ABSTRACT
By April 2010, 186 countries of the United Nations General Assembly had adopted the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. By signing the Convention, each member country signalled its willingness to enact policy and necessary legislation to eliminate gender-based discrimination. The Convention covers discrimination in all its manifestations, including discrimination in labour markets. Despite the existence and wide formal acceptance of this convention, it is well known that considerable differences remain in the terms upon which men and women participate in labour markets around the world. Segregated labour market experiences have been so consistently linked with gender inequalities that detailed analysis and explanation of trends have formed the basis of many research programmes (Webb 1891; Rubery and Fagan 1995; Hakim 1996; England et al. 2001; Charles and Grusky 2004). Differences may be the basis for inequalities, as has been conventionally assumed, or the extent of inequalities may be dependent upon the context (Blackburn et al. 2000; Semyonov and Jones 1999), but all have agreed that understanding the segregated patterns is important in relation to understanding issues of gender equality. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions (Anker 1988), most research has focused on understanding the phenomenon in developed countries. Research into the nature of the trends has been much less extensive in developing countries for a whole array of reasons, including lack of data.
