High Achievement in Education but Low Participation of Labour Force: a case of Females in Sri Lanka

During the past four decades, level of education of females in Sri Lanka has enhanced rapidly. However, along with the increase of female education throughout the country, their participation of labour has not increased. The paper is to explore the reasons behind the low female labour force participation despite having high achievements in the education. Using secondary data and key informant interviews on Sri Lankan labour market, study found, issues on the education system, high female unemployment, narrowed choices of training programmes available to females, labour market structure, multiple roles of females and availability of child caring facilities as main factors that lower the female participation in the labour force in Sri Lanka. Migration of females to Middle-Eastern countries for employment might also have created a shortage of potential females to the local labour markets.
The age structure transition has produced a demographic dividend, covering the period 1991-2017, which is conducive for an economic takeoff of the country. In order to capitalize this dividend, female participation of productive employment is a crucial parameter. Since this is a rare opportunity, the policy makers should develop appropriate policies to enhance the participation of females in the Sri Lankan labour markets immediately