Final: What Drives Women in the Workforce?
The association between female employment rate and the urban rate, democratization
Emily McCormick, Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A.
The rights of women, including strides made in the workforce, have rapidly changed within the past century, yet the rights of women to work differ around the world. In what types of countries does female employment thrive?
Does a country with a more urban population also have more women in the workforce?
Does a country with a higher polity score, that is, a higher level of democratization, also have more women in the workforce?
Female employment rate was grouped as FemGroup1 (less than 30%), FemGroup2 (30%-45%), FemGroup3 (45%-60%) and FemGroup4 (greater than 60%). There were 111 null values, representing 38 percent of the data set.
Urban rate was grouped as Urban1 (less than 30%), Urban2 (30%-45%), Urban3 (45%-60%), Urban 4 (60%-75%) and Urban5 (greater than 75%). There were 81 null values, representing 28 percent of the data set.
As the polity score is a score that could be considered a categorical variable, this data was not grouped in any way.
The univariate procedure was run for female employment rate, urban rate and polity score:
The mean for the female employment rate is 47.55%, with a standard deviation of 14.63.
The mean for the urban rate is 57.14%, with a standard deviation of 24.02.
The mean for the polity score is 3.72, with a standard deviation of 6.3.
H0: The female employment rate has no association with the urban rate.
H1: There is an association between the female employment rate and the urban rate.
As this hypothesis requires the analysis of two quantitative variables, the data was examined using the Pearson Correlation Co-Efficient. Is there be a strong correlation or a weak correlation between the two variables, female employment and the urban rate?
This was the Pearson Correlation procedure for my two data-managed variables, Urban and FemGroup:
The correlation co-efficient is just over 0.41, with a p-value of less than .0001, making the relationship statistically significant. With a value of 0.41, which is closer to 0 than it is to 1, this does not indicate a strong linear relationship.
To ensure that I did not overly-manage my data, I ran the Pearson Correlation for the original, ungrouped data: the urban rate and female employment rate.
Again, the p-value is .0001, and the correlation co-efficient is even closer to zero, at -0.30298; again, this does not indicate a strong linear relationship.
The scatter plot supports the conclusion that the female employment rate is not associated with the urban rate:
H0: The female employment rate has no association with the polity score.
H1: There is an association between the female employment rate and the polity score.
As this hypothesis requires the analysis of a quantitative and categorical variable, the data was examined using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Will there be a strong correlation or a weak correlation between the two variables, female employment and the polity score?
With a p-value of 0.068, along with an examination of the means of female employment at each level of polity score, there does not seem to be a relationship - negative or positive - between female employment rate and the polity score.
A look at a box plot graph confirms that there is no association between the female employment rate and the polity score:
The ANOVA procedure requires a post-hoc test. The DUNCAN post-hoc test further confirms the lack of an association between the two variables, female employment rate and polity score.
Despite my expectations, there does not seem to be an association between urban rate and female employment nor between the polity score and female employment.
The Gapminder set suffers from many gaps in the data, making a good analysis of these factors difficult.
Female employment is a complex puzzle. Many women make the choice to stay at home, which could have little to do with where they live or how democratic the country may be. Perhaps a better indicator would be income per gender, to measure how much women are earning, or perhaps determining a level of employment, measuring blue collar versus white collar among men and women. Education levels could also contribute to a study of the progress women make in the workforce.
libname mydata "/courses/u_coursera.org1/i_1006328/c_5333" access=readonly;
DATA new; set mydata.gapminder_pds;
IF FEMALEEMPLOYRATE= . THEN FemGroup=0; /*Category for missing data*/
ELSE IF FEMALEEMPLOYRATE LE 30.00 THEN FemGroup=1;/*LowFemEmployment*/
ELSE IF FEMALEEMPLOYRATE LE 45.00 THEN FemGroup=2;/*MidFemEmployment*/
ELSE IF FEMALEEMPLOYRATE LE 60.00 THEN FemGroup=3; /*MidHighFemEmployment*/
ELSE IF FEMALEEMPLOYRATE GT 60.00 THEN FemGroup=4; /*HighFemEmployment*/
IF urbanrate= . THEN Urban=0; /*Category for missing data*/
ELSE IF urbanrate LE 30.00 THEN Urban=1;/*LowUrbanEmployment*/
ELSE IF urbanrate LE 45.00 THEN Urban=2;/*MidLowUrbanEmployment*/
ELSE IF urbanrate LE 60.00 THEN Urban=3; /*MidUrbanEmployment*/
ELSE IF urbanrate LE 75.00 THEN Urban=4; /*MidHighUrbanEmployment*/
ELSE IF urbanrate GT 75.00 THEN Urban=5; /*HighUrbanEmployment*/
PROC SORT; by Country;
/*PROC CORR; var urbanrate femaleemployrate;*/
PROC ANOVA; CLASS polityscore;
MODEL FEMALEEMPLOYRATE=polityscore;
MEANS polityscore/DUNCAN;
PROC FREQ; TABLES FemGroup Urban polityscore;
PROC Univariate; var FEMALEEMPLOYRATE;
PROC Univariate; var urbanrate;
Proc MEANS; var FemGroup urban;
run;