Women’s Labor Force Participation in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq : A Study of Social andPsychological Barriers

Women’s labor force participation in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is very low, at 14 percent.This paper investigates a number of social and psychological barriers to participation, using recent methods in themeasurement of social norms and cultural beliefs and primary data collected from all three governorates. Furthermore,since greater growth in employment generation is expected in the private sector, the paper explores women and men’sperceptions toward working in the private sector in detail. The findings show that while 70 percent of women and mensupport women’s participation in the private sector. Several challenges remain in both information about the sector, aswell as perceived risks and discrimination. More broadly, the findings show that traditional gender role expectationsmay still impede women’s labor force participation. Perceptions of common societal practices and beliefs ofother members from the same household are all correlated with women’s work. The paper explores additional mentalbarriers using a smaller sample of younger and more educated female job seekers, who are registered with a jobs agency,and finds that both perseverance in the job search process and trust and engagement with formal institutions areadditional behavioral barriers.