Gender Differences

Self-employment is reemerging in modern society. Many scholars attribute this trend to globalization, flexible employment, and the rise of female labor force participation. However, such observations tend to be constrained by oversimplification and insufficient micro level data. Although women's share of total self-employment significantly increased during the last decades of twentieth century in many post-industrial economies, one of the unanswered questions is whether the mechanism of becoming self-employed differs between women and men and thus results in different outcomes. This study uses event history analysis to examine the effects of individual and structural factors in determining an individual's opportunities for entering into and exiting from self-employment. The author shows that labor market flexibility has a significant impact on people's career choices. In addition, this study also compares earnings and job satisfaction between self-employed and wage workers. The book is addressed to professtionals and policy makers in developing countries. It is also directed towards researchers in stratification, labor market, comparative study, and globalization.