Participação feminina na população economicamente ativa no Brasil: alternativas para projeções de níveis e padrões

Abstract

This paper deals with three aspects of female labor force participation in Brazil. It aims to review different macro level approaches with the purpose of informing sounded projections of female labor force participation profiles in Brazil In the first part we perform period analysis of levels and patterns of female labor force participation based on a comparative study of regional patterns. The analysis shows that in the case of women the profiles can present several possible patterns. The other two parts are developed to deal with the main aspects determining the Brazilian pattern and the trends in the profile. The second part deals with the impact of marital status and fertility in the profiles. The analysis by marital status suggests that married women increased their valuation of labor force participation between 1970 and 1986. The analysis of labor force participation and fertility suggests that fertility declined between 1970 and 1986 in both groups (participating and non-participating women). On the other hand, female labor force participation increased in both high and low fertility segments of married women. The conclusion is that an independent factor may be affecting both fertility and labor force participation, leading to a decline in the degree of incompatibility between these two factors. The third part deals with the labor force participation profiles fin the period and cohort by concatenating the 1976 to 1990 PNAD. The major finding was the development of a crude technique that can predict future participation profiles from longitudinal data at the cohort level.