Top Five Countries With The Highest Female Representation In The Workforce Are All In Africa

In the last year you may have heard about Malawi and it is likely the story featured a celebrity trying adopting yet another set of orphaned Malawian children. You might also have heard of the name Theresa Kachindamoto, the woman chief who is now famously known as the "the terminator of child marriages". She has broken more than 800 child marriages in just three years. But Malawi has more bloom stories for us.

Zimbabwe is often in the news for it’s octogenarian President Robert Mugabe, who will probably die in power, and the economic strife that has plagued the country for over a decade. However, Zimbabwe remains one of most educated countries on the African continent.

If you previously had no idea where the smiling coast of Africa was, you couldn’t have missed it in the last couple of months. The Gambia dominated the news when former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh was forced out of power by the Gambian people who voted him out after 22 years. With backing of the regional economic group ECOWAS, neighbouring Senegal deployed troops and set a precedent with African forces protecting the will of the people in another country. But The Gambia isn’t only about Jammeh, or its vibrant tourism or it being among the top contributors of the Africa migrants headed to Europe.

The three countries are featured in this article about women in the labour force.

Zimbabwe and Malawi lead the list of countries with highest female share in the labour force with more than 52%, followed by The Gambia (50.8%), Liberia (50.6%) and Tanzania (50.5%). This compared to the female share in the US at 46.8%, 47.3% in Canada and 48% in France.

The article brings out these important statistics while highlighting the major hurdles women in African countries still face, as many are still in the informal sector and lower paying jobs.