For example, parents may be forced to spend an inordinate amount of time supervising
children’s homework due to the demands made by badly designed school curricula. Similarly, parents
may have to spend a lot of time accompanying children to and from school, tuition classes and extra- curricular activities, due to poor quality education services, on the one hand, and the lack of a safe and
efficient transport system, on the other hand. Secondly, perceptions about gender roles in relation to
paid work, care work, and social and cultural activities with extended family and friends are likely to
be important determinants of women’s ability to engage in market work and need further exploration
and analysis. Finally, up to date information about women’s own perceptions about the barriers they
face in participating in the labour market and in finding and maintaining jobs, and the kind of work
arrangements, facilities and support systems that they think would enable them to go out to work are
needed to find out whether policies designed to encourage them to go out to work are likely to
actually achieve their objectives.
The research design of this study and its results also highlighted the complementarities of the two
main sources of labour market data in Sri Lanka, the HIES and the LFS. Combining the HIES and
LFS modules as the Department of Census and Statistics plans to do in 2013/14 will yield a more
comprehensive and richer data set which will enable more insightful analysis of issues such as labour
force participation in the future. Nevertheless, there are many relevant issues about employability
which we were unable to look at due to data limitations. For example, the role played by skills could
be captured only by variables denoting general education. Therefore, the LFS schedule needs to be
revised in order to enable the collection of information about the technical and vocational training of
all labour force participants. Some tests of cognitive and other work-oriented skills would also be
useful to find out whether general education and skills-development programmes are effective in
transferring work-oriented skills. Perhaps a special module included in the questionnaire every few
years may yield the necessary information in a cost-effective way. Meanwhile, the revision of the LFS
questionnaire in 2006 has given rise to a very high non-response rate to the question about the reasons
for not entering the labour force. As a result, we do not have information about a critical dimension of
non-participation, that is, what individuals perceive to be the reason why they do not engage in market
work. It would also be more useful if the question about the duration of unemployment were
reformulated to be open-ended, rather than closed with just three options as at present. If the
ILO DWT for South Asia and the Country Office for India xv
questionnaire can be revised to enable the collection of this information, it will help generate useful
insights about dimensions of unemployment and discouragement.
The data collecting authorities can also consider including two additional questions in the schedule,
first on the sources of information that people engaging in market work use to find out about job
opportunities, and second, their perceived satisfaction about their current jobs. The availability of this
information will enable more insightful analyses in the future about labour market issues that have
become critically important for the development process.