Figure 4. Job Quality Measure among the Wage Employed, by Industry <!-- Start of picture text --> Income Benefits Stability Working Conditions Share of Wage Employees<br>4.00 100%<br>90%<br>80%<br>3.00 0.68 0.61 0.59 70%<br>2.001.00 0.950.80 0.870.74 0.850.71 0.500.710.50 0.450.730.47 0.490.660.50 0.430.650.40 0.490.610.40 0.480.540.26 0.520.490.22 60%50%40%30%20%<br>0.87 0.88 0.87 0.81 0.86 0.82 0.80 0.74 0.81 0.62 10%<br>0.00 0%<br>JQM<br>Share of Wage Employees<br><!-- End of picture text --> _Source:_ Estimates based on multiple labor force and household surveys (see annex table A1). _Note:_ The figure shows JQMs by industry among the wage employed only and the share of the wage employed among all workers. These are simple averages across 37 countries in the sample (Panama, Philippines, and Thailand were excluded because they do not have information for one or more dimensions). The average of the stability dimension in public administration is not equal to one (which could be the case given that all public administration workers have a formal employer and therefore have stability according to the definition) because some countries do not have information on formality among private sector workers, and, thus, the formality indicator is not included to calculate the stability dimension in these countries.

Despite considerable progress in recent years, gender disparities persist across developing countries. Women now represent 40 percent of the global labor force, 43 percent of the world’s agriculture labor force, and more than half the world’s university students. Over the past quarter century, women have joined the labor market in increasing numbers. Between 1980 and 2009, the global female labor force participation rate increased from 50.2 percent to 51.8 percent, while the male rate fell from 82.0 percent to 77.7 percent (World Bank 2012). While the rise in female labor force participation is a significant development, it only represents employment or intent to obtain a job. Disaggregating the JQM by gender would help inform the size of the gender gaps in the quality of employment.

Figure 5 presents the JQM for wage employment disaggregated by gender. The results show that job quality is, on average, similar between men and women. However, the JQM decomposition by the four dimensions reveals that women fare especially well in the working conditions dimension, while men fare much better in the income dimension. In particular, men earn more than women even though the selection into wage employment is lower among men than women. On average across countries, 49 percent of men workers are wage employees, whereas this is the case among 43 percent of women workers. Although this <mark>statistic conceals substantial variation across countries, the data show that, in most countries (27 in 40), the selection into wage employment is higher among women than among men</mark> .

Literature that explores the selection of women into the labor force generally suggests that there are many economic, social, and institutional constraints that shape women’s labor force participation, and these constraints vary across countries. However, in focusing on selection into paid employment versus self-employment, the literature consistently finds that the women who enter into paid employment possess characteristics that make them more likely to find quality work. For instance, career-oriented 18