Impact of women’s reproductive health and empowerment on female labour force participation

Abstract The study aims to investigate the long and short-run impacts of women’s reproductive health and women’s empowerment on their economic opportunities in South Asia. The paper employs panel autoregressive distributed lag for eight South Asian countries from 1991 to 2021. The results reveal that awareness about contraceptives and the prevalence of prenatal care for pregnant women have a long-run and short-run positive relationship with female labour force participation (FLFP). These results reflect country-level patterns in which family planning, the use of modern contraceptives, and better health facilities for pregnant women enhance their economic opportunities. Additionally, female tertiary education has a long-run positive effect on FLFP, indicating that higher education, vocational training, and adequate skills support female’s entry into the workforce. Further, the study finds that the maternal mortality rate has a long-run positive relationship with FLFP. This phenomenon might be influenced by household coping mechanisms, wage increases due to labour shortages, and gender roles in a segmented labour market, which is extensively discussed in the paper. The study suggests that policymakers improve reproductive healthcare and increase female higher education to reduce gender inequality in the South Asian labour market.