women. To test whether this pattern holds across South Asian countries, we first constructed a comparable indicator for education attainment<sup>9</sup> . We determined four education categories: little or no schooling (Illiterate), some completion of grades 1 to 5 (Primary), some completion of grades 6 to 12/ A levels (High School), and completion of higher education such as college, vocational training, or graduate school (Above High School).

In Figure 9, we observe that likelihood of male employment remains roughly constant across all education categories in most countries (the exceptions are Bangladesh and India). In Pakistan, we find a “U-shaped” relationship between female education attainment and employment rate: the share of women with little or no schooling employed in 2015 was 30.2 percent, which drops to 13.1 percent for women with at least some secondary level education and then increases again to 26.3 percent for those with some tertiary education. Even for women in the highest education category, the employment rate is 62 percentage points lower than that of male counterparts.

In Sri Lanka and Bhutan, women’s employment likelihood is almost the same for those with low or moderate education, but increases sharply for women with tertiary education. The disparity between male and female employment rates falls significantly with higher levels of education, from around 30 percentage points for the lowest education category to 9 percentage points for those with the most education.

In Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and India, the U-shaped pattern seems to hold, although in these last two countries the same pattern holds for males, while in Afghanistan the male employment rate falls with education.

# 4. **Conclusions**

This paper analyzes employment across South Asian countries to shed light on the high gender employment gap in the region. After standardizing definitions of labor-related variables across different survey instruments, we compare employment by gender across countries and time by looking at different population age groups, economic sectors, location (urban or rural), type of employment contract, and institutional structure to explore factors that could explain the gap.

The aggregate figures show that since 2011 employment rates have been relatively stable in all countries except for Bangladesh, where the gap between men and women’s employment has widened. In fact, in Sri Lanka and Pakistan the different recall periods used in different surveys do not significantly affect employment rates between men and women. In Bhutan, on the other hand, using a yearly recall period rather than a weekly one does generate a difference of up to 20 percentage points, depending on the specific year. In Nepal, Afghanistan, and India, our results do not lead to definite conclusions.

> 9While the surveys for Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Nepal had more precise data on education attainment (completion of each individual grade from 1 to 12), the data for Pakistan was not as detailed and contained fewer categories (primary, secondary, etc.) instead having completion of individual grades). Therefore, the education indicators in other countries were adapted to be comparable to those in the Pakistan survey.

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