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Comprehensive and tailored approaches
for women’s economic empowerment
Leena Akatama, Senior Adviser – Gender, Department of Development Policy, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland
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omen’s share of the global workforce has
increased more or less at the same speed as
international trade, and is estimated at around
40 per cent. For many women, jobs are their gateways to
the formal economy, their own income and, subsequently,
independence, also affecting their power relationships in
the household.
However, these are only the first steps towards a more
profound equality. The majority of women in developing
countries still work in the informal economy with limited
access to occupational safety, services or social protection.
Furthermore, women are still primarily responsible for unpaid
care work, are left with little or no time for recreation and
rest, and are predominantly considered as secondary earners.
The gender gap in education limits women’s ability to grasp
new work opportunities, although the gap in basic education
is gradually closing. Vocational training more often benefits
men than women, because of social norms and the perceived
limitations of women’s command of their own time or their
safety. Women in many developing countries have weaker
rights to own land or other property, hindering their capabili-
ties to invest or acquire productive resources such as finance.
Also, limited access to sexual and reproductive health
services and unrecognized rights to make decisions concern-
ing one’s own life weaken women’s potential to participate in
the economy. Many are juggling with poor health outcomes,
increased care work, financial consequences of increased
family size, and often the risk of violence.
According to a recent report by the Overseas Development
Institute (ODI), women’s economic empowerment is a process
where the capacities of individuals, participation in decision-
making, access to and control over resources, and participation
in collective actionmerge. Therefore, be it freedom from violence
or harmful practices, access to sexual and reproductive health
services or access to information and communication technolo-
gies, all the targets of United Nations Sustainable Development
Goal (SDG) 5 contribute to women’s economic participation.
The study points out six direct factors that either enable
or hinder women’s economic empowerment: education and
skills development; access to quality, decent work; unpaid
care work; access to economic resources; collective action
and leadership; and social protection. These are accompanied
by underlying factors, namely labour market characteris-
tics, fiscal policy, legal and policy framework, and gender
discrimination. Discrimination is prevalent in all 10 factors
and manifests in various ways.
Female workers with relatively low educational levels
are particularly vulnerable in situations where competitive
advantage is sought through low salaries and flexible working
conditions, while women’s status is strongly defined by tradi-
tional gender roles. They are more affected by the gender
role gap than those men and women who have been able to
take advantage of trade openness, technological change and
the widespread availability of information. Furthermore,
inadequate or unavailable social protection makes women
particularly vulnerable to shocks such as occupational hazards,
loss of employment, economic crisis or drought. To date, many
economic advances for women have been made within the
existing structures and power relations, without challenging
them. Addressing the discriminatory perceptions that form and
inform institutions, policies and legal frameworks remains a big
task and requires consistent gender mainstreaming.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda
2030) is the new platform for development policy and a great
opportunity to promote gender equality. It is both a stand-
alone goal and a cross-cutting objective in the SDGs, reflected
in many targets and indicators across the agenda. This
comprehensive approach is useful to see the interlinkages
between the goals but it also poses a challenge of complexity
for effective implementation and monitoring.
Image: Unicef Zambia
An SCT beneficiary recieving a payment at the Mukuni paypoint in Zambia’s
Kazungula district
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etter
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orld