Gender effects of trade liberalization and structural change in China.

This paper investigates the impact of trade liberalization induced labor demand shocks on male and female employment in China. Combining data from firm and various population surveys over the period of 1990 to 2005, we relate prefectural city-level employment by gender to the exposure to tariff reductions on locally relevant imports and exports. Our empirical results show that import competition has kept more females and more young males in the workforce whereas export market access reinforced the withdrawal from the labor market of the youngest cohort (aged 15 to 25), while raising employment among older males. The gendered effects of trade liberalization are related to several channels, including the gendered responses of labor supply to changes in household income but also differential adjustments of firms by ownership, changes in sectoral segregation, trade induced technology upgrading, and competition induced reductions in discrimination. Our results link to the growing literature on the gender-specific effects of globalization.