ABSTRACT
The most significant change that has occurred for women throughout the developing Asian region since the early 1980s has been the large increase in labour force participation rates, which has only recently been followed by a smaller decline in the early years of this century. This parallels the worldwide pattern of increasing work participation of women, but the Asian experience has been somewhat different, in that (unlike, say, Latin America) the increasing work participation of women was part of – and even led – the general employment boom created by export-led economic expansion. It has been suggested (Horton 1995) that over a longer period the pattern of labour force participation among women in various Asian countries shows a U-shaped curve, first decreasing with urbanization (as women stop working on family farms and on other household production activities) and then rising again once the demographic transition is completed. Clearly, however, what happened in many countries of Asia was a sharper and more decisive process than this more gradual long-term tendency.
