Five measures across 174 countries, from 1990 to 2024. The map opens on the participation gap rather than the female rate, for reasons set out below.
Source: International Labour Organization modelled estimates, via the World Bank. Participation counts anyone aged 15 or over who is working or actively seeking work. The map opens on the participation gap — male minus female participation in percentage points — because the female rate alone is easy to misread: it is often high in the poorest countries, where subsistence agriculture counts as employment and not working is not an option. The gap is the clearer measure of exclusion.
Female labour force participation is the figure usually quoted, and taken alone it misleads.
Participation is frequently highest in the poorest countries. Subsistence agriculture counts as employment, informal work counts as employment, and not working is not an option. It then falls as countries industrialise and paid work moves into factories and offices that women are excluded from — before rising again as services expand and education spreads. Economists call this the U-shaped relationship, and it means a low female participation rate can indicate either poverty or prosperity.
The gap between male and female participation avoids that. Where both men and women work in subsistence agriculture, the gap is small. Where women are excluded from a formal labour market men have access to, the gap is large — regardless of income level.
Morocco records a gap of 48.5 percentage points: 19.8% of women in the labour force against 68.3% of men. Norway records 7.1 points. That comparison is meaningful in a way the raw rates are not.
Participation gap — male minus female participation, in percentage points. The clearest single measure of exclusion from the labour market.
Female participation — the headline rate, included because it is what most sources report and readers will want to find it.
Male participation — necessary context. It varies less between countries than the female rate, which is itself informative.
Share of the labour force — women as a proportion of all workers. Reaches around 45 to 48% where participation is near parity; falls below 25% where it is not.
Vulnerable employment — own-account workers and contributing family workers as a share of employed women. This is the measure that distinguishes having work from having secure work. In several countries with respectable participation rates, the great majority of employed women are in unpaid family labour or precarious self-employment.
These are modelled estimates. The ILO harmonises national labour force surveys and models the gaps, so figures are comparable across countries but not identical to national statistics. Countries with infrequent surveys have more modelling in their numbers.
Informal work is inconsistently captured. Definitions of employment vary in how they treat unpaid family labour, seasonal agricultural work and home-based production — all disproportionately done by women. Female participation is more likely to be undercounted than male.
Unpaid care work is entirely absent. None of these measures counts childcare, elder care or domestic labour, which globally women perform at roughly three times the rate of men. A country can show high female participation while women carry a double burden the statistics do not see.
The trend matters. Use the year buttons. Some gaps have narrowed substantially since 1990; others have widened. The hover panel gives each country’s change directly.
Related work:
Data from International Labour Organization modelled estimates, via the World Bank.