Ashley Anderson and Andrea Hill's Comments on "Oil, Islam, and Women"

When the data is imputed to correct for list-wise deletion of missing observations, oil rents no longer correlates significantly with female labor force participation. Furthermore, when more recent data are used, we also fail to find a strong correlation between oil rents and political inclusion of women. The same tools used above to highlight the flaws in Ross' original model also revealed a new and unique picture of the variables affected female labor and governmental participation.

Specifically, rather than oil being correlated with patriarchy, we found working age, income, and cultural variables, such as being a Middle Eastern country or being a predominantly Islamic country, were powerful predictors of female empowerment. From these findings, we develop an alternative theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between oil, income, culture and female labor and governmental participation.

We show how female labor participation and female governmental participation actually move in opposite directions as the wealth of a country increases, but that other variables such as the percentage of the population that is of a working age and the location of the country play important roles as well.