## gnsea2023001

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---

### Key findings and framing
- The IMF’s 2022 Strategy to Mainstream Gender calls for an intentional and systematic approach to integrating gender into macroeconomic policies to foster strong, sustainable, and inclusive growth.
- The Note argues that:
  - closing gender gaps is macrocritical because doing so goes hand in hand with higher economic growth, greater financial stability, and lower income inequality;
  - applying a gender lens to macroeconomic, financial, and structural policy design can help to narrow gender gaps and result in improved economic outcomes.
- Narrowing gender gaps addresses underdevelopment, underutilization, and misallocation of productive human resources and thereby yields economy-wide benefits.

### Motivation and context
- IMF mandate: achieve sustainable growth and prosperity for all 190 member countries by enhancing macroeconomic and financial stability, fostering and maintaining high levels of employment and real incomes, and developing productive resources.
- Persistent disparities highlighted:
  - women constitute about half of the world’s productive human resources but face unequal opportunities, outcomes, and representation;
  - access to finance, women’s labor force participation rates, and wages in comparable positions remain well below those of men;
  - women are more frequently employed in informal, temporary, and part-time jobs with lower pay and little or no social protection and are particularly vulnerable during crises.
- Representative statistics reported as of January 2023:
  - 31 heads of state, 36 finance ministers, and 22 central bank governors were women;
  - women make up just 5 percent of CEOs in commercial banks.
- Crisis and trend context:
  - nearly half of all women reported that they or a woman they know experienced domestic violence during COVID-19;
  - the World Economic Forum’s 2023 report estimates that it will take more than 130 years to close gender disparities worldwide, up from about 100 years before the pandemic;
  - Badel and Goyal (2023) show the gap in labor force participation rates between women and men will narrow but never close absent a significant step up in policy efforts.

### Macroeconomic relevance and estimated gains
- Empowering women can significantly boost incomes and bolster resilience:
  - Ostry and others (2018) estimate that closing female labor force participation gaps alone would, on average, raise income in emerging market and developing economies by about 23 percent over the long term;
  - over the medium term, narrowing gaps by the extent achieved by the top 5 percent of performers would raise income, on average, by 7¾ percent.
- The Note emphasizes urgency because the global growth outlook over the medium term is the weakest it has been in decades and new engines of growth are needed as trade has slowed.

### Channels — labor markets, productivity, and human capital
- Labor force participation and productivity:
  - About 50 percent of working-age women participate in the labor force, which is significantly lower than the ratio of 80 percent for men.
- Skill matching and allocative gains:
  - Example: 20 to 40 percent of per capita output growth in the US during 1960–2010 can be explained by better allocation of talent and falling barriers to human capital accumulation, with women accounting for most of the effect.
- Innovation and education choices:
  - UNESCO (2017) finds that across 115 countries, on average, female students tend to enroll less often in technology, engineering, manufacturing, and construction and more often in education, health and welfare, arts and humanities, and social sciences.
- Human capital accumulation:
  - Gaps in women’s access to health care and education have narrowed over time and across regions, but indicators such as maternal mortality, adolescent fertility, and literacy gaps remain high in some parts of the world.
  - Increased human capital requires a corresponding increase in female labor force participation to harness the benefits of education and health investments.
- Gender wage gaps:
  - Declined from 18 percentage points in 2000 to 11.6 percentage points in 2020.
  - Gender wage gaps contribute directly to higher income inequality; lower gender gaps are associated with lower income inequality.
  - Cuberes and Teignier (2016) estimate that gender gaps in entrepreneurship cause an average income loss of 6 percent in the OECD.

### Balance of payments stability and economic resilience
- Reducing gender disparities can enhance balance of payments stability and improve competitiveness and product variety.
- Channels include gender gaps in opportunity (education enrollment for girls), labor and financial markets (efficiency, informality), and constraints on human capital and innovation.

### Financial inclusion — gaps, fintech, and macro effects
- Account ownership gaps (regional examples):
  - Sub-Saharan Africa: 27 percent of women have an account compared with 36 percent of men.
  - Middle East and Central Asia: 40 percent of women versus 51 percent of men.
- Gender gap in accessing bank credit is larger: female entrepreneurs face more restrictive collateral requirements, shorter loan maturities, and higher interest rates; higher financial illiteracy and lack of household financial resources exacerbate gaps.
- Fintech:
  - Fintech narrows access to financial services overall but can exacerbate the digital gender divide.
  - Fintech contributes to closing gender gaps in Middle Eastern and African countries; gaps are lower for traditional financial inclusion in Asian and Latin American countries.
- Financial inclusion and macro outcomes:
  - Greater financial inclusion goes hand in hand with higher economic growth, particularly where financial inclusion is low.
  - Women’s participation as users, providers, and regulators fosters greater banking stability; gender diversity on boards is associated with lower non-performing loans and greater financial stability.
  - Čihák and Sahay (2020) find that inequality falls more when women have greater access and that the decline in inequality is even more at lower levels of financial depth.
- Specific data points and recommendations:
  - Mobile phone ownership gap among the unbanked: ownership of unbanked men is 10 percentage points higher than of unbanked women.
  - Recommendation to collect sex-disaggregated financial data to inform policy design.

### Leadership, representation, and outcomes
- Political and managerial representation trends:
  - Asia and Middle East and Central Asia had the lowest proportions in 2019: around 18 percent in legislative positions and 12 percent in ministerial-level positions.
  - Managerial positions (2009 to 2019): Middle East and Central Asia increased from 17 percent to 27 percent; Western Hemisphere from 37 percent to 40 percent; sub-Saharan Africa from 33 percent to 35 percent.
- Representation benefits:
  - Greater gender balance in leadership linked to financial stability, economic performance, infrastructure spending, and women's educational attainment.
  - Loans monitored/issued by female officers have a significantly lower probability of default than loans managed by male loan officers.
- Public and private sector pay gaps:
  - World Bank’s 2019 Worldwide Bureaucracy Indicators: women earn 86 percent as much as male public-sector workers; women hold 30 percent of senior-level public-sector positions.
  - In the formal private sector, women earn 76 percent relative to men.

### Drivers of gender disparities
- Key drivers: unequal access to education, health services, infrastructure, assets, technology; unequal legal rights; violence against women; unequal distribution of unpaid care and domestic work; cultural factors.
- Legal impediments:
  - Women enjoy only three-quarters of the legal rights of men.
  - The 2023 Women, Business, and the Law index examines laws across 190 countries and finds that only 14 countries have no de jure forms of gender discrimination.
- Unpaid care work and COVID-19 impacts:
  - Prior to the pandemic, women’s daily unpaid work was nearly three hours more than men’s.
  - During the pandemic, women took on three times as many additional hours of childcare than men globally.
  - An estimated 606 million women in 2018 remained inactive in the labor market because they assumed unpaid caring roles in their families.
- Violence and economic effects:
  - Ouedraogo and Stenzel (2021) estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in violence against women is associated with a 9 percent lower level of economic activity as measured by night-light data.
- Child marriage:
  - Eliminating child marriage today would increase long-term annual per capita real GDP growth by about 1 percentage point in emerging and developing countries.

### Policies to narrow macrocritical gender gaps
- Overarching approach:
  - Tailor policies to country circumstances and implement as interconnected packages across legal, fiscal, financial sector, and labor market domains.
- Legal reforms:
  - Introduce nondiscrimination clauses and constitutional guarantees of equal treatment; address inequities in property, family, and labor law; enact laws to eradicate violence against women and antidiscrimination at work.
  - Evidence: World Bank (2021) found wage gaps narrowed where legal reform showed greater strides toward equality and increased female labor force participation.
  - Example: Rwanda’s supportive legal framework contributed to female labor force participation of 84 percent compared to the global average of around 47 percent.
- Fiscal policy and public investment:
  - Macroeconomic stability and space for countercyclical fiscal policy are necessary to durably tackle gender disparities.
  - Gender-responsive budgeting and monitoring of investment in infrastructure, health, education, and social protection.
  - Tax policy measures include progressive tax brackets with lower marginal rates for lower incomes; individual rather than household taxation; tax credits or deductions for childcare costs; account for gender differences in consumption; rebalance taxation on labor versus capital income.
  - Infrastructure priorities: water and sanitation—2 billion people lack access to improved sanitation and nearly 1 billion to potable water.
- Financial sector reforms:
  - Improve identification systems, including digital IDs; facilitate mobile phone access; ensure regulatory frameworks do not exhibit gender biases; enable interoperability of financial infrastructure.
  - Enable direct deposit for government transfers and private sector payments to accounts under women’s control; improve financial and digital literacy for women; promote alternative collateral and credit history building.
  - Eliminate biases against female staff and in leadership positions; adopt proportionate risk-based regulation for small and noncomplex institutions serving unserved and underserved customers.
  - Collect sex-disaggregated financial data and conduct policy-related research.
- Product and labor market reforms:
  - Pro-competition product market regulation to increase labor demand and female entrepreneurship; structural transformation toward services can increase demand for female workers.
  - Ease regulations that raise childcare costs or restrict shop hours; simplify business registration, asset ownership, and access to credit to encourage female entrepreneurship.
  - Support flexible work arrangements and parental leave.
  - Minimum wage: changes can affect low-wage workers’ salaries, reduce gender wage gaps, and increase female labor force participation; moderate minimum-to-median-wage ratios are recommended to avoid adverse effects on disadvantaged groups.
  - Collective bargaining: well-designed systems can support disadvantaged groups and reduce gender pay gaps; evidence is mixed but generally supportive.
  - Employment protection: balance needed; overly strict protections can benefit prime-age males and hurt women who move in and out of the labor market, and contribute to larger informal sectors.
- Policies to tackle cultural and social norms:
  - Political prioritization by top leadership can transform women’s economic empowerment; economic processes and pro-women policies can shape cultural norms over time.

### Mainstreaming gender at the IMF — roles and operational guidance
- IMF comparative advantage: highlight macrocriticality of gender disparities and analyze the role of fiscal, monetary, financial, and structural policies in supporting stronger and more inclusive outcomes.
- Operational guidance across IMF functions:
  - Surveillance: where gender gaps significantly influence balance of payments and domestic stability, coverage in Article IV Consultations should occur on a case-by-case basis and be limited to areas where the IMF has expertise.
  - Lending: if narrowing gender gaps is critical to achieve objectives of IMF-supported programs, programs should consider related measures and monitoring.
- Strategic vision: integrate gender issues into IMF work through analysis of how gender disparities affect macro outcomes and how macro policies affect gender disparities, tailoring approaches to country circumstances.

### Box 1 — Historical perspective and the IMF’s 2022 Strategy to Mainstream Gender
- Historical timeline highlights:
  - Voluntary application of gender lens under Managing Director Christine Lagarde; pilot phase 2015–19 in nearly 40 countries; How-To Note in 2018; annual gender-disaggregated financial sector data collected via the Financial Access Survey.
  - 2020–21: Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva prioritized gender mainstreaming; June 2021 letter calling for gender equality in recovery strategies; July 2022 IMF Executive Board endorsement of the gender mainstreaming strategy and start of systematic implementation.
- The 2022 Strategy four pillars:
  - Pillar 1: Strengthen the analytical framework to support IMF country teams.
  - Pillar 2: Set up robust internal governance and organizational structure.
  - Pillar 3: Strengthen collaboration and modalities of engagement with other international institutions.
  - Pillar 4: Create a central unit in the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department.
- Progress since July 2022:
  - Inclusion and Gender Unit established in the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department.
  - Centralized data hub created; roughly 30 percent of data are missing for 190 member countries since 1990.
  - Life-cycle general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents applied in Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and the United States; plans to expand modeling to monetary, financial sector policies and structural reforms.
  - Governance: Senior Gender and Inclusion Accountability Group meets quarterly; Internal Gender Working Group meets monthly.
  - External collaboration: relationships established with international financial institutions, multilateral development banks, civil society organizations; two external advisory groups provide counsel.
  - Country coverage in the first year: gender was covered in the bilateral dialogue with 22 member countries, ranging from “light touch” to deep dives.
- Looking ahead:
  - Gradual expansion of country coverage and depth, emphasis on sustained, intentional gender focus; priority areas include governance, analytics, capacity development, and external collaboration.
  - Mainstreaming gender is expected to take time; IMF is positioned to address knowledge gaps given its macroeconomic and financial policy expertise and counterparts in member countries.
- Significance:
  - July 2022 endorsement recognized that narrowing gender gaps is macrocritical and that integrating gender into macroeconomic and financial policies can lead to stronger, more inclusive growth and more resilient economies.
  - Since strategy launch, internal structures established, analytical tool development underway, country team support organized, external partner collaboration facilitated, and macrocritical gender issues covered in bilateral consultations with more than two dozen member countries.

*Source: Conclusion section of "Integrating Gender into the IMF’s Work" (Gender Note 3) by Rishi Goyal (IMF) and Ratna Sahay (CGD and NCAER).*

### Conclusion ______________________________________________________________________________________ 21

### Conclusion

### Key findings and framing
- The International Monetary Fund’s 2022 Strategy to Mainstream Gender calls for an intentional and systematic approach to integrating gender into macroeconomic policies to foster strong, sustainable, and inclusive growth.
- The Note argues that:
  - closing gender gaps is macrocritical because doing so goes hand in hand with higher economic growth, greater financial stability, and lower income inequality;
  - applying a gender lens to macroeconomic, financial, and structural policy design can help to narrow gender gaps and result in improved economic outcomes.
- Narrowing gender gaps addresses underdevelopment, underutilization, and misallocation of productive human resources and thereby yields economy-wide benefits.

### Motivation: Why the IMF is getting serious about gender equality
- The IMF’s mandate: achieve sustainable growth and prosperity for all 190 member countries by enhancing macroeconomic and financial stability, fostering and maintaining high levels of employment and real incomes, and developing productive resources.
- Persistent gender disparities highlighted:
  - women constitute about half of the world’s productive human resources but face unequal opportunities, outcomes, and representation;
  - access to finance, women’s labor force participation rates, and wages in comparable positions remain well below those of men;
  - women are more frequently employed in informal, temporary, and part-time jobs with lower pay and little or no social protection and are particularly vulnerable during crises.
- Representative statistics reported as of January 2023:
  - 31 heads of state, 36 finance ministers, and 22 central bank governors were women;
  - women make up just 5 percent of CEOs in commercial banks (Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum 2023; Čihák and Sahay, forthcoming).
- Crisis and trend context:
  - nearly half of all women reported that they or a woman they know experienced domestic violence during COVID-19;
  - the World Economic Forum’s 2023 report estimates that it will take more than 130 years to close gender disparities worldwide, up from about 100 years before the pandemic;
  - Badel and Goyal (2023) show the gap in labor force participation rates between women and men will narrow but never close absent a significant step up in policy efforts.

### Macroeconomic relevance and estimated gains
- Empowering women can significantly boost incomes and bolster resilience:
  - Ostry and others (2018) estimate that closing female labor force participation gaps alone would, on average, raise income in emerging market and developing economies by about 23 percent over the long term;
  - over the medium term, narrowing gaps by the extent achieved by the top 5 percent of performers would raise income, on average, by 7¾ percent.
- The Note emphasizes the urgency because the global growth outlook over the medium term is the weakest it has been in decades and new engines of growth are needed as trade has slowed.

### Why gender is macrocritical — channels
- Integrating gender into mainstream macroeconomic policymaking requires recognizing that reducing gender disparities in opportunities, outcomes, and decision-making roles raises economic growth and enhances macro-financial stability.
- IMF country teams and authorities should be sensitized to:
  - channels through which gender disparities affect macroeconomic and financial outcomes;
  - drivers of the disparities and their economic effects;
  - macroeconomic, structural, and financial sector reforms that deliver better macroeconomic and gender outcomes.

### Channels — Labor markets, productivity, and human capital
- Labor force participation and productivity:
  - About 50 percent of working-age women participate in the labor force, which is significantly lower than the ratio of 80 percent for men.
  - Overcoming barriers to women’s participation can stimulate economic growth and stability (Ostry and others 2018; Petersson and others 2017; Woetzel and others 2015; Caprioli 2005; Demeritt and others 2014; Cuberes and Teignier 2016, 2018; Bandara 2015; Gonzales and others 2015b; Hakura and others 2016).
- Skill matching and allocative gains:
  - Without restrictions on access to education, health, finance, and labor force participation, women acquire skills that better match their talent, further boosting productivity.
  - Example: 20 to 40 percent of per capita output growth in the US during 1960–2010 can be explained by better allocation of talent and falling barriers to human capital accumulation, with women accounting for most of the effect (Hsieh and others 2019).
  - Cross-country evidence suggests higher gender equality translates into higher labor productivity (Bertay and others 2020).
- Innovation and education choices:
  - Overcoming gender gaps that hinder innovation at every step—from education and training to the practice of invention and commercialization—would further boost productivity.
  - UNESCO (2017) finds that across 115 countries, on average, female students tend to enroll less often in technology, engineering, manufacturing, and construction and more often in education, health and welfare, arts and humanities, and social sciences.
- Human capital accumulation:
  - Reducing gaps in access to nutrition, education, and health care improves human capital, a key input for economic output (Klasen 2002).
  - Gaps in women’s access to health care and education have narrowed over time and across regions, but indicators such as maternal mortality, adolescent fertility, and literacy gaps remain high in some parts of the world.
  - Increased human capital requires a corresponding increase in female labor force participation to harness the benefits of education and health investments.
- Gender wage gaps:
  - Although narrowing over time, a marked gender wage gap remains within most countries and occupations.
  - Gender wage gap data are not readily available for most developing economies.
  - For countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the gender wage gap—defined as the percentage difference between the median earnings of female and male full-time employees—was estimated at (text ends in source).

*Source: Conclusion section of "Integrating Gender into the IMF’s Work" (Gender Note 3) by Rishi Goyal (IMF) and Ratna Sahay (CGD and NCAER).*

### 11.6 percentage points in 2020, compared to 18 percentage points in 2000 (Figure 2). Gender wage gaps

### gnsea2023001 - 11.6 percentage points in 2020, compared to 18 percentage points in 2000 (Figure 2). Gender wage gaps

### Gender wage gaps and income inequality
- Gender wage gap declined from 18 percentage points in 2000 to 11.6 percentage points in 2020.
- Gender wage gaps contribute directly to higher income inequality; lower gender gaps are associated with lower income inequality, which improves social stability and economic growth (Gonzales and others 2015a; Demery and Gaddis 2009; Čihák and Sahay 2020).
- Cuberes and Teignier (2016) estimate that gender gaps in entrepreneurship cause an average income loss of 6 percent in the OECD, with potentially higher losses in developing countries.

### Balance of payments stability and economic resilience
- Reducing gender disparities can enhance balance of payments stability and improve competitiveness and product variety (Kazandjian and others 2016).
- Channels: gender gaps in opportunity (education enrollment for girls), labor and financial markets (efficiency, informality), and constraints on human capital and innovation.
- References illustrating channels: Seguino (2000, 2010); Blanton and Blanton (2015); Coleman (2010); Busse and Nunnenkamp (2009); Busse and Spielmann (2006); Seguino and others (2009).

### Financial inclusion: current gaps and impacts
- Global access to financial services has increased, but women on average have fewer accounts than men.
- Regional account ownership gaps:
  - Sub-Saharan Africa: 27 percent of women have an account compared with 36 percent of men.
  - Middle East and Central Asia: 40 percent of women versus 51 percent of men.
- Gender gap in accessing bank credit is larger: female entrepreneurs face more restrictive collateral requirements, shorter loan maturities, and higher interest rates; they also face higher financial illiteracy and lack of household financial resources (Sahay and others 2015; DFiD-GIZ 2013).
- Fintech effects:
  - Fintech narrows access to financial services overall but can exacerbate the digital gender divide.
  - Regional variations: Fintech contributes to closing gender gaps in Middle Eastern and African countries; gaps are lower for traditional financial inclusion in Asian and Latin American countries (Sahay and others 2020).
- Financial inclusion and macro outcomes:
  - Greater financial inclusion goes hand in hand with higher economic growth, particularly where financial inclusion is low (Sahay and others 2015; Khera and others 2021).
  - Inclusion of women as users, providers, and regulators fosters greater banking stability; women in leadership positions and gender diversity on boards are associated with lower non-performing loans and greater financial stability (Olusegun 2017; Sahay and Čihák 2018; Khera and others 2022; Strøm and others 2014).
  - Čihák and Sahay (2020) find that inequality falls more when women have greater access and that the decline in inequality is even more at lower levels of financial depth.
- Specific data points and estimates:
  - Mobile phone ownership gap among the unbanked: ownership of unbanked men is 10 percentage points higher than of unbanked women.
  - Recommendation to collect sex-disaggregated financial data to inform policy design (Women's World Banking 2016).

### Leadership, representation, and outcomes
- Political and managerial representation:
  - Proportion of women in legislative and ministerial-level positions increased worldwide, with notable improvements in sub-Saharan Africa and the Western Hemisphere.
  - Asia and Middle East and Central Asia had the lowest proportions in 2019: around 18 percent in legislative positions and 12 percent in ministerial-level positions.
  - Managerial positions (2009 to 2019): Middle East and Central Asia increased from 17 percent to 27 percent; Western Hemisphere from 37 percent to 40 percent; sub-Saharan Africa from 33 percent to 35 percent.
- Representation benefits:
  - Greater gender balance in leadership linked to financial stability, economic performance, infrastructure spending, and women's educational attainment (Christiansen and others 2016; Sahay and Čihák 2018; Duflo 2012).
  - Women’s political leadership associated with higher infrastructure spending and female educational attainment.
  - Evidence that loans monitored/issued by female officers have a significantly lower probability of default than loans managed by male loan officers (Beck and others 2018).
- Public sector pay and representation:
  - World Bank’s 2019 Worldwide Bureaucracy Indicators: women earn 86 percent as much as male public-sector workers; women hold 30 percent of senior-level public-sector positions.
  - In the formal private sector, women earn 76 percent relative to men (Shi and others 2019).

### Drivers of gender disparities
- Key drivers: unequal access to education, health services, infrastructure, assets, technology; unequal legal rights; violence against women; unequal distribution of unpaid care and domestic work; cultural factors.
- Legal impediments:
  - Women enjoy only three-quarters of the legal rights of men.
  - The 2023 Women, Business, and the Law index examines laws across 190 countries and finds that only 14 countries have no de jure forms of gender discrimination.
  - Even where legal equality exists, implementation is constrained by social, cultural, and religious norms.
- Unpaid care work and COVID-19 impacts:
  - Prior to the pandemic, women’s daily unpaid work was nearly three hours more than men’s (Alonso and others 2019).
  - During the pandemic, women took on three times as many additional hours of childcare than men globally (Kenny and Yang 2021).
- Violence and economic effects:
  - Ouedraogo and Stenzel (2021) estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in violence against women is associated with a 9 percent lower level of economic activity as measured by night-light data.
  - Short-term: victims work fewer hours and are less productive; long-term: fewer women in the workforce, lower skill acquisition, and adverse effects on children and public investment.
- Child marriage:
  - Eliminating child marriage today would increase long-term annual per capita real GDP growth by about 1 percentage point in emerging and developing countries (Mitra and others 2020).
- Magnitude of unpaid-care-driven inactivity:
  - An estimated 606 million women in 2018 remained inactive in the labor market because they assumed unpaid caring roles in their families (Addati and others 2018).

### Policies to narrow macrocritical gender gaps
- Overarching approach:
  - Policies need to be tailored to country circumstances and implemented as interconnected packages across legal, fiscal, financial sector, and labor market domains.
  - IMF surveillance and country work can diagnose issues and recommend policy packages to achieve better macroeconomic outcomes.
- Legal reforms:
  - Introduce nondiscrimination clauses and constitutional guarantees of equal treatment.
  - Address inequities in property law, family law (e.g., right to head a household, sell joint assets, open a bank account), labor law (equal pay for equal work, rights related to childbearing and elderly care), and enact laws to eradicate violence against women and antidiscrimination at work.
  - Evidence: World Bank (2021) found wage gaps narrowed where legal reform showed greater strides toward equality and increased female labor force participation.
  - Example: Rwanda’s supportive legal framework contributed to female labor force participation of 84 percent compared to the global average of around 47 percent.
- Fiscal policy and public investment:
  - Macroeconomic stability (including debt sustainability and space for countercyclical fiscal policy) is necessary to durably tackle gender disparities.
  - Gender-responsive budgeting and monitoring of investment in infrastructure, health, education, and social protection.
  - Tax policy measures include:
    - Progressive tax brackets with lower marginal rates for lower incomes.
    - Individual rather than household taxation to address biases against secondary earners.
    - Tax credits or deductions for childcare costs.
    - Account for gender differences in consumption in specific taxes.
    - Rebalance taxation on labor versus capital income.
  - Strengthen social protection (targeted social assistance, conditional cash transfers targeted to women, quality childcare and elder care).
  - Infrastructure priorities: water and sanitation, secure transportation, digital services—2 billion people lack access to improved sanitation and nearly 1 billion to potable water.
  - Closing public-sector wage and leadership gaps can lead by example.
- Financial sector reforms:
  - Improve identification systems, including digital IDs (Demirguc-Kunt and others 2018; Cecchetti and Schoenholtz 2017).
  - Facilitate mobile phone access and close gender ownership gaps (mobile phone ownership of unbanked men is 10 percentage points higher than of unbanked women).
  - Ensure regulatory frameworks do not exhibit gender biases and enable interoperability of financial infrastructure.
  - Enable direct deposit for government transfers and private sector payments to accounts under women’s control.
  - Improve financial and digital literacy for women.
  - Promote alternative collateral and credit history building (phone and utility payments).
  - Eliminate biases against female staff and in leadership positions in financial firms.
  - Adopt proportionate risk-based regulation for small and noncomplex institutions that serve unserved and underserved customers (who are more often women).
  - Collect sex-disaggregated financial data and conduct policy-related research.
- Product and labor market reforms:
  - Pro-competition product market regulation to increase labor demand and female entrepreneurship.
  - Structural transformation toward services can increase demand for female workers.
  - Ease regulations that raise childcare costs or restrict shop hours.
  - Simplify business registration, asset ownership, and access to credit to encourage female entrepreneurship.
  - Support flexible work arrangements and parental leave.
  - Minimum wage:
    - Changes can affect low-wage workers’ salaries, reduce gender wage gaps, and increase female labor force participation.
    - Moderate minimum-to-median-wage ratios are recommended to avoid adverse effects on disadvantaged groups.
  - Collective bargaining:
    - Well-designed collective bargaining can support disadvantaged groups and reduce gender pay gaps; evidence is mixed but generally supportive.
  - Employment protection:
    - Legislation needs balance; overly strict protections can benefit prime-age males and hurt women who move in and out of the labor market, and contribute to larger informal sectors.
- Policies to tackle cultural and social norms:
  - Addressing social, cultural, and religious norms is complex and long-term.
  - Political prioritization by top leadership can transform women’s economic empowerment (anecdotal evidence from India, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania).
  - Economic processes and pro-women policies can shape cultural norms over time.

### Mainstreaming gender at the IMF
- IMF comparative advantage:
  - Highlight macrocriticality of gender disparities and analyze the role of fiscal, monetary, financial, and structural policies in supporting stronger and more inclusive outcomes.
  - Engage with ministers of finance and central bank governors to link gender and macroeconomic policy discussions.
- Operational guidance across core IMF functions:
  - Surveillance: where gender gaps significantly influence balance of payments and domestic stability, coverage in Article IV Consultations should occur on a case-by-case basis and be limited to areas where the IMF has expertise.
  - Lending: if narrowing gender gaps is critical to achieve objectives of IMF-supported programs, programs should consider related measures and monitoring.
- Strategic vision:
  - Integrate gender issues into IMF work through analysis of how gender disparities affect macro outcomes and how macro policies affect gender disparities, while tailoring approaches to country circumstances.

*Source: IMF staff text from the described content unit.*

### Box 1. Historical Perspective on Mainstreaming Gender at the IMF

### Box 1. Historical Perspective on Mainstreaming Gender at the IMF

### Historical timeline and background
- IMF staff began applying a gender lens on a more voluntary basis under Managing Director Christine Lagarde (“Lagarde: Women Can Help Grow the World Economy” 2013).
- 2015: IMF committed to support member countries pursuing the 2030 Development Agenda, which included addressing gender inequality.
- 2015–19: A pilot phase was launched during which staff’s contributions were sought on a voluntary basis; work was conducted in nearly 40 countries.
- 2018: A How-To Note was prepared to guide staff in covering gender issues in country work.
- Around the same time, IMF began collecting annual gender-disaggregated financial sector data as part of the Financial Access Survey (FAS).
- 2015: IMF undertook a global study on gender budgeting, supported by the UK Department for International Development (now UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)); IMF (2017) set out a framework for the Fund’s capacity development work on gender budgeting.
- COVID-19 pandemic: IMF capacity development on gender budgeting came to a virtual halt as country teams focused on crisis response—this decline in coverage occurred while gender gaps began to worsen rapidly.
- 2020–21: Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva prioritized gender mainstreaming; in June 2021 she cosigned a letter calling on governments to prioritize gender equality in economic recovery strategies and appointed a Senior Advisor to the Managing Director on Gender to develop the IMF’s first-ever gender mainstreaming strategy for the IMF’s 190 member countries.
- July 2022: IMF Executive Board strongly endorsed the gender mainstreaming strategy; staff began systematic implementation.

### IMF’s vision on mainstreaming gender
- Integrate gender into IMF core activities—surveillance, lending, and capacity development—so staff can:
  - Systematically assess the macroeconomic consequences of gender gaps where they are macrocritical.
  - Evaluate gender-differentiated impacts of shocks, trends, and policies.
  - Provide granular and tailored macroeconomic and financial policy advice and capacity development support.
- Mainstreaming implies integrating gender-relevant issues into exchange rate, monetary, fiscal, financial, and structural policy discussions.
- If recommended or implemented measures (for example, eliminating fuel subsidies, reducing other public expenditures, introducing a value-added tax) widen gender disparities or lead to other adverse distributional effects, a comprehensive policy package should:
  - Include assessment of the gender and distributional impacts of these policies.
  - Propose mitigating measures (such as social spending) targeting the most vulnerable.
- Gender mainstreaming overlaps with, yet remains distinct from, the quest for inclusive growth; including women more equally is necessary for inclusive growth and brings inherent value through diversity and demonstrated socioeconomic benefits.
- Integration into lending: gender to be included in lending activities where program conditionality on gender issues is critical for achieving IMF-supported program objectives.
- Capacity development: move from primarily fiscal-focused training/workshops toward training and tailored technical assistance across macroeconomic and financial sector policies.
- Collaboration with partner institutions and stakeholders at international and national levels is essential to maximize impact.

### IMF’s 2022 Strategy to Mainstream Gender — four pillars
- Pillar 1: Strengthen the analytical framework to support IMF country teams
  - Equip staff with data and analytical and policy tools for tailored and granular advice.
  - Enable application of a gender lens to emerging priority areas: climate, digitalization, and fragile and conflict-affected countries.
  - Recognize that the process will take time as data gaps are closed, skills acquired, and resource constraints alleviated.
- Pillar 2: Set up robust internal governance and organizational structure
  - Ensure prioritization, accountability, and steady progress.
  - Embed gender mainstreaming activities in IMF agenda-setting documents, management priorities, and departments’ accountability frameworks.
  - Ensure country coverage is based on macrocriticality and evenhanded treatment of countries in similar circumstances.
- Pillar 3: Strengthen collaboration and modalities of engagement with other international institutions
  - Collaborate with institutions with sectoral expertise (World Bank Group, UN Women, multilateral development banks, regional development institutions).
  - Engage civil society organizations, think tanks, and external experts.
  - Expect limited external donor funding to support IMF capacity development activities.
- Pillar 4: Create a central unit in the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department
  - Further develop analytical tools, realize internal economies of scale, avoid duplication, facilitate external collaboration, monitor governance, and periodically take stock of progress.

### Progress in implementing the strategy (since July 2022)
- Central unit creation:
  - Inclusion and Gender Unit established in the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department to develop analytical tools, support country teams, provide guidance, monitor implementation, and facilitate external collaboration.
- Data and tools:
  - Centralized data hub offers IMF economists access to comparable cross-country macro-relevant gender-related indicators.
  - Roughly 30 percent of data are missing for 190 member countries since 1990—progress in collecting such data is imperative.
  - A variety of analytical tools exist to assess macrocriticality of gender disparities and to explore effects of policy reforms; these tools will be made available externally in due course.
- Modeling and analysis:
  - Life-cycle general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents are being applied for policy analyses in Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and the United States.
  - Models allow understanding of differential effects of shocks, trends, and policies and support design of gender-responsive reforms.
  - Staff plan to expand modeling to include monetary and financial sector policies and structural reforms.
- Governance and internal structures:
  - Senior Gender and Inclusion Accountability Group (heads of departments) meets quarterly for strategic oversight.
  - Internal Gender Working Group (staff across departments) meets monthly to foster peer learning.
- External collaboration:
  - Relationships established with other international financial institutions, multilateral development banks, and civil society organizations.
  - Two external advisory groups—one with academics and another with civil society and think tanks—provide counsel.
- Country coverage:
  - In the first year of implementation, gender was covered in the bilateral dialogue with 22 member countries.
  - Coverage ranged from “light touch” (starting conversations, analyzing a specific issue) to deep dives (breadth and depth of analysis and inclusion in policy discussions).
  - The Inclusion and Gender Unit works with area departments to identify country coverage and issues for bilateral consultations; progress is reported to IMF management and the IMF Executive Board.

### Looking ahead — priorities and expectations
- Aim to expand country coverage and deepen breadth and depth of coverage of macrocritical gender issues gradually.
- Emphasis on sustained, intentional gender focus; evidence-based, high-quality policy analysis; and traction of staff recommendations rather than speed.
- Continued steady progress required across the four pillars:
  - Governance: prioritization and accountability by decision-makers.
  - Analytical: collecting data, building and disseminating analytical tools.
  - Capacity development and internal resourcing: training staff and country authorities, encouraging peer learning, enhancing coverage and follow-up.
  - External collaboration: work with partners to leverage on-the-ground experience.
- Sensitizing country teams and main counterparts (including through surveillance and capacity development) is necessary for sustained engagement.
- Historical precedent: macro-financial mainstreaming has been a sustained multi-decade effort; mainstreaming gender is expected to take time but IMF is well-positioned to address knowledge gaps given its macroeconomic and financial policy expertise and counterparts in member countries.

### Conclusion — significance and current status
- July 2022 endorsement of the gender mainstreaming strategy was an important milestone recognizing that narrowing gender gaps is macrocritical and that integrating gender into macroeconomic and financial policies can lead to stronger, more inclusive growth and more resilient economies.
- Macrocriticality of gender remains the essential basis for IMF engagement, benefiting women and society at large.
- Since the strategy launch, important progress has been made in the first year: internal structures established, analytical tool development underway, country team support organized, external partner collaboration facilitated, and macrocritical gender issues covered in bilateral consultations with more than two dozen member countries.
- Context: the initiative arrives during a period of weak medium-term growth prospects, growing geopolitical strains, retreat to insular policies, widening income and wealth inequalities, and rising distrust and disillusionment—closing gender disparities is presented as a silver lining.

*Source: IMF — Box 1. Historical Perspective on Mainstreaming Gender at the IMF.*

### References

### gnsea2023001 - References

### Major themes and topics represented in the references
- Care work and care jobs; unpaid work and redistribution
- Youth labor market outcomes and labor market policies
- Origins and persistence of gender roles; social norms and female employment
- Gender budgeting and gender mainstreaming in IMF policy
- Conditional cash transfers and targeted cash transfers
- Financial inclusion, fintech, and women in finance
- Gender gaps in labor markets, wages, and employment (including informality)
- Product and labor market reforms, minimum wages, and collective bargaining
- COVID-19 impacts on female employment (“She-cessions”) and childcare burdens
- Gender-based violence and legal/land/property rights as constraints on women’s economic participation
- Education, STEM participation, and the innovation gap
- Macroeconomic costs and growth implications of gender inequality

### Representative citations (as listed in the source)
- Addati, L., U. Cattaneo, V. Esquivel, and I. Valarino. 2018. “Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work.” International  abour Organization (I O).
- Ahn, J., Z. An, J. C. Bluedorn, G. Ciminelli, Z. Koczan, D. Malacrino, D. Muhaj, and others. 2019. “Improving Youth Labor Market Outcomes in Emerging Market and Developing Economies.” IMF Staff Discussion Note 19/02, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Alonso, C., M. Brussevich, E. Dabla-Norris, Y. Kinoshita, and K. Kochhar. 2019. “Reducing and Redistributing Unpaid Work: Stronger Policies to Support Gender Equality.” IMF Working  aper 19 225, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Armand, Alex, Orazio Attanasio, Pedro Carneiro, and Valérie Lechene. 2020. “The Effect of Gender-Targeted Conditional Cash Transfers on Household Expenditures: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment.” The Economic Journal 130 (631): 1875–97.
- Baird, S., C. McIntosh, and B. Özler. 2011. “Cash or Condition? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 126 (4): 1709–53.
- Bluedorn, J., F. Caselli, N.-J. Hansen, I. Shitaba, and M. M. Tavares. 2021. “Gender and Employment in the COVID-19 Recession: Evidence on ‘She-cessions.’” IMF Working  aper 21 95, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Demery, L., and I. Gaddis. 2009. “Social Spending,  overty, and Gender Equality in Kenya: A Benefit Incidence Analysis.” Deutsche Gesellschaft for Technische Zusammenarbeit, Nairobi.
- Demirguc-Kunt, A., L. Klapper, D. Singer, S. Ansar, and J. Hess. 2018. “The Global Findex Database 2017: Measuring Financial Inclusion and the Fintech Revolution.” World Bank, Washington, DC.
- Elborgh-Woytek, K., M. Newiak, K. Kochhar, S. Fabrizio, K. Kpodar, P. Wingender, B. Clements, and others. 2013. “Women, Work, and the Economy: Macroeconomic Gains from Gender Equity.” IMF Staff Discussion Note 13/10, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Fabrizio, S., D. B. P. Gomes, and M. M. Tavares. 2021. “COVID-19 She-Cession: The Employment Penalty of Taking Care of Young Children.” IMF Working  aper 21 58, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Georgieva, K., S. Fabrizio, D. B. P. Gomes, and M. M. Tavares. 2021. “COVID-19: The Moms’ Emergency.” IMF Blog, April 30.
- Khera, P., S. Ogawa, R. Sahay, and M. Vasishth. 2022. “Women and Fintech: As  eaders and Users.” IMF Working Paper 22/140, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Malta, V., L. Kolovich, A. Martinez, and M. M. Tavares. 2019b. “Informality and Gender Gaps Going Hand in Hand.” IMF Working  aper 19 112, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Ostry, J., J. Alvarez, R. Espinoza, and C. Papageorgiou. 2018. “Economic Gains from Gender Inclusion: New Mechanisms, New Evidence.” IMF Staff Discussion Note 18 06, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Sahay, R., and M. Čihák. 2018. "Women in Finance: A Case for Closing Gaps." IMF Staff Discussion Note 18/005, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Suri, T., and W. Jack. 2016. “The  ong-run Poverty and Gender Impacts of Mobile Money.” Science 354 (6317): 1288–92.
- Tang, V., A. Santiago, Z. Khan, D. Amaglobeli, E. Dugarova, K. Gifford, L. Gores, and others. 2021. “Gender Equality and COVID-19: Policies and Institutions for Mitigating the Crisis.” IMF COVID-19 Special Series, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Woetzel, J., A. Madgavkar, K. Ellingrud, E. Labaye, S. Devillard, E. Kutcher, J. Manyika, and others. 2015. “The ower of  arity: How Advancing Women’s Equality Can Add $12 Trillion to Global Growth.” McKinsey Global Institute.
- World Bank. 2023. “Women, Business and the  aw 2023 Report.” Washington, DC.
- World Economic Forum. 2023. “Global Gender Gap Report.” https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2023/.

### Notes appearing in the source
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*Source: gnsea2023001 - References (PDF).*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/gns/2023/english/gnsea2023001.pdf_