PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Feicheng Wang
AU  - Krisztina Kis-Katos
AU  - Minghai Zhou
TI  - Import Competition and the Gender Employment Gap in China
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.1220-11399R3
DP  - 2022 Jul 11
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 1220-11399R3
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2022/07/06/jhr.1220-11399R3.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2022/07/06/jhr.1220-11399R3.full
AB  - Combining data from China’s population and firm censuses between 1990 and 2005, this paper relates prefecture-level employment by gender to the regionalized measure of exposure to tariff reductions. We find that increasing import competition kept more females in the workforce, reducing an otherwise growing gender employment gap in the long run. These dynamics were present both in local economies as a whole and among private firms in the formal industrial sector. The gendered employment effects of trade-induced competitive pressures can be attributed to an expansion of femaleintensive industries, a reduction in gender discrimination, and technology upgrades through computerization.