This paper investigates the association between religion and female labor market outcomes using new micro-level data on two distinct Muslim denominations in Turkey: Sunni and Alevi Muslims. We find a positive and significant association between being an Alevi Muslim and female labor force participation and employment, whereas there are no significant differences in male labor market outcomes between the two denominations. We provide evidence that Alevi Muslims have more gender-equal views regarding the role of women in the labor market and consider themselves as more modern. Both Sunnis and Alevis consider themselves as believers in religion (Islam). However, Sunnis are more likely to abide by the rules of religion. We argue that differences in views on gender roles and self-identity regarding modernity between the two denominations drive the results on female labor market outcomes.

US women, on average, had approximately two children in both the 1930s and in the 1970s, yet the fertility distribution in the 1930s was less concentrated. This implies change in reproductive behavior, which cannot be captured by models focusing on average fertility. To explain these changes, I have developed a model that makes a distinction between sons and daughters. In this model, the female labor force participation rate is the probability of each girl becoming an employed woman. This endogenizes the empirically observed difference in the propensity for an all-girl household to have another child compared to an all-boy household, generating large fertility differentials at low participation rates. Higher participation rates raise the expected return from an additional child, as well as the expected return from existing daughters. The first effect tends to increase fertility, while the second effect, for relatively concave utility functions, tends to decrease it, so that the distribution of completed fertilities becomes more concentrated.

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, women in the United States decided to move increasingly into the labor market. This paper investigates the growth of the service sector as an explanation for the increase in women's employment. It develops an economic model that can account for the increase in women's employment and the growth of the service sector at the same time. A growth model with two sectors and a home production technology is constructed in order to quantitatively assess the contribution of sectoral productivity differences to the change in women's employment decision. The sectoral productivities are taken from the data. This model demonstrates that a higher rate of productivity growth in market services compared to home services can account for a large fraction of the observed increase in women's labor supply from 1950 to 2005.