Gender Strategy Update (2024-30): Accelerating Equality and Empowerment for All

Digital technology has introduced innovative business models and changed how society operates. Through digital technology, access to services can be increased and more people can be reached, particularly those from underserved groups, such as women, people in rural communities and persons with disabilities. Yet, gaps in access to digital technology deepen inequalities and have social costs and economic implications. have lost out on $1 trillion in GDP due to the digital exclusion of women. (Alliance for Affordable Internet, 2021). Grounded in examples extracted from research and World Bank Group operations with client countries and clients in the private sector, this policy note presents interventions that aim to close the gaps in digital inclusion. These examples demonstrate that the public and private sectors have significant roles to play in ensuring digital technology reaches women, aligns with their needs, and strengthens their economic empowerment. This policy note provides impetus for the World Bank Group to continue strengthening its work on the digital inclusion of women and underserved groups.

The narrative among policymakers about women’s entrepreneurship is slowly shifting from encouraging the creation of a high number of startups to focusing on supporting women who are well positioned to lead growth-oriented enterprises. Innovative women entrepreneurs can be agents of change and provide new solutions to global challenges, yet they face multiple barriers to growing their businesses. This policy brief examines the following four areas of constraints and provides evidence on measures to reduce gender gaps in each: 1. Human capital, including gender gaps in access to skills and networks 2. Factors constraining access to finance 3. Factors constraining technology uptake and market expansion 4. Contextual factors, including legal and regulatory constraints, social norms, access to care, and gender-based violence.

Women and disadvantaged groups tend to be more affected by climate change across various dimensions, including health, livelihoods, and agency. Gender gaps are increasingly seen as barriers to effective mitigation and adaptation strategies. Women are also critical leaders and participants of low-carbon transitions. This policy note investigates how gender equality and climate change intersect; explores programmatic experience on the gender-climate nexus; identifies promising entry points and solutions; and offers recommendations for development practitioners, policymakers, and businesses.

Gender gaps in labor force participation persist worldwide. Closing this gap can lead to sizeable gains for economies—a 20 percent increase in GDP per capita, on average. Female labor force participation (FLFP) remains low due to lack of skills, assets and networks, time-based constraints, limited mobility, gender discrimination in hiring and promotion, and restrictive gender norms. Effective evidence-backed policy options can increase FLFP. They include providing childcare services, disseminating information on work opportunities and returns to employment, training in socio-emotional skills, addressing norms by engaging partners and family members, and targeting women via social protection, safety net, and public-works programs. The World Bank Group actively supports countries in boosting FLFP through development policy lending, advisory and analytical work, and supporting reforms to address constraining contextual factors, including legal barriers, social norms, and gender-based violence. This note sheds light on an array of policy options that are effective or show promise in improving FLFP.

Significant gender gaps in labor force participation persist around the world. When women do work, they are much more likely than men to engage in vulnerable employment with lower earnings and worse working conditions. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered larger losses in employment for women than for men across the globe. Several factors constrain women’s labor force participation and employment outcomes. On the supply side, time and mobility constraints and differences in endowments (skills, assets, and networks) limit women’s labor force participation and wages. On the demand side, discrimination in hiring and retention, lack of jobs with convenient features (childcare, maternity leave, flexible schedules), and skills mismatch are key constraints. All these are combined with contextual factors, including social and cultural norms, that restrict women’s labor force participation. The GIL Federation is generating rigorous evidence around the world to understand what works, and what does not, in supporting women’s labor market participation. This note presents evidence on seven key findings.

Several circumstances make women more vulnerable to economic shocks than men. Women are more likely than men to be out of the labor force due to care responsibilities. When they work, women are more likely to have low-paying jobs in the informal sector. Moreover, women have lower access to financial services and other strategies to mitigate shocks. Social protection systems can enable women to cope with and adapt to economic shocks. In particular, adaptive social protection systems can help identify the differential needs of women to prepare support mechanisms and build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households before, during, and after large shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic occur. The GIL Federation is generating rigorous evidence around the world to understand what works, and what does not, in supporting women with social protection interventions. This note presents evidence on four key findings based on impact evaluations.

Significant progress has been made in closing gender gaps in primary and secondary enrollment rates worldwide. However, girls still have lower expected years of schooling than boys in some regions, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, and boys have worse educational outcomes than girls in other countries, most notably in Latin America and the Caribbean. Barriers to the continuation of schooling for girls are linked to child marriage, early pregnancies, sexual harassment, and social norms around girls’ education. The COVID-19 pandemic has also impacted schooling of both girls and boys. The transition to remote learning hurt girls who often have fewer technical skills and less access to the internet than boys.3 In other cases, boys had higher economic opportunities than girls and were more likely to drop out from school in response to the economic stress generated by the pandemic.4 The GIL Federation is generating rigorous evidence around the world to understand what works, and what does not, in narrowing gender gaps in education. This note presents evidence on three key findings.

Land is a key productive asset for rural households. Property rights play a critical role in determining who can own and access this fundamental resource. More than 70 percent of women across 53 developing countries do not own any land. Customary norms confer disproportionately weaker land rights to women, feeding into a cycle that limits their access to credit and other economic opportunities. Empowering women through stronger land rights can play a central role in the process of economic development. However, overturning existing cultural norms and power structures in the context of traditional (patriarchal) customary land tenure systems can be challenging. There are also concerns that such policy efforts could formalize, even exacerbate, existing gender gaps in land rights. The GIL Federation is generating rigorous evidence around the world to understand what works, and what does not, in increasing access to land titles for women and its effects on women’s empowerment. This note presents evidence on three key findings.

Gender productivity gaps in agriculture are large around the world, even though women comprise 40–50 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries. Gender differences in agricultural productivity can be as high as 66 percent and can cost countries up to $105 million annually. Women farmers tend to produce lower output per unit of land than men farmers because of gender-specific constraints, such as unequal access to farm labor, agricultural inputs, lower literacy, childcare responsibilities, limited involvement in cash crop production, and lower participation in farmers’ groups. Women farmers are concentrated in the lower levels of agricultural value chains and are less likely to be active in commercial farming than men. Restrictive gender norms underlie occupational sex segregation in agriculture, leading women to concentrate in low-value crops. Research by the Africa GIL indicates that when women manage cash crop plots—and have access to the same inputs and resources as men—they are able to be as productive as their male counterparts. The GIL Federation is generating rigorous evidence around the world to understand what works, and what does not, in narrowing gender productivity gaps and helping farmers reach their potential. This note presents evidence on three key findings based on impact evaluations.

Unpaid care work and the lack of access to affordable child care constitute key barriers to women’s participation in labor markets. The International Labour Organization estimates that, in 2018, 647 million working-age adults were hindered from entering the workforce due to family responsibilities—94 percent of whom were women. In that year, women’s unpaid care work amounted to three-quarters of total unpaid care work, with an estimated value of 9 precent of global GDP. A pilot study by the MNA GIL in Egypt finds that, on average, mothers spent 11 hours per day on childcare and seven hours per day doing household chores. The EAP GIL reviewed causal evidence on the effects of childcare interventions on maternal labor market engagement in low and middle-income countries and found positive impacts for 21 out of the 22 studies considered.

Entrepreneurship can be a pathway to employment and economic empowerment for women. Over half of the women in developing countries are or aspire to be entrepreneurs, but most of them run subsistence oriented micro-businesses that are not seen as key drivers of innovation and growth. Among formal firms, the share of women-led businesses decreases as the size of the firm increases. Multiple factors—including lack of skills, networks, and access to finance, technology, and markets—constrain women’s decision to become entrepreneurs and affect their choices concerning which sector to enter, how much to put into their firms, and which business practices and technology to adopt. Contextual factors, such as social norms, access to childcare, and risk of gender-based violence, also contribute to the gender gap in firm performance documented by the Africa GIL and the EAP GIL. The GIL Federation is generating rigorous evidence around the world to understand what works, and what does not, in addressing the differential constraints restricting the growth of women-led firms. This note presents evidence on five key findings.

Adolescent girls face multiple challenges that restrict their horizons. They have to make decisions about employment and fertility at an early age with limited access to formal education and under restrictive social norms. Domestic responsibilities limit their time in school and educational achievement, in turn curtailing their ability to enter the labor force. The GIL Federation is generating rigorous evidence on what works, and what does not, in empowering adolescent girls. This note presents evidence on five key findings.

Adolescent girls face multiple challenges that restrict their horizons. They have to make decisions about employment and fertility at an early age with limited access to formal education and under restrictive social norms. Domestic responsibilities limit their time in school and educational achievement, in turn curtailing their ability to enter the labor force. The GIL Federation is generating rigorous evidence on what works, and what does not, in empowering adolescent girls. This note presents evidence on five key findings.