Employment Responses to EU Food Safety Regulations: A Gendered Perspective

In many developing countries, women constitute the bulk of agricultural sector’s workers and might be susceptible to job loss or gain in the presence of regulations among which are food safety regulations. Thus, this study investigates the gender implications of EU food safety regulations on agricultural labour market between 1995 and 2012 using a panel data of 90 developing countries. In addition, it also investigates how the existing gender-specific obstacles and opportunities affect women’s ability to engage effectively in the agricultural sector and benefit from such regulations. Our results show that in many of the countries considered, women are disproportionately disadvantaged in the agricultural sector not only because of the effect of the food regulations but also because of their unequal access to opportunities such as gender inequality in both secondary and tertiary schooling as well as low quality of time-saving infrastructure which make them less available for gainful employment. However, the near gender parity achieved in primary education increases their agricultural employment share. Thus, investment in infrastructure that reduces women care burden, and building the educational capacity of women could work to remove these gender-specific obstacles and enable women to respond to employment opportunities.