is possible that FLFP rates drive some of the correlations and not necessarily the other way around, making it very difficult to exclude “reverse-causality” biases. This would make it difficult to interpret the estimated coefficient as a causal impact. Take for instance the fact that certain locations have a larger number of jobs suitable to women’s competencies and skills. This could raise women’s bargaining power within the household and thus impact their degree of participation in household decision making (Majlesi, 2015). We mitigate these concerns by controlling for a wide set of observable variables at the individual, household, and municipality level. We also show the robustness of our findings to the inclusion of department fixed effect. We minimize concerns of reverse causality by exploring lagged values when data is available. Despite all efforts, our findings should be interpreted cautiously. Ultimately, the analysis makes a strong case for the simultaneous importance of the four set of proposed factors –individual and household characteristics, social norms and attitudes towards women, social policies, and local labor market factors-- as drivers of the current levels of FLFP in Guatemala.

Our results show that, between 2002 and 2018, FLFP increased 5.7 percentage points, from an average of 26% to 32% nationwide. At the same time, we observe an increase in women’s level of education, a reduction in fertility (as proxied by the number of children ages 0-12 living in the household), and an increase in the share of services in total employment . These changes explain part of the increase in FLFP over time. However, a large component remains unexplained. This suggests that factors not included in the model, such as social norms or attitudes towards women in the society or public policies, could be important drivers of changes in FLFP over time. Our analysis of the within-country variation exploring 2018 data is fully aligned with this conclusion.

The cross-section findings show very interesting, strong correlations across local social norms and FLFP. FLFP is higher when women participate in household decision making, and it is smaller when the rate of intrafamily violence against women is higher. We also find a positive association between FLFP and aspirations on local gender parity. There is also strong evidence that public policy shapes women’s incentives to work: a larger number of local preprimary centers per child or local public investments in education or health are positively associated with FLFP for mothers and women living with elderly. Road accessibility is positively correlated with FLFP, although not statistically significant, after accounting for other differences.

In alignment with the findings in the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, the results exploring the within-country variation in FLFP reinforce the importance of individual and household characteristics and local labor markets. While there is a strong positive within-country relation between FLFP and education, marriage is negatively associated. FLFP is also smaller among mothers, with larger impacts for those with younger children. Presence of the mother or motherin-law in the same household, increases FLFP, suggesting that additional help with domestic tasks, 6