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Women's Labour Force Participation and Socioeconomic Development: The Case of Peninsular Malaysia, 1957–1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Charles Hirschman  and
Akbar Aghajanian
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Extract

The changing role of women's economic activities in developing countries is a topic of particular importance, not only because women represent a significant resource of much underutilized labour in the non-household sector but also because women's activities are intimately tied to the structure of the family. Low levels of female participation in the labour force suggest that much of the potential human talent and skills in a society are restricted to household endeavours. For the objectives of both eliminating discrimination against women in employment and expanding the pool of human resources for development, there is a growing scientific and policy interest in the study of socioeconomic development and women's labour force participation. Of considerable interest is the relationship between women's economic roles and fertility. While the causal structure of this relationship is still an unresolved topic, there is a basic consensus that the transition from high to low fertility levels is closely intertwined with the changing social and economic roles of women.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1980 , pp. 30 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1980

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References

1 For a review of the recent literature on this topic, see McGrevey, William P. et at., The Policy Relevance of Recent Social Research on Fertility (Washington, D.C., 1974), pp. 20–23Google Scholar.

2 For an examination of the historical trend in the United States, see Durand, John D., The Labour Force in the United States, 1890-1960, (New York, 1968, original ed. 1948), pp. 23–28,Google Scholar and Oppenheimer, Valerie Kincade, The Female Labor Force in the United States, Population Monograph Series, No.5, (Berkeley, Cal., 1970), ch. 1.Google Scholar Durand concludes that one cannot make a consistent generalization about the trend in women's labour force participation of Western industrial nations — see Durand, John D., The Labor Force in Economic Development (Princeton, N.J., 1975), p. 123Google Scholar.

3 For instance, see Wilensky, H., “Women's Work: Economic Growth, Ideology and Social Structure”, Industrial Relations 7 (1965): 235–48, andGoogle ScholarCollver, H. and Langlois, E., “The Female Labor Force in Metropolitan Areas: An International Comparison”, Economic Development and Cultural Change 10 (1962): 367–85. The interpretation in these articles is not simply that women's labour force participation is a response to economic development, but that it is an important factorCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Durand, , The Labor Force in Economic Development, p. 131.Google Scholar This hypothesis was first introduced in Sinha, J. N., “Dynamics of Female Participation in Economic Activity in a Developing Economy”, United Nations World Population Conference, 1965Google Scholar WPC/285, Session A.5 (mimeo.).

5 Yousseff, Nadia Haggag, Women and Work in Developing Societies, Population Monograph Series, No.15, (Berkeley, Cal., 1974),Google Scholar ch. 2; also see studies cited in note 4.

6 Durand, , op. cit., p. 138.Google Scholar

7 Yousseff, , op. cit.Google Scholar

8 Malaysia, , Dept. of Statistics, 1970 Population and Housing Census of Malaysia: Community Groups, by Chander, R. (Kuala Lumpur, 1972), p. 45.Google Scholar

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10 Lim, David, Economic Growth and Development in West Malaysia, 1947-1970 (!Kuala Lumpur, 1973).Google Scholar

11 Hirschman, Charles, “Recent Urbanization Trends in Peninsular Malaysia”, Demography 13 (1976), Table 3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

12 Hirschman, Charles, Ethnic and Social Stratification in Peninsular Malaysia (Washington, D.C., 1975).Google Scholar

13 Jones, Gavin, “Female Participation in the Labour Force in a Plural Economy: The Malayan Example”, Malayan Economic Review 10 (1965): 61–82.Google Scholar

14 Fong, Monica, “Female Labor Force Participation in a Modernizing Society: Malaya and Singapore, 1921-1957”, Papers of the East-West Population Institute. No. 34. (Honolulu, 1975).Google Scholar

15 Federation of Malaya, Dept. of Statistics, 1957 Population Census of the Federation of Malaya: Report No.14, by Fell, H. (Kuala Lumpur, 1960).Google Scholar There are also a series of 1957 Census reports for each state.

16 The sample tape was constructed by systematically selecting every 50th household from the master file of 1970 Census of Peninsular Malaysia. The tape is available to academic researchers for specific research projects from the Chief Statistician, Dept. of. Statistics, Malaysia. The publications from the 1970 Census include several national and state level reports under the general title, 1970 Population and Housing Census of Malaysia.

17 For the 1957 Census, see United Nations, “Evaluation of the Population Census Data of Malaya”, United Nations Bulletin for Asia and the Far East 13, No. 2 (1962): 23–44,Google Scholar and for the 1970 Census, see Malaysia, Dept. of Statistics, An Interim Report on the Post-Enumeration Survey, (Kuala Lumpur, 1974)Google Scholar.

18 Federation of Malaya, Dept. of Statistics, op. cit., p. 24.Google Scholar

19 Jones, , op. cit., p. 68.Google Scholar

20 There was a sharp rise in the average age at marriage and a consequent decline in fertility among young women in all ethnic communities from 1957 to 1970. See Hirschman, Charles, “The Decline of Fertility in Peninsular Malaysia”, Unpublished paper, Dept. of Sociology, Duke University, 1978Google Scholar.

21 Second Malaysia Plan. 1971-1975 (Kuala Lumpur, 1971), p. 97.Google Scholar

22 Hirschman, Charles, “Net External Migration From Peninsular Malaysia, 1957 to 1970”, Malayan Economic Review 20 (1975): 38–54Google Scholar.