## Pursuing Women’s Economic Empowerment

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---

### EXECUTIVE SUMMARY — Rationale and global context
- Greater gender equality boosts economic growth, leads to better development outcomes, contributes to reducing income inequality, boosts economic diversification, and supports economic resilience.
- Gender equality is one of the 17 global UN Sustainable Development Goals.
- The G7 (Taormina Leaders’ Summit, 2017) renewed emphasis on promoting women’s empowerment and committed to mainstreaming gender equality into all policies; Canada’s G7 Presidency is carrying this forward.

### EXECUTIVE SUMMARY — Current state of gender inequality (high-level findings)
- Gender inequality persists worldwide despite progress.
- The World Economic Forum estimates that at the current rate of progress it will take 217 years to close the overall global gender gap in female labor force participation and equal opportunities.
- The global average female labor force participation rate hovers around 50 percent, but regional variation is large:
  - About two-fifths of women participate in the labor market in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.
  - Almost two-thirds of women participate in sub-Saharan Africa.
- On average, women’s earnings are about half those of men.
- Low inclusion of women in the labor market and in political positions reflects unequal opportunities in access to education and health from early childhood and to financial services, and is impeded by widespread gender-based legal restrictions.

### EXECUTIVE SUMMARY — Why gender equality matters — economic arguments and evidence
- Closing gender gaps can boost economic growth and productivity:
  - IMF and other studies estimate growth gains from closing gender gaps: Canada by 4 percent; Japan by 4 percent; Pakistan by 30 percent; Niger by 32 percent.
- Gender equality is associated with greater equality in income distribution; gender inequality correlates with higher income inequality.
- Female representation in senior corporate positions is associated with higher corporate profitability; adding one more woman to senior management or a corporate board (holding team size constant) is associated with 8–13 basis points higher return on assets.
- Gender equality supports economic resilience through greater export diversification and reduces export concentration risks.
- Presence and higher shares of women on bank boards are associated with greater bank stability.
- Lower gender inequality has been linked to improved health outcomes for women and children and positive associations with per-capita GDP, competitiveness, and human development indicators.

### EXECUTIVE SUMMARY — Policy priorities and interventions (general guidance)
- Policies providing equal opportunities from the start:
  - Invest in education and health to level the playing field and reduce gender gaps in skills and income.
  - Increase access to financial services, including digital financial services, to provide women with equal access to resources and foster labor productivity.
  - Promote equal rights for women in all areas, including the right to property ownership.
  - Developing countries can benefit most from these policies.
- Measures supporting work–family balance:
  - Provide affordable, high-quality child and elderly care to support more rapid returns to work for women with caregiving responsibilities.
  - Offer publicly financed parental leave schemes to reconcile work and family life and maintain labor market connections via guaranteed return to the job.
  - Establish flexible work arrangements to help women balance formal employment with other demands.
  - Remove tax provisions that discriminate against secondary (predominantly female) earners to generate large efficiency gains and improve aggregate labor market outcomes.
  - Use tax credits or benefits for low-wage earners to reduce net tax liability and increase net income gain from accepting a job.
  - These measures can be particularly effective in advanced economies and some developing countries.

### EXECUTIVE SUMMARY — IMF engagement and focus areas
- The IMF has scaled up work on gender equality and will continue efforts focusing on:
  - Deepening understanding of the economic benefits of women’s empowerment in the labor market and through equal opportunities for boys and girls, including in the context of megatrends and rapid technological change.
  - Integrating gender analysis into Fund policy dialogue with member countries.
  - Providing customized assistance, workshops, and peer-learning courses in areas such as gender budgeting.
  - Expanding collaboration with other international institutions to leverage complementary expertise.

### 9. Health indicators have improved globally, but maternal death and adolescent fertility rates remain high in some countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa — Health indicators and gender outcomes
- The risk of maternal death has declined in all regions over the past three decades; sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of mortality, but the rate now stands at half that in 1980.
- Asia and the Pacific and the Middle East and Central Asia achieved a significant decline in the maternal mortality ratio; the decline in the Western Hemisphere was gradual and remains slightly higher than in Europe.
- Adolescent fertility rates—the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 19—have declined in all regions from 1980 to 2014, with sub-Saharan Africa having the highest average rate.
- High adolescent fertility rates are associated with less economic activity by women, prevent girls from going to school, increase gender gaps in education, and may result in girls remaining out of the labor market or entering with low skill levels (Gonzalez and others, 2016).

### Financial access and legal barriers — key statistics and findings
- Worldwide, only 65 percent of women have a formal bank account compared with 72 percent of men, with larger gaps in emerging and developing countries (World Bank Global Findex, 2018).
- Gaps exist in the use of financial services such as credit and debit cards and borrowing services (Delechat and others, 2018).
- Women receive approximately only 40 percent of outstanding loans.
- Country-specific evidence: Malaysia saw its share of female borrowers increase from 37 percent in 2004 to 44 percent in 2016 (IMF Financial Access Survey).
- Gender-based legal restrictions remain pervasive:
  - When gender equity was reflected in the law, female labor force participation increased by at least five percentage points in the following five years in half of the countries studied (Gonzales and others, 2015b).
  - According to the 2018 Women, Business, and the Law Report, globally over 2.7 billion women face legal restrictions from having the same choice of jobs as men.
  - In 18 countries, husbands can prevent their wives from working.
  - In 59 countries, there are no laws against sexual harassment in the workplace.
- Social norms, beyond formal legal frameworks, also cause gender inequality and can reduce the effectiveness of policies.

### Mixed developments in equality of outcomes
- Labor force participation gaps have been decreasing overall, and wage gaps have narrowed in many countries; female representation in political and corporate leadership has increased.
- Despite progress, labor force participation rates, wages, and representation in parliament remain well below parity in all regions.
- Female labor force participation trends:
  - General increase over the past three decades in all regions except the Middle East and Central Asian region, where participation has plateaued.
  - Even with higher participation, women are often concentrated in informal, low-paying, and vulnerable jobs.
- Gender earnings gaps:
  - On average, women’s earnings are about half those of men (World Economic Forum, 2016).
  - Some countries have made progress toward parity; in sub-Saharan Africa the ratio of female-to-male estimated earnings approaches parity in Liberia (World Economic Forum, 2017).
  - In Benin, Botswana, Lao P.D.R., Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Slovenia, Rwanda, and Vietnam, the female-to-male earnings ratio stands above 0.8.
  - OECD research: in OECD countries, the gender gap for average annual earnings for full-time workers is 26 percent for highly educated workers and 22 percent for less educated workers (OECD, 2017).

### Policies to foster women’s participation in economic activities — sectoral measures
- Education:
  - Educational attainment correlates positively with female labor force participation (Gonzales and others, 2015b; World Bank, 2011).
  - Example: in Turkey, 17 percent of illiterate women participate in the labor force, while participation exceeds 70 percent among women with a graduate degree (Ercan, Hoşgör, and Yimlaz, 2010).
  - Conditional cash transfers have been used to increase female school enrollment in Nigeria and Pakistan; Nigeria’s scheme targeted poor households and linked transfers to girls' enrollment.
- Health:
  - Investing in healthcare can increase economic opportunities for women (World Bank, 2011).
  - Rwanda reduced maternal mortality rates from 1990 to 2013 associated with an increase in health expenditures as a share of GDP (Kadama and others, 2018).
  - There was an increase of about seven percentage points from 2000 to 2014 in the percentage of women who received prenatal care from a skilled provider; by 2014 almost 100 percent of Rwandan women were receiving this care.
- Access to infrastructure:
  - Safe transportation, better roads, and mobile networks help women access work across regions.
  - Mexico introduced public transport buses for women only to ensure safe travel.
  - Kerala’s 2017-18 Gender and Child Budgeting plan includes allocations for gender-friendly infrastructure.
  - Sanitation facilities, particularly in lower-income countries such as India, help protect girls from gender-based violence and can increase school attendance.
- Access to finance and digital financial services:
  - Access to finance could impact labor productivity and is associated with more equal incomes across countries.
  - The 2017 IMF Financial Access Survey (gender-disaggregated data from 27 countries) shows a steady increase in the share of female borrowers in Chile, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
  - Initiatives cited: Malaysia’s Women Entrepreneur Financing Program and Chile’s Simplified Deposit Accounts.
- Promoting equal rights in property and entrepreneurship:
  - Address female inheritance legislation, equal property rights, and laws against discrimination to stimulate female labor force participation.
  - Malawi, Namibia, and Peru revised legal frameworks to reduce gender discrimination and experienced substantial increases in female labor force participation in the decade following those changes.

### Policies supporting work–family reconciliation, tax, and labor supply
- Child and elderly care:
  - Providing affordable, high-quality care supports faster return to work for women.
  - Mexico: one-third of women aged 25 to 44 spend at least 40 hours per week caring for both children under age 14 and elderly, dependent, or disabled individuals.
  - Pension credits and other incentives should ensure caregivers are not penalized for returning to work.
- Parental leave:
  - Publicly financed parental leave can help reconcile work and family life and guarantee a return to the job.
  - The average duration of paid parental leave in advanced economies is 26 weeks; all OECD countries except the United States and Korea offer paid parental leave (Elborgh-Woytek and others, 2013).
  - Long periods outside the labor market can reduce skills and earnings (Ruhm, 1998).
  - Policies that promote parity between paternity and maternity leave and “use-it-or-lose-it” allowances (e.g., Sweden) can support more equal sharing of leave and faster returns to work for mothers.
- Flexible work arrangements:
  - Flexible modalities (telework, compressed schedules, part-time work) help balance paid work and family commitments; availability tends to matter more for women given traditional intra-family labor divisions.
- Tax policy and secondary earners:
  - Female labor supply is more responsive to taxes than male labor supply.
  - Replacing family taxation with individual taxation can reduce the tax burden on predominantly female secondary earners and generate efficiency gains.
  - Many advanced economies, particularly in Europe, can reduce the secondary earner tax wedge significantly.
  - In-work tax credits reduce net tax liability and increase net income gains from accepting a job; phasing out with individual income rather than family income reduces high marginal tax rates for secondary earners.
  - Countries using individual-income phase-outs include Belgium, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

### Fiscal policy, gender-responsive budgeting, and institutional measures
- Gender-sensitive or gender-responsive budgeting can ensure tax and spending policies and public financial management address gender inequality in education, health, and economic empowerment.
- Objectives of gender budgeting: assess needs of boys and girls and men and women; identify outcomes or goals; plan, allocate, distribute funds; monitor and evaluate achievements.
- Findings from global and country studies on gender budgeting:
  - Gender budgeting has been implemented across all regions and income levels and at national, state, and local levels.
  - Leadership of the ministry of finance is crucial; examples of countries including gender budgeting requirements in budget call circulars: Afghanistan, Albania, Ecuador, Finland, the Philippines, Sweden.
  - Legal requirements matter: Austria, Bolivia, and Rwanda mandate gender budgeting in their constitutions.
  - Public financial management institutions enable operationalizing gender-responsive fiscal policies; Ukraine implemented gender budgeting within public financial management reforms.
  - Civil society, gender and other ministries, parliaments, and academia are key players.
  - Gender units in line ministries can help but coordination can be an issue; political support is important when additional resources and cross-administration efforts are required.
  - Gender budgeting has typically focused on expenditures and overlooked taxes; recent greater focus on revenues noted in Finland, Iceland, India, and Uganda.
  - Evidence of impacts:
    - Morocco: gender budgeting associated with an increase in female primary school enrollment in rural areas by more than 18 percentage points over 10 years.
    - India: states with gender budgeting efforts have made more progress on gender equality in primary school enrollment than states without.

### Strengthening gender budgeting: reporting, transparency, and cooperation
- Gender budgeting statements can help ensure transparency. Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Korea, Morocco, and Nepal have issued various forms of these statements.
- Collecting gender-disaggregated data to allow for better gender-based analysis is important.
- Ex-ante impact assessments of gender policies, as well as ex-post monitoring and gender auditing, are common gaps in most surveyed countries.
- Among the G7 countries, Japan and France have made the most progress in systematically collecting fiscal data disaggregated by gender, though they have not yet published these data in the annual budget documentation.
- Korea requires that the government examine the gender impacts of the budget and whether men and women are equally receiving benefits from the budget.
- Cooperation across levels of government and with non-governmental actors is essential:
  - Mexico: federal government earmarked resources nationally for women’s health and economic empowerment programs; Mexico City implemented a program aimed at providing safe public transportation options for women.
  - Uganda: “local budget clubs” allow citizens to discuss spending priorities and maintain government accountability.
  - Germany and Spain: gender budgeting initiatives introduced at the local level.
  - United Kingdom: Women’s Budget Group conducts a thorough annual, gender-sensitive analysis of the budget.
  - Canada: Alternative Federal Budget is an example of civil society ensuring a gender perspective in fiscal policies.

### IMF’s mandate and integration of gender in its work program
- Gender equality promotes economic stability and growth—key objectives under the Fund’s mandate.
- The 2013 IMF Board paper “Jobs and Growth: Analytical and Operational Considerations for the Fund” and the accompanying Guidance Note noted the need for IMF work on issues related to jobs and growth—including gender inequality—to be consistent with its mandate and areas of expertise.
- In 2015, the Article IV Surveillance Guidance Note was updated to cover emerging issues and included the operationalization of gender issues in the IMF Board work program.
- The IMF is working on a “how-to” note that provides an overview of good practices in covering gender issues in its country work and provides guidance to IMF teams.
- The IMF’s operational work on gender follows three main work streams: surveillance; use of Fund resources (financial assistance to Fund members); and provision of technical assistance (capacity development and training).

### Analytical work: topics and ongoing research
- Analytical work examines drivers of gender equality and links to sustained and inclusive growth.
- Recent work explores legal restrictions, financial inclusion, female labor force participation, access to infrastructure, and gender budgeting.
- Ongoing Fund work examines:
  - Impact of technological advancement on the future of work, focusing on gender differences in labor market outcomes across countries.
  - Relationship between gender diversity and structural transformation and resulting effects on productivity and growth.
  - Potential gains in female labor force participation from tax-and-transfer reform in a number of advanced economies.
  - Link between gender gaps and financial resilience, analyzing gaps in access to and use of finance and inclusion of women among financial services providers and regulators.
- Analytical and policy work informs IMF operational work.

### Surveillance and programmatic integration of gender issues
- Gender issues will be covered in IMF surveillance when they are macro-critical.
- In 2015, the Fund adopted a more systematic approach on gender issues, integrating analysis of gender equality into Article IV consultations under a pilot initiative.
- The pilot initiative covered gender inequality issues in 38 countries across all geographic regions and income levels.
- Gender equality has been considered in Fund-supported programs:
  - Egypt: recent IMF-supported program focuses on investing in public nurseries and is working towards implementing gender budgeting.
  - Jordan: program contains measures to reduce child-care costs, including publicly-subsidized nurseries for low-income employees in small and medium size enterprises.
  - Niger: program includes conditionality on formulating a gender development plan.
- Following conclusion of the third and final phase of the pilot initiative, the plan is to incorporate gender issues into Article IV consultations with the entire membership wherever sufficiently relevant under the Fund’s mandate.
- If gender equality issues are critical for the success or monitoring of a Fund-supported program, they will be addressed through program design and conditionality.

### Technical assistance, capacity development, and tools
- The IMF’s technical assistance and capacity development on gender-related issues has expanded through training courses and technical assistance missions.
- The IMF has offered workshops in partnership with ministries of finance and/or gender and UN Women at IMF regional technical assistance centers to provide training on conducting gender-based analysis and implementing policy recommendations.
- Regional centers and peer-learning workshops where the IMF has worked include Barbados (CARTAC), Guatemala (CAPTAC-DR), India (SARTTAC), Mauritius (ATI), and Austria (JVI).
- To date, the IMF has worked with 60 countries through these efforts.
- Early 2018: staff delivered a workshop to the Gender Budget Council and the Ministry of Finance of the United Arab Emirates as a framework for the design of the Action Plan of Gender Budgeting Implementation.
- The IMF has provided technical assistance on gender budgeting in Bahrain, Cambodia, and Ukraine, among others.
- Additional technical assistance missions and peer learning workshops were planned for 2018.
- The Fund is developing a toolkit to provide staff, country authorities, civil society organizations, and academics with user-friendly charts and graphs highlighting key indicators of gender inequality by country and region:
  - The toolkit will allow users to identify which gaps are contributing to macroeconomic losses (such as a reduction in GDP growth or per capita income) and identify policy prescriptions to close the gaps.
- The IMF has extended its modeling framework for macro and distributional impact of policies to analyze impacts on gender.
  - The extended framework has been applied to Argentina and Iran to analyze the macroeconomic and distributional impact, including on gender, of possible tax reforms and measures to reduce gender gaps and discrimination.

### Looking ahead: the Fund’s continued role
- The Fund will continue efforts to foster gender equality.
- Promoting gender equality can strengthen economies through higher economic growth and stability and bring significant change and benefits to people’s lives.
- The Fund, in accordance with its role and mandate, is prepared to support members in these efforts.

*International Monetary Fund — "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY" of Pursuing Women’s Economic Empowerment (May 30, 2018).*

### EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

### EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

### Rationale and global context
- Greater gender equality boosts economic growth and leads to better development outcomes, contributes to reducing income inequality, boosts economic diversification, and supports economic resilience.  
- Gender equality is one of the 17 global UN Sustainable Development Goals.  
- The G7 (Taormina Leaders’ Summit, 2017) renewed emphasis on promoting women’s empowerment and committed to mainstreaming gender equality into all policies; Canada’s G7 Presidency is carrying this forward.

### Current state of gender inequality (high-level findings)
- Gender inequality persists worldwide despite progress.  
- The World Economic Forum estimates that at the current rate of progress it will take 217 years to close the overall global gender gap in female labor force participation and equal opportunities.  
- The global average female labor force participation rate hovers around 50 percent, but regional variation is large:
  - About two-fifths of women participate in the labor market in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.
  - Almost two-thirds of women participate in sub-Saharan Africa.  
- On average, women’s earnings are about half those of men.  
- Low inclusion of women in the labor market and in political positions reflects unequal opportunities in access to education and health from early childhood and to financial services, and is impeded by widespread gender-based legal restrictions.

### Why gender equality matters — economic arguments and evidence
- Closing gender gaps can boost economic growth and productivity:
  - IMF and other studies estimate growth gains from closing gender gaps: Canada by 4 percent; Japan by 4 percent; Pakistan by 30 percent; Niger by 32 percent.  
- Gender equality is associated with greater equality in income distribution; gender inequality correlates with higher income inequality.  
- Female representation in senior corporate positions is associated with higher corporate profitability; adding one more woman to senior management or a corporate board (holding team size constant) is associated with 8–13 basis points higher return on assets.  
- Gender equality supports economic resilience through greater export diversification and reduces export concentration risks.  
- Presence and higher shares of women on bank boards are associated with greater bank stability.  
- Lower gender inequality has been linked to improved health outcomes for women and children and positive associations with per-capita GDP, competitiveness, and human development indicators.

### Policy priorities and interventions (general guidance)
- Policies providing equal opportunities from the start:
  - Invest in education and health to level the playing field and reduce gender gaps in skills and income.
  - Increase access to financial services, including digital financial services, to provide women with equal access to resources and foster labor productivity.
  - Promote equal rights for women in all areas, including the right to property ownership.
  - Developing countries can benefit most from these policies.
- Measures supporting work–family balance:
  - Provide affordable, high-quality child and elderly care to support more rapid returns to work for women with caregiving responsibilities.
  - Offer publicly financed parental leave schemes to reconcile work and family life and maintain labor market connections via guaranteed return to the job.
  - Establish flexible work arrangements to help women balance formal employment with other demands.
  - Remove tax provisions that discriminate against secondary (predominantly female) earners to generate large efficiency gains and improve aggregate labor market outcomes.
  - Use tax credits or benefits for low-wage earners to reduce net tax liability and increase net income gain from accepting a job.
  - These measures can be particularly effective in advanced economies and some developing countries.

### IMF engagement and focus areas
- The IMF has scaled up work on gender equality and will continue efforts focusing on:
  - Deepening understanding of the economic benefits of women’s empowerment in the labor market and through equal opportunities for boys and girls, including in the context of megatrends and rapid technological change.
  - Integrating gender analysis into Fund policy dialogue with member countries.
  - Providing customized assistance, workshops, and peer-learning courses in areas such as gender budgeting.
  - Expanding collaboration with other international institutions to leverage complementary expertise.

*International Monetary Fund — "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY" of Pursuing Women’s Economic Empowerment (May 30, 2018).*

### 9.      Health indicators have improved globally, but maternal death and adolescent fertility

### 9.      Health indicators have improved globally, but maternal death and adolescent fertility rates remain high in some countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

### Health indicators and gender outcomes
- The risk of maternal death has declined in all regions over the past three decades; sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of mortality, but the rate now stands at half that in 1980.
- Asia and the Pacific and the Middle East and Central Asia achieved a significant decline in the maternal mortality ratio; the decline in the Western Hemisphere was gradual and remains slightly higher than in Europe.
- Adolescent fertility rates—the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 19—have declined in all regions from 1980 to 2014, with sub-Saharan Africa having the highest average rate.
- High adolescent fertility rates are associated with less economic activity by women, prevent girls from going to school, increase gender gaps in education, and may result in girls remaining out of the labor market or entering with low skill levels (Gonzalez and others, 2016).

### Financial access and legal barriers
- Worldwide, only 65 percent of women have a formal bank account compared with 72 percent of men, with larger gaps in emerging and developing countries (World Bank Global Findex, 2018).
- Gaps exist in the use of financial services such as credit and debit cards and borrowing services (Delechat and others, 2018).
- Women receive approximately only 40 percent of outstanding loans.
- Country-specific evidence: Malaysia saw its share of female borrowers increase from 37 percent in 2004 to 44 percent in 2016 (IMF Financial Access Survey).
- Gender-based legal restrictions remain pervasive:
  - When gender equity was reflected in the law, female labor force participation increased by at least five percentage points in the following five years in half of the countries studied (Gonzales and others, 2015b).
  - According to the 2018 Women, Business, and the Law Report, globally over 2.7 billion women face legal restrictions from having the same choice of jobs as men.
  - In 18 countries, husbands can prevent their wives from working.
  - In 59 countries, there are no laws against sexual harassment in the workplace.
- Social norms, beyond formal legal frameworks, also cause gender inequality and can reduce the effectiveness of policies.

### Mixed developments in equality of outcomes
- Labor force participation gaps have been decreasing overall, and wage gaps have narrowed in many countries; female representation in political and corporate leadership has increased.
- Despite progress, labor force participation rates, wages, and representation in parliament remain well below parity in all regions.
- Female labor force participation trends:
  - General increase over the past three decades in all regions except the Middle East and Central Asian region, where participation has plateaued.
  - Even with higher participation, women are often concentrated in informal, low-paying, and vulnerable jobs.
- Gender earnings gaps:
  - On average, women’s earnings are about half those of men (World Economic Forum, 2016).
  - Some countries have made progress toward parity; in sub-Saharan Africa the ratio of female-to-male estimated earnings approaches parity in Liberia (World Economic Forum, 2017).
  - In Benin, Botswana, Lao P.D.R., Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Slovenia, Rwanda, and Vietnam, the female-to-male earnings ratio stands above 0.8.
  - OECD research: in OECD countries, the gender gap for average annual earnings for full-time workers is 26 percent for highly educated workers and 22 percent for less educated workers (OECD, 2017).

### Policies to foster women’s participation in economic activities
- General focus: invest in education, health, infrastructure, increase financial inclusion, and promote equal rights; consider unconditional cash transfers where protection for the informal sector is needed.
- Education:
  - Educational attainment correlates positively with female labor force participation (Gonzales and others, 2015b; World Bank, 2011).
  - Example: in Turkey, 17 percent of illiterate women participate in the labor force, while participation exceeds 70 percent among women with a graduate degree (Ercan, Hoşgör, and Yimlaz, 2010).
  - Conditional cash transfers have been used to increase female school enrollment in Nigeria and Pakistan (IMF, 2016a; IMF, 2016b); Nigeria’s scheme targeted poor households and linked transfers to girls' enrollment.
- Health:
  - Investing in healthcare can increase economic opportunities for women (World Bank, 2011).
  - Rwanda reduced maternal mortality rates from 1990 to 2013 associated with an increase in health expenditures as a share of GDP (Kadama and others, 2018).
  - There was an increase of about seven percentage points from 2000 to 2014 in the percentage of women who received prenatal care from a skilled provider; by 2014 almost 100 percent of Rwandan women were receiving this care.
- Access to infrastructure:
  - Safe transportation, better roads, and mobile networks help women access work across regions (IMF, 2017a; IMF, 2016c; IMF, 2015a).
  - Mexico introduced public transport buses for women only to ensure safe travel (Perez Fragoso and Rodriguez Enriquez, 2018).
  - Kerala’s 2017-18 Gender and Child Budgeting plan includes allocations for gender-friendly infrastructure (Kolovich and Loungani, 2018).
  - Sanitation facilities, particularly in lower-income countries such as India, help protect girls from gender-based violence and can increase school attendance (IMF 2017d; Jain-Chandra and others 2018).
- Access to finance and digital financial services:
  - Access to finance could impact labor productivity and is associated with more equal incomes across countries (Aslan and others, 2018).
  - The 2017 IMF Financial Access Survey (gender-disaggregated data from 27 countries) shows a steady increase in the share of female borrowers in Chile, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
  - Initiatives cited: Malaysia’s Women Entrepreneur Financing Program and Chile’s Simplified Deposit Accounts.
- Promoting equal rights in property and entrepreneurship:
  - Address female inheritance legislation, equal property rights, and laws against discrimination to stimulate female labor force participation (Novta and Wong, 2017).
  - Malawi, Namibia, and Peru revised legal frameworks to reduce gender discrimination and experienced substantial increases in female labor force participation in the decade following those changes (Gonzales and others, 2015b).

### Policies supporting work–family reconciliation, tax, and labor supply
- Child and elderly care, parental leave, work flexibility, and reducing tax disincentives for secondary earners can boost female participation, particularly in advanced economies.
- Child and elderly care:
  - Providing affordable, high-quality care supports faster return to work for women.
  - Mexico: one-third of women aged 25 to 44 spend at least 40 hours per week caring for both children under age 14 and elderly, dependent, or disabled individuals (Rogriguez-Chamussy and Lopez, 2018).
  - Pension credits and other incentives should ensure caregivers are not penalized for returning to work.
- Parental leave:
  - Publicly financed parental leave can help reconcile work and family life and guarantee a return to the job.
  - The average duration of paid parental leave in advanced economies is 26 weeks; all OECD countries except the United States and Korea offer paid parental leave (Elborgh-Woytek and others, 2013).
  - Long periods outside the labor market can reduce skills and earnings (Ruhm, 1998).
  - Policies that promote parity between paternity and maternity leave and “use-it-or-lose-it” allowances (e.g., Sweden) can support more equal sharing of leave and faster returns to work for mothers.
- Flexible work arrangements:
  - Flexible modalities (telework, compressed schedules, part-time work) help balance paid work and family commitments; availability tends to matter more for women given traditional intra-family labor divisions (Aguirre and others, 2012).
- Tax policy and secondary earners:
  - Female labor supply is more responsive to taxes than male labor supply (IMF, 2012).
  - Replacing family taxation with individual taxation can reduce the tax burden on predominantly female secondary earners and generate efficiency gains.
  - Many advanced economies, particularly in Europe, can reduce the secondary earner tax wedge significantly (Elborgh-Woytek and others, 2013).
  - In-work tax credits reduce net tax liability and increase net income gains from accepting a job; phasing out with individual income rather than family income reduces high marginal tax rates for secondary earners.
  - Countries using individual-income phase-outs include Belgium, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

### Fiscal policy, gender-responsive budgeting, and institutional measures
- Gender-sensitive or gender-responsive budgeting can ensure tax and spending policies and public financial management address gender inequality in education, health, and economic empowerment.
- Objectives of gender budgeting: assess needs of boys and girls and men and women; identify outcomes or goals; plan, allocate, distribute funds; monitor and evaluate achievements.
- Box 1: Findings from global and country studies on gender budgeting
  - Gender budgeting has been implemented across all regions and income levels and at national, state, and local levels; state/local examples include Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, and Uganda.
  - Leadership of the ministry of finance is crucial; examples of countries including gender budgeting requirements in budget call circulars: Afghanistan, Albania, Ecuador, Finland, the Philippines, Sweden.
  - Legal requirements matter: Austria, Bolivia, and Rwanda mandate gender budgeting in their constitutions.
  - Public financial management institutions enable operationalizing gender-responsive fiscal policies; Ukraine implemented gender budgeting within public financial management reforms.
  - Civil society, gender and other ministries, parliaments, and academia are key players (examples: United Kingdom’s Women’s Budget Group; Canada’s Alternative Federal Budget).
  - Gender units in line ministries can help but coordination can be an issue; political support is important when additional resources and cross-administration efforts are required.
  - Gender budgeting has typically focused on expenditures and overlooked taxes; recent greater focus on revenues noted in Finland, Iceland, India, and Uganda.
  - Evidence of impacts:
    - Morocco: gender budgeting associated with an increase in female primary school enrollment in rural areas by more than 18 percentage points over 10 years (Kolovich and Shibuya, 2016).
    - India: states with gender budgeting efforts have made more progress on gender equality in primary school enrollment than states without (Stotsky and Zaman, 2017).

*International Monetary Fund — Pursuing Women’s Economic Empowerment (chapter content provided).*

### Box 1. Gender Budgeting (concluded)

### Box 1. Gender Budgeting (concluded)

### Strengthening gender budgeting: reporting, transparency, and cooperation
- Gender budgeting statements can help ensure transparency. Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Korea, Morocco, and Nepal have issued various forms of these statements.
- Collecting gender-disaggregated data to allow for better gender-based analysis is important.
- Ex-ante impact assessments of gender policies, as well as ex-post monitoring and gender auditing, are common gaps in most surveyed countries.
- Among the G7 countries, Japan and France have made the most progress in systematically collecting fiscal data disaggregated by gender, though they have not yet published these data in the annual budget documentation.
- Korea requires that the government examine the gender impacts of the budget and whether men and women are equally receiving benefits from the budget.
- Cooperation across levels of government and with non-governmental actors is essential:
  - Mexico: federal government earmarked resources nationally for women’s health and economic empowerment programs; Mexico City implemented a program aimed at providing safe public transportation options for women.
  - Uganda: “local budget clubs” allow citizens to discuss spending priorities and maintain government accountability.
  - Germany and Spain: gender budgeting initiatives introduced at the local level.
  - United Kingdom: Women’s Budget Group (started in the 1980s) conducts a thorough annual, gender-sensitive analysis of the budget.
  - Canada: Alternative Federal Budget is an example of civil society ensuring a gender perspective in fiscal policies.

### IMF’s mandate and integration of gender in its work program
- Gender equality promotes economic stability and growth—key objectives under the Fund’s mandate.
- The 2013 IMF Board paper “Jobs and Growth: Analytical and Operational Considerations for the Fund” (IMF, 2013a) and the accompanying Guidance Note (IMF, 2013b) noted the need for IMF work on issues related to jobs and growth—including gender inequality—to be consistent with its mandate and areas of expertise.
- In 2015, the Article IV Surveillance Guidance Note (IMF, 2015b) was updated to cover emerging issues and included the operationalization of gender issues in the IMF Board work program.
- The IMF is working on a “how-to” note (IMF, forthcoming) that provides an overview of good practices in covering gender issues in its country work and provides guidance to IMF teams.
- The IMF’s operational work on gender follows three main work streams: surveillance; use of Fund resources (financial assistance to Fund members); and provision of technical assistance (capacity development and training).

### Analytical work: topics and ongoing research
- Analytical work examines drivers of gender equality and links to sustained and inclusive growth.
- Recent work explores legal restrictions, financial inclusion, female labor force participation, access to infrastructure, and gender budgeting.
- Ongoing Fund work examines:
  - Impact of technological advancement on the future of work, focusing on gender differences in labor market outcomes across countries (Brussevich and others, forthcoming; Jain-Chandra and others, 2018).
  - Relationship between gender diversity and structural transformation and resulting effects on productivity and growth (Ostry and others, forthcoming).
  - Potential gains in female labor force participation from tax-and-transfer reform in a number of advanced economies (Wingender and Moreno-Badia, forthcoming).
  - Link between gender gaps and financial resilience, analyzing gaps in access to and use of finance and inclusion of women among financial services providers and regulators (Sahay and Cihak, forthcoming).
- Analytical and policy work informs IMF operational work.

### Surveillance and programmatic integration of gender issues
- Gender issues will be covered in IMF surveillance when they are macro-critical.
- In 2015, the Fund adopted a more systematic approach on gender issues, integrating analysis of gender equality into Article IV consultations under a pilot initiative.
- The pilot initiative covered gender inequality issues in 38 countries across all geographic regions and income levels.
- Gender equality has been considered in Fund-supported programs:
  - Egypt: recent IMF-supported program focuses on investing in public nurseries and is working towards implementing gender budgeting (IMF, 2017f).
  - Jordan: program contains measures to reduce child-care costs, including publicly-subsidized nurseries for low-income employees in small and medium size enterprises (IMF, 2016c).
  - Niger: program includes conditionality on formulating a gender development plan (IMF, 2016d).
- Following conclusion of the third and final phase of the pilot initiative, the plan is to incorporate gender issues into Article IV consultations with the entire membership wherever sufficiently relevant under the Fund’s mandate.
- If gender equality issues are critical for the success or monitoring of a Fund-supported program, they will be addressed through program design and conditionality.

### Technical assistance, capacity development, and tools
- The IMF’s technical assistance and capacity development on gender-related issues has expanded through training courses and technical assistance missions.
- The IMF has offered workshops in partnership with ministries of finance and/or gender and UN Women at IMF regional technical assistance centers to provide training on conducting gender-based analysis and implementing policy recommendations.
- Regional centers and peer-learning workshops where the IMF has worked include Barbados (CARTAC), Guatemala (CAPTAC-DR), India (SARTTAC), Mauritius (ATI), and Austria (JVI).
- To date, the IMF has worked with 60 countries through these efforts.
- Early 2018: staff delivered a workshop to the Gender Budget Council and the Ministry of Finance of the United Arab Emirates as a framework for the design of the Action Plan of Gender Budgeting Implementation.
- The IMF has provided technical assistance on gender budgeting in Bahrain, Cambodia, and Ukraine, among others.
- Additional technical assistance missions and peer learning workshops were planned for 2018.
- The Fund is developing a toolkit to provide staff, country authorities, civil society organizations, and academics with user-friendly charts and graphs highlighting key indicators of gender inequality by country and region.
  - The toolkit will allow users to identify which gaps are contributing to macroeconomic losses (such as a reduction in GDP growth or per capita income) and identify policy prescriptions to close the gaps.
- The IMF has extended its modeling framework for macro and distributional impact of policies to analyze impacts on gender.
  - The extended framework has been applied to Argentina and Iran to analyze the macroeconomic and distributional impact, including on gender, of possible tax reforms and measures to reduce gender gaps and discrimination (IMF, 2018a and 2018b).

### Looking ahead: the Fund’s continued role
- The Fund will continue efforts to foster gender equality.
- Promoting gender equality can strengthen economies through higher economic growth and stability and bring significant change and benefits to people’s lives.
- The Fund, in accordance with its role and mandate, is prepared to support members in these efforts.

*International Monetary Fund — Box 1. Gender Budgeting (concluded), from "Pursuing Women’s Economic Empowerment"*

### References

### References

### Financial inclusion, banking, and legal barriers
- Allen, F., A. Demirgüç-Kunt, L. Klapper, M. S. Martinez Peria. 2012. “The Foundations of Financial Inclusion: Understanding Ownership and Use of Formal Accounts,” Policy Research Working Paper WPS6290, World Bank, Washington, DC.
- Aslan G., C. Deléchat, M. Newiak, and F. Yang. 2017. “Inequality in Financial Inclusion and Income Inequality.” IMF Working Paper 17/236, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Deléchat, C., M. Newiak, R. Xu, F. Yang and G. Aslan. 2018. “What is Driving Women’s Financial Inclusion Across Countries?” IMF Working Paper 18/38, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Demirgüç-Kunt, A., L. Klapper. 2012. “Measuring Financial Inclusion: The Global Findex Database,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 6025, World Bank, Washington, DC.
- Demirgüç-Kunt, A., L. Klapper, and D. Singer. 2013. “Financial Inclusion and Legal Discrimination against Women: Evidence from Developing Countries.” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 6416. World Bank, Washington, DC.
- Sahay, R., M. Cihak, P. N’Diaye, A. Barajas, A. Kyobe, S. Mitra, Y.N. Mooi, and R. Yousefi. 2017. “Banking on Women Leaders: A Case for More?” IMF Working Paper 17/199, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Sahay R. and M. Cihak. Forthcoming. “Role of Gender in Enhancing Financial Resilience,” International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Steinberg, C., and M. Nakane. 2012. “Can Women Save Japan?” IMF Working Paper 12/48, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- World Bank. 2018. “Women, Business and the Law, 2018.” World Bank, Washington, DC.

### Labor markets, employment, and macroeconomic gains from gender equity
- Christiansen, L., L. Huidan, J. Pereira, P. Topalova, and R. Turk. 2016. “Unlocking Female Employment Potential in Europe." IMF Departmental Paper. International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Cuberes, D., and M. Teignier. 2016. “Aggregate Effects of Gender Gaps in the Labor Market: A Quantitative Estimate.” Journal of Human Capital 10 (1): 1–32.
- Duflo, E. 2012. “Women Empowerment and Economic Development.” Journal of Economic Literature 50 (4): 1051–79.
- Elborgh-Woytek, K., M. Newiak, K. Kochhar, S. Fabrizio, K. Kpodar, P. Wingender, B. Clements, and G. Schwartz. 2013. “Women, Work, and the Economy: Macroeconomic Gains from Gender Equity.” Staff Discussion Note 13/10, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Gonzales, C., S. Jain-Chandra, K. Kochhar, M. Newiak, and T. Zeinullayev. 2015a. “Catalyst for Change: Empowering Women and Tackling Income Inequality.” IMF Staff Discussion Note 15/20, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Gonzales, C., S. Jain-Chandra, K. Kochhar, and M. Newiak. 2015b. “Fair Play: More Equal Laws Boost Female Labor Force Participation.” IMF Staff Discussion Note, 15/02, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Hsieh, C., E. Hurst, C. Jones, and P. Klenow. 2018. “The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth,” Working Paper.
- Khera, P. 2016. “Macroeconomic Impacts of Gender Inequality and Informality in India,” IMF Working Paper 16/16, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Novta, N., and J. Wong. 2017. “Women at Work in Latin America and the Caribbean”. IMF Working Paper 17/34, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Petersson B., R. Mariscal, and K. Ishi. 2017. “Women Are Key for Future Growth: Evidence from Canada,” IMF Working Paper 17/166, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Ostry, J., A. Berg, and C. Tsangarides. 2014. “Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth.” IMF Staff Discussion Note 14/02, International Monetary Fund, Washington.

### Education, gender gaps, and long-run growth
- King, E. and A. Hill. 1991. “Women's Education in Developing Countries: Barriers, Benefits and Policy.” Education and Employment Division Background Paper Series 91/40, World Bank, Washington, DC.
- Klasen, S., and F. Lamanna. 2009. “The Impact of Gender Inequality in Education and Employment on Economic Growth: New Evidence for a Panel of Countries.” Feminist Economics 15 (3): 91–132.
- Knowles, S., P. K. Lorgelly, and P. D. Owen. 2002. “Are Educational Gender Gaps a Brake on Economic Development? Some Cross-Country Empirical Evidence.” Oxford Economic Papers 54 (1): 118–49.
- Esteve-Volart, B. 2004. “Gender Discrimination and Growth: Theory and Evidence from India.” LSE STICERD Research Paper DEDPS42, London School of Economic, London.

### Gender budgeting, fiscal policy, and public finance
- Budlender, D., and G. Hewitt. 2003. “Engendering Budgets: A Practitioner's Guide to Understanding and Implementing Gender-Responsive Budgets”. Commonwealth Secretariat, London.
- Budlender, D., and R. Sharp. 1998. “How to Do a Gender-Sensitive Budget Analysis: Contemporary Research and Practice.” Sydney: Commonwealth Secretariat/Australian Agency for International Development.
- Elson, D. 2003. “Gender Mainstreaming and Gender Budgeting.” Gender Equality and Europe’s Future. Women’s Budget Group. Paper from the European Commission, DG Education and Culture and Jean Monnet Project, Brussels, March 4.
- Kolovich, L., and S. Shibuya. 2016. “Middle East and Central Asia: A Survey of Gender Budgeting Efforts.” IMF Working Paper 16/151, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Kolovich, L. (Ed.) 2018. Fiscal Policies and Gender Equality. International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Stotsky, J. 2006. “Gender Budgeting.” IMF Working Paper 06/232, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Stotsky, J., and A. Zaman. 2016. “The Influence of Gender Budgeting in Indian States on Gender Inequality and Fiscal Spending.” IMF Working Paper 16/227, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Fragoso, L. P., and C. R. Enríquez. 2018. “Latin America.” In Fiscal Policies and Gender Equality, edited by L. Kolovich. International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Kadama, C., L. Kolovich, S. Kwalingana, M. Newiak, C. Ntumwa, and F. Nyankiye. 2018. “Africa,” in Fiscal Policies and Gender Equality. International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.

### IMF country reports, guidance notes, and operational documents
- International Monetary Fund, 2013a, “Jobs and Growth: Analytical and Operational Considerations for the Fund,” IMF Board Paper, March, Washington, DC.
- International Monetary Fund, 2013b. “Guidance Note on Jobs and Growth Issues in Surveillance and Program Work,” IMF Policy Document, Washington, DC.
- International Monetary Fund, 2015a. “2015 Article IV Consultation for Chile.” IMF Country Report No. 15/227, Washington, DC.
- International Monetary Fund, 2015b. “Guidance Note for Surveillance under Article IV Consultations,” Washington, DC.
- International Monetary Fund, 2015c. “Mali: Selected Issues for the 2015 Article IV Consultation.” Country Report No. 15/340, Washington, DC.
- International Monetary Fund, 2015d. “Germany: Selected Issues for the 2015 Article IV Consultation.” Country Report No. 15/187, Washington, DC.
- International Monetary Fund, 2015e. “2015 Article IV Consultation for Iceland.” IMF Country Report No. 15/160, Washington, DC.
- International Monetary Fund, 2015f. “2015 Article IV Consultation for Hungary.” IMF Country Report No. 15/92, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2016a. “2016 Article IV Consultation for Nigeria.” IMF Country Report No. 16/101, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2016b. “2016 Article IV Consultation for Pakistan.” IMF Country Report No. 16/94, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2016c. “2016 Article IV Consultation for Jordan.” IMF Country Report No. 16/295, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2016d. “2016 Article IV Consultation for Mauritius.” IMF Country Report No. 16/89, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2016e. “2016 Article IV Consultation for Niger.” IMF Country Report No. 17/59, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2016f. “Niger: Selected Issues for the 2017 Article IV Consultation.” Country Report No. 17/60, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2016g. “2016 Article IV Consultation for the Republic of Poland.” IMF Country Report No. 16/210, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2016h. “2016 Article IV Consultation for Guatemala.” IMF Country Report No. 16/281, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017a. “2017 Article IV Consultation for Rwanda.” IMF Country Report No. 17/217, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017b. “Jordan: Selected Issues for the 2017 Article IV Consultation.” Country Report No. 17/232, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017c. “Gender Budgeting in G7 Countries.” Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017d. “2017 Article IV Consultation for India.” IMF Country Report No. 17/54, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017e. “India: Selected Issues for the 2017 Article IV Consultation.” IMF Country Report No. 17/55, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017f. “2017 Article IV Consultation for the Arab Republic of Egypt.” IMF Country Report No. 17/17, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017g. “2017 Article IV Consultation for the Japan.” IMF Country Report No. 17/243, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017h. “Japan: Selected Issues for the 2017 Article IV Consultation.” Country Report No. 17/243, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017i. 2017 Article IV Consultation for Austria.” IMF Country Report No. 17/26, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017j. “2017 Article IV Consultation for Morocco.” IMF Country Report No. 17/36, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2017k. “2017 Article IV Consultation for Argentina.” IMF Country Report No. 17/409, Washington, DC.
- ———. “Nigeria: Selected Issues for the 2018 Article IV Consultation.” 2018a. Country Report No. 18/64, Washington, DC.
- ———. 2018b. “2017 Article IV Consultation for the Islamic Republic of Iran.” IMF Country Report No. 18/94, Washington, DC.
- ———. Forthcoming. “How to Operationalize Gender Issues in Country Work. Washington, DC.

### Cross-country analysis, inequality, and diversity
- Jain-Chandra, S., K. Kochhar, M. Newiak, Y. Yang, and E. Zoli. 2018. “Gender Equality: Which Policies Have the Biggest Bang for the Buck?” IMF Working Paper 18/105, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Kazandjian, R., L. Kolovich, K. Kochhar, and M. Newiak. 2016. “Gender Equality and Economic Diversification.” IMF Working Paper 16/140. International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Loko, B., and M. A. Diouf. 2009. “Revisiting the Determinants of Productivity Growth: What’s New?” IMF Working Paper 09/225, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Ostry J., J. Alvarez, R. Espinosa, and C. Papageorgiou. Forthcoming. “Gender Diversity and Growth,” International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Stotsky, J., S. Shibuya, L. Kolovich, and S. Kebhaj. 2016. “Trends in Women’s Development and Gender Equality.” IMF Working Paper 16/21, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Wingender, P., and M. Moreno-Badia. Forthcoming. “Optimal Tax and Transfer Reform and Female Labor Force Participation in Advanced Economies.” International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.

### Regional and thematic studies, reports, and other sources
- Ercan, H., A. G. Hoşgör, and O. Yilmaz. 2010. “Factors that Affect Women's Labor Force Participation and Suggestions for Provincial Employment and Vocational Education Boards: Ankara, Gaziantep and Konya.” Ankara: Middle East Technical University.
- Fragoso, L. P., and C. R. Enríquez. 2018. “Latin America.” In Fiscal Policies and Gender Equality, edited by L. Kolovich. International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Gonzales, C., S. Jain-Chandra, K. Kochhar, M. Newiak, and T. Zeinullayev. 2015a. “Catalyst for Change: Empowering Women and Tackling Income Inequality.” IMF Staff Discussion Note 15/20, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
- Rogriguez-Chamussy and H. Lopez. 2018. “A Growing Burden for the Women of the “Generation Sandwich.” http://blogs.worldbank.org/latinamerica/node/1188.
- Ruhm, C.J. 1998. “The Economic Consequences of Parental Leave Mandates: Lessons from Europe.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 113 (1): 285–317.
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2016. Sub-Saharan Africa (SIGI), 2016 Regional Report, OECD, Paris.
- OECD. 2017. “LMF1.5: Gender Pay Gaps for Full-Time Workers and Earnings Differentials by Educational Attainment.” OECD, Paris.
- World Bank. 2011. “World Development Report 2012. Gender Equality and Development.” World Bank, Washington, DC.
- World Economic Forum. 2014. The Global Iceland Gender Gap Report 2014. World Economic Forum, Basel.
- World Economic Forum. 2016. The Global Gender Gap Report 2016. World Economic Forum, Basel.
- World Economic Forum. 2017. The Global Gender Gap Report 2017. World Economic Forum, Basel.

*Pursuing Women’s Economic Empowerment — References*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/pp/2018/pp053118pursuing-womens-economic-empowerment.pdf_