The objective of this paper is to decompose the evolution of the female's labor force participation rate (LFPR) in the Brazilian labor market. Particularly, we want to investigate the importance of changes in LFPR within female sub-groups, as well as to know if size changes of such groups contribute to explain the growth of LFPR between women. Among the main results, we find that changes in the LFPR within sub-groups are responsible for more than a half of the LFPR variation between 1982 and 2002. On the other hand, the increases in the size of groups containing more educated women have contributed with the remainder.
decomposition; woman; participation
