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Paper short abstract:

This paper takes a non-traditional angle to the polarised rural-urban dichotomy by studying the effects of networks on labour force participation outcomes of women living in areas that fit neither the rural nor the urban profiling; the slums of Cairo.

Paper long abstract:

The MENA region has some of the lowest Female labour force participation (FLFP) rates in the world. The effect of unpaid care work as an explanatory variable has been rapidly gaining attention, highlighting that the opportunity cost of participating in the labour force is higher for women given their care responsibilities. Sociology literature also addresses the importance of social networks in allowing women to balance paid and unpaid work. While there is acknowledgment that this relationship differs between urban and rural women, the traditional polarised view of the rural-urban distinction leads populations that do not fit either profile to be excluded in research and consequently in policy design. A lot can be learnt about the relation between networks and women’s outcomes by investigating the gradients within traditional dichotomies. A good example of such populations are the slums of Cairo.

This paper analyses labour force surveys along with qualitative interviews to map networks and their effect on FLFP, a relation that’s difficult to determine accurately through numbers alone. We find that women living in urban slums face similar constraints to rural women (excluded from formal institutions, job opportunities and subject to greater unequal gender distribution of unpaid care work), but yet do not have access to the coping mechanisms of neither rural women (strong social network to rely on) nor urban women (quality care substitutes). This combination drives women to work in precarious daily-wage jobs to ensure flexibility to deal with care responsibilities, stressing the importance of social networks on FLFP.