Measuring Women’s Employment in 28 Muslim Countries

Abstract

This study primarily makes use of large data sets and regression-based techniques (multilevel models) that on the one hand enable the identification of general relationships and on the other hand allow me to test the complex dynamics and differences. This chapter provides information about the general data and methods used and insight into the choices made, the empirical novelties of this book, as well as some of the data limitations. First, I discuss which women were included in this study, and why for instance women who were still in school were excluded (Section 5.2), followed by the chosen logistic multilevel modelling (Section 5.3), and the data sets that underlie all empirical analyses (Section 5.4). In Section 5.5, I engage the debate on measuring employment and argue that women’s gainful non-agricultural employment can be measured quite well with the used surveys, and Section 5.6 discusses the operationalization of the explanatory factors. Section 5.7 closes this chapter with a short summary.