Evaluating Gender Wage Gap and Female Labour Force Participation in Liberia

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between the gender wage gap and female labour force composition in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on Liberia. Using secondary time series data from 2010 to 2024, it assesses how wage disparities between men and women relate to women's labour force participation, alongside other determinants such as education, informal employment, and broader market forces. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and regression are used to examine these relationships. Findings show that despite active female engagement in Liberia's labour market, a persistent wage gap remains between men and women. After correcting for severe multicollinearity in the original four-predictor specification, the respecified two-predictor model shows that a wider gender wage gap is significantly associated with lower female labour force participation, while male participation is significantly and positively associated. This model explains just under half the variance in female participation, and a first-differenced robustness check confirms the wage gap effect persists after removing shared time trends. The small sample size (N = 15) limits precision and generalizability. Education and informal employment show directionally consistent but statistically non-significant bivariate correlations with participation (positive and negative, respectively), reflecting the limited power of a 15-observation sample. Policy priorities include reducing wage disparities, expanding women's education, and formalizing informal employment.   Keywords: Female Labour force participation, informal sector, gender wage gap, education, Liberia, Sub-Saharan Africa.