Women in Development and Gender Study
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Publication
Navigating Education, Motherhood, and Informal Labor: The Experiences of Young Women in Luanda
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-26)Gender equality is a key foundation of inclusive and sustainable economic development that can translate into long-term and effective poverty reduction. While gender equality matters on its own as a human right, it also offers instrumental value for individuals, households, and societies at large. Global evidence consistently shows that empowering women and girls reduces poverty incidence and food insecurity, boosts economic growth and productivity, and enhances investments in children’s human capital. Angola, a country where a third of the population lives in poverty and economic output is heavily dependent on its oil sector, stands out in Sub-Saharan Africa for its particularly large gender disparities, especially when compared to countries of same income levels. Family formation, education, and labor market decisions are intrinsically interwoven and connected, which in the case of Angola leads to extreme demographic pressure on an already weak public service system. To begin tackling these significant gender disparities, well-designed and targeted policies are needed. But there are significant knowledge gaps when it comes to understanding the key barriers facing Angolan girls and young women in accessing education and transitioning to the labor market. This report presents insights gained from the voices of young women and girls, their parents, and key informants through a series of interviews carried out in Luanda, home to a quarter of the country’s population, in 2022. Based on these in-depth interviews with low-income young women in Luanda, this report points to the multiple challenges they face across their life cycle - challenges relating to the dimensions of education, family formation, and work. It also shows how those dimensions in a woman’s life are deeply interconnected - and how they are determined by structural constraints including poverty and vulnerability, gender norms, corruption and lack of transparency in access to services and opportunities, and violence in public and private spheres. -
Publication
Gender and Taxpayer Study in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan: In Preparation for the One-Stop Taxpayer Facilitation Centers
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-15)This study supports the KP provincial government’s efforts to facilitate women’s voluntary tax compliance by understanding women’s constraints and experiences in tax payment and property registration and the gender gaps in access to and use of digital technologies. It draws data from a survey, which interviewed 1,200 current taxpayers and nontaxpayers (a third of whom were women), focus group discussions with women and female tax administrators, and key informant interviews with senior directors of the KP tax administrations. It identifies specific challenges women face in property registration and tax payments, such as restricted mobility, and lack of information and unclear processes. It also reveals that women’s challenges are not monolithic, but varies by education; therefore, tailored measures are important to meet the needs of different types of taxpayers. While digitization of tax services could reduce tax compliance costs for taxpayers, women with limited education may not fully benefit from digitization because they tend to lack ownership of mobile devices and to have limited use of digital banking and wallet applications. The importance of having female staff provide tax and property registration services dedicated to women, simplifying property registration processes, and using easy Urdu and Pashto are highlighted by female taxpayers. Establishing dedicated services for women by assigning female tax officials in one-stop Tax Facilitation Centers could also help women register property and pay taxes. But to retain staff, these changes require allocation of human and financial resources, review of staff roles, additional training, instituting a gender-equitable and safe workplace environment and physical infrastructure, including bathrooms and separate areas for women. Digitizing and sex-disaggregating taxpayer and service user data could help revenue authorities develop tailored programs and services that meet the needs of women and men and monitor progress. Such data would be useful in guiding tax administrations to allocate financial and human resources. -
Publication
Gender and Property Taxes in São Paulo
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-15)This knowledge note provides new evidence on property ownership and taxation patterns across genders in São Paulo (Brazil), the largest city in the Americas, with 12 million inhabitants. We exploit microdata on all commercial and residential properties to document the share of total property and property wealth owned by women, the geographic distribution of female-owned properties, and the implications of this data for property taxes in the city. -
Publication
An Assessment of Gender Gaps in Liberia through a Women’s Empowerment Lens
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-11)Advancing gender equality by strengthening women’s empowerment is essential for improving development outcomes in Liberia. This report draws on existing literature and data review, as well as new qualitative evidence collected in Liberia. It shows that despite some progress, significant gender gaps still hold back the individual well-being of half of the population. Although abject poverty is part of the story, formal and informal institutions that shift the balance of decision-making power and access to resources away from women also disempower. Eliminating institutional and resource constraints and strengthening women’s ability to make choices to improve their lives can leverage women’s skills and talents and enhance their contributions to a more prosperous and sustainable Liberia. This report is grounded in the concepts underlying women’s and girls’ empowerment - namely, a process whereby women and girls who have been denied the ability to make choices and realize them acquire such an ability. The analysis is focused on identifying the constraints Liberian women face in achieving better outcomes in education, health, and productive employment, through the lens of the three pillars of empowerment: context, resources, and agency. -
Publication
Moving from Traditional to Transformational Approaches to Women’s Economic Empowerment - A Review of the KDRDIP Program
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-01)This paper aims to answer two important questions: how traditional CDD livelihood projects can adjust or adopt practices to strengthen women’s economic empowerment outcomes, and how government and other development actors can employ an ecosystem approach to develop coordinated and sustainable local economic development on a larger scale. To answer these questions, the paper draws on a mixed-methods study of the Kenya Development Response to Displacement Impacts Project (KDRDIP), a traditional CDD livelihood program, along with an analysis of other WEE programs in the region and worldwide. The paper offers useful recommendations and insights for practitioners and policymakers. -
Publication
An Operational Approach to Enhancing Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment in World Bank Projects
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-28)Gender equality has long been central to the World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. More recently, women’s and girls’ empowerment (WGE) has become a priority in the Africa region in the context of the region’s demographic transition. There has been a proliferation of World Bank projects with development objectives that include “empowerment”, yet there remains a lack of consensus around its definition and operationalization. This note lays out a pragmatic Operational Approach to enhancing women’s and girls’ empowerment in World Bank projects. It is not intended to provide a new definition of empowerment or to present a new framework. Instead, the objective of the note is to translate widely accepted empowerment concepts into an operational approach to WGE that Bank Task Team Leaders (TTLs) can use in their project and ASA work. The approach includes: (i) a systematic way to analyze constraints to achieving WGE in the context of lending or analytical products; (ii) a list of potential intervention areas within the three empowerment pillars that can be integrated into World Bank projects; and (iii) guidance on how to incorporate the operational approach to WGE into project design. -
Publication
Global Evidence on Context and Agency Interventions to Empower Women and Girls
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-25)As gender equity becomes more central to social and economic development, practitioners are increasingly focused on women and girls’ empowerment as a sustainable way to enhance well-being and close gender gaps. The operational approach to women and girls’ empowerment can guide practitioners in systematically translating the concept of empowerment into project designs. While World Bank projects are fairly effective at providing women and girls with the resources they need to reach their desired achievements, interventions that affect agency and context are much more scarce. This literature review is intended to provide a curated set of examples of interventions that aim to affect the context and agency factors impeding women’s and girls’ empowerment. The paper starts from the assumption that practitioners are increasingly convinced of the importance of addressing the three pillars of empowerment, but they are unfamiliar with evidence-based context and agency interventions. Information about effective initiatives is dispersed, often leaving task teams to start from zero rather than drawing on prior experience. This paper sorts through the literature and presents some of the most effective examples of agency and context interventions in developing countries. -
Publication
How Do Agricultural Import Tariffs Affect Men and Women Smallholders?: Evidence from Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-07-10)Using newly available customs data from Bangladesh, along with additional administrative and survey data, this study examines how variation in import tariffs on key agricultural inputs affects men’s and women’s agricultural employment and production—given a high degree of segmentation among men and women in different agricultural activities. In Bangladesh, women and men in agriculture are typically smallholders and maintain distinct occupations within the sector (women in livestock and poultry rearing, and men in crop agriculture). These areas are both heavily dependent on imported commodities (grains and oilseed for livestock and poultry feed, as well as seeds and fertilizer for crop agriculture). The paper shows that import tariff rates are much higher on feed-related inputs; imported inputs for crop agriculture, such as fertilizer, are also heavily subsidized. The paper also shows that the higher resulting prices for inputs used in feed are significantly negatively associated with employment and earnings in poultry and livestock activity, where women are heavily concentrated. Among those marketing output, earnings also tend to be substantially higher in crop agriculture than in livestock/poultry activity, underscoring the need for closely examining how import tariffs can affect more vulnerable groups. Individual producers are also heavily reliant on livestock for own-consumption activity, reducing their ability to pass on increased input costs. -
Publication
Gender Equality in Development: A Ten-Year Retrospective
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-28)This retrospective report explores global progress and lessons learned over the past 10 years in promoting gender equality. This report takes stock of global progress and considers the impact of evidence-backed solutions to close the most persistent gender gaps. It examines the evolution of World Bank Group’s engagement on gender and highlights promising approaches. Reflections and findings will enable the WBG and its partners to develop a deeper understanding of what works, provide opportunities to strengthen and expand efforts in critical areas, and will inform the new WBG Gender Strategy, to be launched in 2024. -
Publication
Opening Opportunities: The Economic Cost of Gender Gaps in Entrepreneurship in Indonesia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-22)This report examines the state of female entrepreneurship in Indonesia, outlines major binding constraints and gender gaps, and highlights the untapped potential that could be realized if key barriers were lifted. The report draws on quantitative analysis of household- and firm-level surveys, the collection and review of qualitative work with male and female entrepreneurs across the country, a review of global evidence on gender and entrepreneurship, and analysis of relevant policies, laws, and regulations in Indonesia. The report also offers a novel analysis of the potential economic dividends from closing gender gaps in business performance in Indonesia.