Exploring the Interplay of Female Entrepreneurship, Employment, and Family Dynamics in Economic Development

This thematic collection brings together four research papers that explore the complex relationships between female economic activity, family dynamics, and social well-being, examining their influence on social and economic well-being in diverse geographic and socio-economic contexts. The collection covers various geographical regions and time periods, offering insights into how gender roles and economic participation interact in diverse contexts. Collectively, these papers address critical questions about the impact of female entrepreneurship, labor market participation, and family-related policies on broader social and economic outcomes.

The scope of the collection spans different methodologies and approaches, but all focus on the intersection of gender and economic development.
One paper investigates the link between female entrepreneurship and happiness in the ASEAN region, highlighting the role of women in fostering economic growth and well-being in emerging economies. Using a panel data model with a sophisticated methodological approach, it reveals that female entrepreneurship significantly contributes to happiness across ASEAN countries. This study highlights the potential of female-led businesses in enhancing well-being, underscoring the importance of policies supporting women in entrepreneurship, especially in emerging economies. The focus on gender development in the context of happiness contributes to a growing body of literature on gender equity and economic empowerment.
Another paper examines the employment decisions of mothers in post-socialist Poland, showing how women navigate the challenges of balancing work and family in a rapidly changing economy. This research uncovers the strong determination among Polish women to balance motherhood with paid employment, despite increasing challenges. The paper provides valuable insights into the social and cultural factors that influence women’s labor force participation during periods of economic transformation.

The third study analyzes the effects of Poland’s Family 500+ benefit on female labor market participation, revealing how family policies can shape women’s economic choices and labor force engagement. By analyzing macro data from 2016 to 2019, this research highlights the unintended consequences of the child benefit policy, which led to a stagnation in female labor force participation and an increase in economic inactivity, particularly among mothers with young children. This paper raises important questions about the design of family benefits and their implications for women’s labor market engagement.
The final paper revisits the well-documented relationship between female labor force participation and fertility in developed countries, applying a novel statistical approach to uncover long-term trends in the OECD. It employs a unique statistical approach to decompose the relationship into time-series and cross-sectional effects, offering new insights into the persistence of a negative trend in labor force participation and fertility rates. The study provides a nuanced understanding of the complex dynamics between family planning and women’s participation in the workforce in highly developed economies.

Together, these studies emphasize the importance of gender in understanding economic outcomes, highlighting how social policies, cultural contexts, and economic transitions affect women’s roles in the labor market and entrepreneurship. The findings from these papers have wide-reaching implications for policymakers aiming to create inclusive economic policies that promote gender equity, enhance well-being, and support sustainable development. By examining the interplay of gender, work, and well-being, the insights of this collection contributes valuable knowledge to ongoing discussions about women’s economic empowerment, labor force participation, and overall happiness across different regions and its critical role in societal progress. They share a common theme of investigating how gender-related policies, cultural norms, and economic transitions influence women’s participation in entrepreneurship and the labor market.

The Relationship between Fertility and Female Participation in the Labour Force in OECD Countries 2000–2020: It Is (Again) Negative

The cross-sectional association between female labour force participation rates and fertility in developed countries shifted from negative to positive during the 1980s. Ever since then, researchers have applied different statistical approaches; therefore, the present study re-evaluates the results by applying a distinct strategy to the data from 2000 to 2020 for 32 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Specifically, the data analysis discussed here implemented the so-called „unified“ model, thereby extending the analysis beyond the limitations of the fixed effects (FE) method; namely, by decomposing coefficients within (time-series) and between (cross-sectional) countries‘ effects, the study increased the explanatory power of our statistical model on the relation between fertility level and female labour force participation rate. Eventually, the selected statistical approach has shown the potential to offer a better interpretation of results in comparison to previous studies. Finally, this study confirmed the persistence of a negative trend in a time-series association between labour force participation and fertility.

Published online: 2023

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The Family 500+ benefit and changes in female employment in Poland

This paper investigates the relationship between the implementation of the Family 500+ benefit, changes in female employment and female economic inactivity. The analysis is based on macro data and is focused on the years 2016–2019. To examine the relationship, this study uses decomposition of the employment-to-population ratio change into labour supply and unemployment components, analysis of changes in the structure of nonparticipants and the shift-share method. Considering that the reaction to the child benefit may differ across age groups, this study found that since the introduction of the Family 500+ benefit, the employment-to-population ratio for women aged 25–39 (the most likely age group to be raising children and therefore to receive the benefit) stagnated, their labour force participation rate decreased and the percentage of nonparticipants due to family and household responsibilities increased.

Published online: 2023

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Motives for Combining Motherhood with Employment: Evidence for Medium and Highly Educated Polish Women Around the EU Accession

This article provides insights into employment decisions of mothers and mothers-to-be in a post-socialist Poland around the entry to the EU. Previous studies for this country continuously pointed to a strong determination among mothers to be employed during the economic transformation, despite increasing obstacles to combining paid work with childrearing over the 1990s. We analyse in-depth interviews to explore women’s motives to work for pay. We investigate how these motives are related to women’s childbearing experiences and intentions. Our analyses show that motherhood was central in women’s lives at this point in Polish history, but females sought to combine it with employment. We also find that women’s perceptions about their ability to balance work and motherhood were strongly related to the meanings that they attached to paid work.

Published online: 2021

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How Does Female Entrepreneurship Affect Happiness?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the correlation between female entrepreneurship and happiness within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region. The study uses a panel data model with two independent variables measuring female entrepreneurship and five control variables measuring the determinants of happiness. The method used for analysis is the panel fixed effects of the method of moments quantile regression (MM-QR) to examine data from nine ASEAN countries between 2006 and 2021. MM-QR can capture the location and scale of the conditional distribution of the dependent variable, making it suitable for studying the heterogeneous effects of female entrepreneurship on happiness across happiness quantiles. This approach controls for unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity, reducing omitted variable bias in cross-sectional studies. The MM-QR approach is rigorous and robust for analysing the complex relationship between female entrepreneurship and happiness in ASEAN countries. The main contribution of this study is to shed light on the relationship between female entrepreneurship and happiness, which reinforces and supports comprehensive development in emerging countries. The findings suggest that policymakers and practitioners can benefit from supporting female entrepreneurship by implementing policies and programs that provide access to education, training, mentorship, and financing. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of the gender development index (GDI) as a determinant of happiness in ASEAN countries.

Published online: 2023

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