Key Messages

CHAPTER 2

Do Apparel Exports Support a “Quiet Revolution”?

Key Messages

• This report investigates five performance indicators to evaluate whether there are signs of a jobs-to-careers transition for women in seven middle-income apparel exporting countries. • The five performance indicators are (a) investment in human capital (notably, education); (b) marriage and labor force participation; (c) lifetime labor force participation; (d) earnings gaps between men and women; and (e) distribution of employment across occupations and industries.

• Even though countries such as Sri Lanka and Vietnam provide enough access to education to activate women’s career paths in clerical and managerial occupations, the presence of women in such positions does not by itself signal that the transition has occurred.

• A career pathway that rewards labor market experience over education might still be feasible for women in countries with insufficient incentives for—and cultural norms against—continued studying. In Sri Lanka, however, women must have more than lower-secondary education to have better returns than males, although the wage gap is narrowing.