Gender Equality

Despite some advances toward gender equality, women remain marginalized and disadvantaged in a number of major areas, including education, labor force participation, pay, and access to legal and social services. These disparities, which are particularly acute in emerging and low-income economies, take a toll on economic development. 

“Vast empirical evidence exists to show that significant macroeconomic gains can be realized when women are able to develop their full labor market potential.”

A 2018 study of 100 countries from 1980 to 2014 identified the factors that most strongly affect female representation in the labor market. For example, high fertility levels and wide age differences between spouses correlate with large workforce gender gaps. Domestic activities, such as child-rearing and the “home-based production of goods and services,” adversely influence women’s ability to work outside the home. Access to electricity, water and sanitation allows more women to get jobs. Higher educational attainment can boost female employment by as much as one-third. 

“Better infrastructure, a stronger institutional environment, more equal legal rights and low adolescent fertility rates are strongly associated with higher female labor force participation.”

The gender gap narrows and widens based on a nation’s economic development. Subsistence economies typically boast large numbers of working women, because both men and women need to work to survive. But as a country’s per capita GDP increases, labor force gender disparities increase as well, as women trade paying jobs for family duties. Then, at even higher income levels, the gap contracts again, as affordable childcare and household services become available.

“Labor market protection appears to have a nonlinear relationship [with] labor market participation gaps.”

Policy initiatives likely to promote gender equality include tax credits or incentives for low-income workers; the removal of legal barriers to inheritance and property ownership; and government spending on infrastructure, education, health care and childcare. Enacting job protection measures in economies that lack strong labor safeguards can motivate women to join the workforce.

But, surprisingly, these laws are helpful only up to a certain point, after which they can actually increase gender inequality. For example, the study shows that female participation declines in response to a mandated “larger maximum number of working days” per week. Research indicates that too rigidly regulated job markets can exacerbate rather than reduce gender inequality at work.