China's Rural Labor Market Development and Its Gender Implications

Our major objective is to discuss the development of rural labor markets and understand how their emergence has affected women. Using household data, we examine the role of women in labor markets by examining employment trends and analyze how their participation in agriculture has affected farm output. We find that there has been an overall increase in off-farm participation. Most of the increase has been driven by young migrants. Women have participated at rates equaling or surpassing those of their male counterparts. We also find that when women are left in charge of farm work, crop productivity does not fall.