Socio-Economic and Environmental Factors Affecting Female Labor Force Participation in Saudi Arabia: ARDL Bounds Testing Approach

The paper aims to highlight the issues and obstacles of the women labor force by examining the economic, social and environmental factors affecting female labor force participation in KSA during the period 1990-2018. Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag ARDL bounds testing approach applied to estimate the relationship between female labor force participation (FLFP), education, per capita Gross Domestic Product (PGDP), the ratio of urban population to the total population (urbanization) and CO2 Emissions. One of our important contributions is the introduction of the effect of CO2 emission on women's labor force participation. All findings confirm the presence of co-integration between female labor force participation, education, GDP per capita, urbanization and CO2 emissions. It is found that in the short-run, education had no impact on female labor force participation. It concludes that regardless of the obstacles and challenges faced by the female labor force in KSA; Vision 2030 paves a new path to empower women to contribute effectively to the economic growth of the country.