The high value of the D (MANU) coefficient in the equation for female self-employment is in line with other types of evidence that indicate that women are more likely than men to be employed in low-quality jobs (Lichter and Landry, 1991). A number of studies have provided evidence on the steep increases in self-employment and underemployment seen in the United States as industrial enterprises have closed their doors (Belcher and DiBlasio, 1993), while, using a sample composed of both developed and developing countries, Pietrobelli, Rabellotti and Aquilina (2004) have found that the rate of self-employment tends to decline as the degree of industrialization rises. This agrees with the evidence presented by Caceres and Caceres (2017a), who found that economic growth drove down the self-employment rate in a sample of panel data for 1993-2012 from six countries in the region.