World Bank Gender Thematic Policy Notes Series
11 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
This series of thematic policy notes provides an analytical foundation for the World Bank Gender Strategy 2024-2030.
Each note summarizes key thematic issues, evidence on promising solutions, operational good practices, and promising areas for future engagement on promoting gender equality and empowerment.
Items in this collection
1 - 10 of 11
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Publication
Addressing Care to Accelerate Equality
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-08)The care economy is essential in daily life and a driver of economic growth, human capital development, and employment. Gender is a defining characteristic of the care economy. Women spend 3.2 times more time on unpaid care work than men and constitute the majority of the care workforce. Disproportionate unpaid care responsibilities and a lack of access to quality, accessible, affordable care services impede women’s economic participation and affect their overall well-being. Investments in the care sector are essential to accelerate equality and could generate up to 299 million jobs worldwide by 2035. Globally, the need for care services is high. Worldwide, 43 percent of all children below primary-school-entry age—350 million children—need childcare but do not have access to it. The need for eldercare is also growing as the population continues to age and face chronic health conditions. The World Bank actively supports countries in addressing this care crisis. This thematic policy note reviews many of the issues, evidence, and lessons learned. -
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Addressing Social and Gender Norms to Promote Gender Equality
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-12)This thematic note is part of a series being developed to inform the 2024-30 WBG Gender Strategy. It provides a summary of existing evidence in applying a social norms lens to development policy, including guidance on defining, measuring, and changing social norms, with specific guidance for WBG task teams and recommendations for policymakers. -
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Why Land and Property Rights Matter for Gender Equality
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-12)Securing women’s rights, access to, and control over housing, land, and property (HLP) are important for livelihood generation, food security, a store of wealth, and other economic benefits. Ensuring women’s HLP rights also provides social benefits, such as improved bargaining power within the household and community. Data on women’s rights to HLP is limited, but available evidence from 53 countries shows that within those countries, over 70 percent of women do not own any land. Without action, women are at risk of being left farther behind. This policy note explores the barriers and impediments to women’s HLP rights. It shares emerging evidence on what works to support women in attaining the full range of HLP rights, including experience from World Bank and other donor financed projects and interventions that have shown promise. -
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Leveraging Gender Data to Accelerate Gender Equality
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-12)Gender data are a critical input to achieving gender equality goals. Yet insufficient availability of and funding for gender data impede effective policymaking. Without high-quality gender data, it is impossible to understand gender differences in living conditions, opportunities, productivity, and other elements germane to development. Gender data are also critical to monitoring progress in empowering women and closing gender gaps. This policy note outlines the evolution, challenges, and priorities related to gender data that can inform not only World Bank Group operations but also highlight opportunities for engagement with external stakeholders. It summarizes the World Bank Group’s programmatic experience in improving the availability, quality, processing, dissemination, and use of gender data; and offers recommendations. -
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Accelerating Gender Equality Through Reforming Legal Frameworks
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-13)This thematic note emphasizes the role of laws and regulations in safeguarding women’s economic opportunities, for the purpose of informing the update of the World Bank Group’s Gender Strategy. The note demonstrates the importance of legal gender equality and draws on data and analysis from the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law initiative and other evidence to explore legal barriers that hinder women’s economic participation and showcase successful reforms. It also offers examples of how World Bank projects have addressed legal frameworks toward gender equality and concludes with proposals for future areas of operational focus and research. -
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Increasing Women’s Representation in Business Leadership
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-09)Better gender balance in business leadership is inextricably linked with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By definition, attainment of SDG 5, gender equality, is impossible without women’s equal representation at the top. Women leaders are levers of change for all SDGs, as they prioritize social protections, health, education, climate, and inclusivity. Having more women in leadership is positively correlated with higher environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards, leading to improved business performance and inclusive economic growth. Yet, enormous gender gaps in corporate leadership persist. Globally, women hold only 19.7 percent of board seats, and 6.7 percent of board chair, 5 percent of CEO, and 15.7 percent of CFO positions. Unconscious and cultural biases, lack of opportunities, and other workforce barriers can limit women’s professional aspirations and narrow leadership paths. While direct cause-and-effect links cannot always be demonstrated, World Bank Group interventions that address the root causes of gender gaps in business leadership offer strong potential for progress. This note examines World Bank Group experience and provides several strategies that other programs can consider to accelerate the pace at which women ascend to senior leadership positions. -
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Closing Gender Gaps in Earnings
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-03-27)Gender gaps in earnings persist across all regions. For every dollar men make, women make 77 cents. Closing this gap can lead to sizeable gains for economies - an estimated 160 trillion dollars in global gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. A multitude of factors contributes to this gap and this note sheds light on some of the key drivers. Effective evidence-backed policy options to close the earnings gap include providing information on work opportunities and returns to employment, training in socio-emotional skills, imparting sector-specific technical skills to address occupational segregation and adopting pay-transparency laws. The World Bank Group actively supports countries to boost women’s access to better, high-quality jobs through development policy lending, advisory and analytical work, and supporting reforms to address constraining contextual factors. This note examines an array of policy options that are effective or show promise in closing gender gaps in earnings and offers some key takeaways. -
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Increasing Access to Technology for Inclusion
(World Bank, Washington DC, 2023-02)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. -
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Increasing Female Labor Force Participation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-01)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. -
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Placing Gender Equality at the Center of Climate Action
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-01)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.