1 Introduction
This paper is part of a programme of work being undertaken at the Treasury on labour force participation in New Zealand. It uses Census data to show the patterns of participation and non-participation among different groups of New Zealand women, and compares these with the patterns found in other OECD countries. These comparisons are intended to inform policy discussions, but it should be noted from the outset that differences in participation rates do not, in themselves, constitute an argument for or against measures to increase the labour force participation of women in New Zealand.
The focus of the paper is on women’s participation and non-participation in the labour force, rather than on the number of hours they work. In many places in the paper, however, labour force participants are divided into full-time workers, part-time workers and the unemployed, which gives some indication of the amount of time they work. A fuller consideration of the hours worked by New Zealand women, and by families as a whole, is given elsewhere, for example by Callister (2004, 2005a, 2005b).
The basic economic model of labour supply and the rationale for investigating women’s labour force participation are outlined in Section 2. This provides a background and a framework for the study. Section 3 briefly discusses the sources of data and some key definitions. Sections 4 and 5 lie at the heart of the paper. Section 4 is concerned with the participation of New Zealand women, namely how participation rates differ between women and men; how women’s participation has changed over recent decades; how it may change in the future; and what personal and family characteristics are associated with participation and non-participation amongst women. In particular, groups of women are distinguished according to their age, qualifications, the presence and age of children, and whether women are sole or partnered mothers. Section 5 compares the participation rates of women across OECD countries, and identifies groups of countries that are similar in their participation profiles. This section also tries to identify the key differences between women’s participation in New Zealand and their participation in other countries. Section 6 summarises and discusses the findings of this paper.
