A longitudinal perspective of mothers' employment in Metro Cebu, the Philippines

Abstract

In Western societies, women's productive and reproductive roles are presumed to be incompatible. Women are therefore likely to be out of the labour market at crucial periods of their reproductive life cycle. In developing societies, however, women's fertility and work experiences have been more varied and there is no consensus on the incompatibility of mother and worker roles. Little is known about the life cycle dynamics of mothers' employment in these societies. An assumption extrapolated from modem to developing societies is that participation of women in the modem workforce will improve their lives. But particularly in low-income countries, some working women compromise their own welfare and that of their children by trying to combine domestic and labour-market activities. This study examines whether childbearing and childcare pose significant impediments to mothers' employment over the course of their reproductive life cycle, and what implications employment has for mothers' personal and family lives in urban Metro Cebu, the second largest metropolitan area in the Philippines. It uses panel data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey which collected information on 1,511 mothers from the time they were pregnant during the baseline survey in 1983 until 11 years thereafter. The data set enables the examination of fertility and employment status of mothers at four points in time corresponding to the 1983-84, 1985-86, 1991-9} and 199495 surveys. Fertility is measured in terms of pregnancy status, presence of children under two years of age, and parity at the time of survey; employment is measured as working or not working, and whether work was formal or informal, part-time or full-time. Mothers' employment is hypothesised to b~ influenced by fertility and a set of factors relating to the stages of th~ family life cycle, human capital, household resources and labour market conditions. It was found that mothers' work participation declined at the time of marriage and of pregnancy in 1983, but increased thereafter as mothers matured over their reproductive life cycle. Of mothers who worked at any given survey, at least eight in every ten worked in the informal sector. On average, mothers worked 42 hours per week. Nearly a quarter of Metro Cebu mothers worked consistently in all surveys. More than a third, however, did not work in 1983 but worked eventually in later surveys; three in every ten worked sporadically, but only one in ten did not work during any survey. The presence of very young children in the household was a persistent deterrent of maternal employment across all four surveys; so mothers who had completed childbearing in 1983 showed a propensity for consistent employment in all four surveys. The same is true of mothers who were older, had worked before the baseline survey, had a high level of education, below-average household income, or substitute caretakers in their households. Mothers from more affluent households or without work experience before 1983 were least likely to work during any of the surveys. Consistent work participation of mothers enhanced the economic well-being of their households. Mothers' income increased expenditure on children's education and household amenities, and enabled households to secure and repay loans. It also increased mothers' autonomy in household decision-making. Mothers' labour force participation showed no adverse effects on children's education: it did not prevent mothers from helping their children with homework and was not a reason for their failure to pass a grade in school. An adverse effect of mothers' work participation, however, was the considerable reduction in mothers' leisure. Show more