Impact of Cultural Factors on Earnings of Working Women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Abstract

There has been a substantial increase in women’ work participation in the recent years. As a result, their contribution to house hold income has increased. But there are several cultural factors which are considered to be operational in explaining earnings of working women across countries and regions. For gaining knowledge of these factors, the current study used human capital variables (schooling and experience) along with some important cultural factors like family size, number of children, marital status of working woman and restrictions of permission for doing job as explanatory variables. Primary data were collected from ten (10) randomly selected districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province of Pakistan from 789 respondents in the year 2017 through a comprehensive questionnaire. After conducting the diagnostic tests, the Mincer wage function was estimated through Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression technique. Results of regression analysis showed that earnings, on average, rise 9.6 percent with each additional year of education and 6.1 percent with each additional year of experience. The working women earnings showed an increase of 5.9 percent annually if there are no restrictions of permission for doing job. Family size showed a significant negative impact (1.9 percent) on working women earnings. Marital status and number of working women own children have an insignificant negative impact (1.5 and 1.6 percent respectively) on female earnings. It is concluded that cultural factors have an important impact on earnings of working women in KP province of Pakistan.