Globalized markets, globalized information, and female employment: accounting for regional differences in 30 OECD countries

Accounting for within-country spatial differences is a neglected aspect in many cross-country comparisons. This paper highlights this importance in this empirical analysis of the impact of a country’s degree of informational and economic globalization on female employment in 30 OECD countries, using a micro pseudo panel of 110’000 persons derived from five waves of repeated cross-sections from the World Values Survey, 1981 to 2008. I conjecture that informational globalization affects societal values and perceived economic opportunities, while economic globalization impacts actual economic opportunities. A traditional cross-country analysis suggests that the informational dimension of globalization but not the economic one increases the probability of employment for women – contradicting the Becker (1957)-hypothesis of international competition mitigating discrimination in employment. However, accounting for sub-national regional gender heterogeneity reveals that the impact of worldwide information exchange works rather at the regional level, while economic globalization (trade) increases female employment in general.