How to Speed Up the Jobs-to-Careers Transition
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been shown to support the development of such industries and support female employment within them. In Nigeria, a World Bank project that provided information and communication technology (ICT) training to female university graduates increased by almost 30 percent their likelihood of working in the ICT industry after graduating (Croke, Goldstein, and Holla 2018). Where do our case countries fit in? As income and education rise in each one, a policy that considers training in industry can also take place in services. In Sri Lanka and Turkey, thanks to their relatively high income and education levels, there is room to expand domestic professional services. In both, more than one out of every three working women have at least upper-secondary education, making these countries good candidates to support higher-skill service industries for women pursuing higher educational attainment for careers. These women may particularly benefit from specialized training in specific professional service industries that have higher labor demand and require industry-specific skills. In Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Vietnam, a stronger footprint across manufacturing sectors—combined with sufficient average education levels and training—creates an opportunity to further expand women’s opportunities in manufacturing-related services, such as in the wholesale, logistics, and distribution stages of the supply chain. Wholesale firms are also top employers of clerks, an occupation that plays an important role in facilitating the jobs-to-careers transition. In Egypt, a bigger move into services may also be relevant, although its income per capita suggests that such a shift may be limited to urban areas.
Increase Access to Education to Promote Female Participation in Careers Expanding education matters for all countries because it is an enabler for women to stay in the labor market—the primary characteristic of a career. In industry, although careers are related but not limited to HSOs, other career paths are also feasible considering on-the-job experience and permanence in the labor market. Whether countries succeed in fostering more-advanced sectors with mid-skill occupations (like clerks or supervisors), HSOs (like managers, professionals, or technicians), or both, will depend on higher education levels and industrial upskilling or diversification programs. INCREASE UPPER-SECONDARY ENROLLMENT AND INDUSTRY ENTRY POINTS Differences in educational attainment between men and women are among the reasons why females represent a lower share of higher-skill positions in apparel factories in LMICs (ILO and IFC 2018a). Among our country cases, this applies to Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Pakistan, where education levels are still quite low and
