Abstract:
Gender differences and productivity issues are among the key challenges most developing nations face. This has stimulated a lot of researchers’ interest towards avenues to reduce these challenges. This research work was carried out to examine for the relationship between trade openness and female labour force participation rate in Nigeria. It adopted the ARDL bound estimation technique using data from World Bank Development Index (WDI) and found that in the long run,women health status which was captured by the human immunodeficiency virusfor female (HIVF) have anegative impact on female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) while trade openness (TO), primary school education enrolment for female (PEEF), secondary school education enrolment for female (SEEF) and total fertility rate (TFR) have a positive impact on female labour force participation rate. This study also found that in the short run, trade openness, total fertility rate andhuman immunodeficiency virushave anegative impact on female labour force participation rate while female primary and secondary school education have positive impact on female labour force participation rate. This study also carried out a Granger causality test between trade openness and female labour force participation rate. It found a unidirectional-causality running from trade openness to female labour force participation rate. Pre-estimation and diagnostics tests such as unit root test, serial correlation test, hetroscedasticiy test, normality test and stability test was also carried out.
