Greater participation of women in economic activities is an important pathway to poverty reduction and economic development. In Ethiopia, women account about half of the labor force and possess a significant potential to contribute for national growth. Ethiopia acknowledges the crucial role that woman empowerment plays in achieving the country’s development goal as it is reflected in its legal and policy frameworks. Yet, the labor force participation of women is still far from the potential and there is notable gender gap concerning participation in measured economic activities. In sight of this, the study analyzes the status of gender gap in labor force participation and, factors which influence men’s and women’s decision to work and how much to work in wage and selfemployment. Data from the recent round of the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS 2018/19) is mainly used for the study. The 2015/16 round of the same survey was also used for comparison purpose in the descriptive analysis section. Overall participation of women in the labor force is found to be significantly lower than men. With the exception of non-farm enterprises ownership, relative to men, women show lower participation in all economic activities considered in the study. In wage employment, women participation is lower by half compared to men and those who participate are underrepresented in top positions while dominating elementary occupations. As to ownership of non-farm enterprises, significant gender disparity is not observed. However, women owned enterprises show less achievement in terms of various business performance indicators. Particularly, women owned enterprises seem to perform less in terms of sales, business legalization, number of hired workers and firm size.

Women’s overall participation and hour of work are also found to be lower compared to men while controlling for various individual and household characteristics. Factors which explain such differences in participation and hour of work include age, education, religion, marital status, household headship, family size, wealth, non-farm income and residence. Among these, education is found to be the main factor which positively associate with women’s overall participation in labor market. Marital status on the other hand is negatively associated with women participation in the labor market and work hour. Age and