Factors influence on female labour force participations in Sri Lanka

Abstract

(FLFP) in Sri Lanka using explanatory variables as age group, marital status, relationship to household head, religion, level of education, sector, province, number of dependants, literacy in English, currently attending to an educational institute in Sri Lanka and compare this results that for male labour force participation (MLFP). The necessary data was obtained from Sri Lanka Quarterly Labour Force Survey 2012 (QLFS 2012) conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS). Full of The original data set is used for this study consists with 62,299 person records in the data file. The statistical analyses used were bi- variant Chi-square test and binary logistic models. It was found that FLFP is significantly lower than that of MLFP. Low levels of labour force participation was mainly among females who currently engage in studies, who have low levels of education, who are illiterate in English, who have more household responsibilities, place of residence is urban or not in the Western province and who are Muslims. The study recommends that improving human capital, expanding more opportunities for female and providing facilities to working female such as reliable welfare centers for their dependants will support to increase female labour force participation in the country. In literature there are lots of micro level studies on related subjects which were done in other countries but found very few for Sri Lanka. Therefore, findings of this study will be very useful to see the female labour force conditions in the country. The results of this study confirm some previous findings and thus the results can be effectively used for various levels of planning.