Informal Employment In Chinese Women Study

Informal employment has been the international research topic recent years. Thedata shows, in developing countries, there are more than half of the nonfarm workersengaged in the informal employment. Also informal employment has been developedrapidly during the process of China’s economic transition and structural adjustment.Informal employment is known as a "sponge" to absort employment and become theimportant way to solve the problem of employment during China’s economicdevelopment.Women are overrepresented in the informal employment which is also to be seen aslow quality of employement. Informal employed workers usually earn less thanformal employed workers, however the gender wage gap in the informal employmentis much higher than that in the formal employment, so informal employed womenworkers earn least in the labor market. Informal employed women workers not onlytake disadvantage in terms of economic income, but also have little or no security ofemployment and lock of social protection and social welfare. The fact that women areoverrepresented in the informal employment will become the constraints for femaleself development, and also means the marginalization of women in the labor market,thus reduces the possibility of upward mobility for women. Women overrepresentedin the informal employment is not only a phenomenon in labor force market, but alsocorrelated with women’s issues, poverty, and public welfare. So the study of informalemployment in women is indispensable.There are onsiderable research on informal employement since the emergence anddevelopment of informal employment in China, but studies about female informalemployment have not been due attention though informal employed women are alarge group of informal employment, and discussion from the perspective of genderdifferences are lacking. What is the development trend of informal employment forwomen? What are women’s characteristics in informal employment? Why women aremore likely to be informal employed workers? How to measure the gender wage gapin informal employment? Why informal employed women workers have lowcoverage of social protection systems? All these questions are worthy for our in-depthdiscussion, so we can form the relatively perfect system for the study of femaleinformal employment.From the perspective of gender differences, this paper investigate female informalemployment by econometric method and economics related theory. Based on macroand micro statistics, this paer first shows the developing process and present situationfor female informal employment in China. Then, on the basis of the empirical analysis,this paper tries to explore the factors affecting the women’s informal employmentchoice. Low income and low degree of social security are two important features ofinformal employment, so this paper will use micro econometric methods to explor thedeterminant of income, social security participation. Last, this paper analyses thegender differences in informal employment.The main conclusions are as follows:Women are over-represented in informal types of employment compared to their male counterparts in China based on both macro and micro data. Personalcharacteristics, family characteristics and household factors can affect whetherwomen engage in informal employment, but if a series of factors are controled, suchas personal characteristics, family characteristics, area etc, the probability of womenworkers engaged in informal employment is still higher than that of male. Thisindicates that women’s informal employment choice is also influenced by otherfactors, and these factors may include gender discrimination, etc.Women workers are at a disadvantage even within the informal employment. Theoccupational gender segregation exists in the informal employment which formed theso-called "women industry "," women career". The gender segregation will haveinfluence on the income level for women workers.The wage differentials between mlae and female in informal employment areobvious and the gender wage gap is widering. On the other hand, the gender wagedisparity can’t be completely explained by the gender differences in personalcharacteristics, family characteristics, job characteristics and regional characteristics,which indicates that the phenomenon of unequal pay for men and women exists in theinformal employment.The coverage of social security for informal employed women workers is verylow. The institutional factors, such as whether having the urban household registrationis the most important factor if female workers want to participate in social pensionand medical insurance. However, some non-insstitutional factors, such as age, income,occupation, type of informal employment also have influence on women’sparticipation in social insurance. Informal employed women workers have lowpossibility of social security than men, but the gender difference in social security isusually explained by personal characteristics, income level, profession, gendersegregation.