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In this piece I comment on Nancy's Folbre's David Gordon Memorial Lecture for the 2012 Allied Social Science Associations meetings, focusing on the strengths of how she combines Marxian sensibilities with neoclasscial analytical tools, the advantages of her proposed definition of political economy, and extending her call for developing a macroeconomic approach to human capital.JEL codes: B50; E11; E24

ABSTRACTWhile women's share of employment has risen in many countries over the last two decades, gender job segregation has worsened, with women increasingly excluded from 'good' jobs in the industrial sector. In this article, the determinants of gender job segregation are assessed using panel data for a broad set of developing countries covering the period 1991–2015. The effect of gender job segregation on all workers, via the labour share of income, is also analysed. The results identify two major contributors to gender job segregation — the rising capital/labour ratio and the ratio of female/male labour force participation rates — indicative of 'crowding' and exclusion as economies move up the industrial ladder. The analysis further indicates that the crowding of women into lower quality jobs has a negative effect on workers as a whole by dampening the labour share of income. Those processes are influenced by global and macroeconomic conditions and policies that have circumscribed the expansion of high‐quality jobs relative to labour supply, intensifying competition for 'good' jobs and weakening labour's bargaining power.

Latin America experienced a decline in household income inequality in the 2000s, in sharp contrast to growing inequality in other regions of the world. This has been attributed to macroeconomic policy, social spending, and increased returns to education. This paper explores this issue from a gender perspective by econometrically evaluating how changes in economic structure and policy have impacted gendered employment and unemployment rates, as well as gender inequality in these variables, using country-level panel data for a set of 18 Latin American countries between 1990 and 2010. Three variables stand out as having consistent gender-equalizing effects in the labor market: social spending, minimum wages, and public investment. Less important or consistent were the effects of external factors (such as terms of trade), economic structure, and GDP growth.

In this article we estimate the growth elasticity of employment by gender for 160 countries during 1990-2010. We then econometrically model these elasticities to draw out the structural contexts in which gendered employment outcomes respond differently to growth, including measures of economic structure, demographic change, macroeconomic stability, global stance and policy, and income distribution and institutional development. Our investigation shows that the relative size of the service sector and the ratio of female to male labor force participation are key determinants of differences in employment elasticities by gender, creating higher elasticities for women than men. We also find that the terms of global integration, as measured by the current account balance, growth in the terms of trade, and the share of foreign direct investment in investment, are important for both female and male employment elasticities. JEL Classification: O5, F4, B54