You might think that gender inequality today has more to do with social obstacles than legal ones. Like companies paying a young graduate less than the salary negotiated by her male classmate. Or women doing more unpaid household work than their male partners. You would be wrong.
A recent World Bank survey of 173 countries found that no fewer than 155 still had at least one law impeding women’s economic opportunities. Women face gender-based job restrictions in 100 countries, often confining them to low-paying activities, more often than not in the informal sector. In 18 countries the law gives husbands the right to prohibit their wives from working outside the home.
These legal differences have long-lasting economic and social consequences. Gender based job restrictions tend to be associated with wider wage gaps and lower employment rates for women. And where girls’ future earning potential is limited, families may choose to send their brothers to school instead.
Laws matter. With effective implementation and enforcement, good laws can nudge forward positive changes in social and cultural mores. Legislating parental leave – for fathers as opposed to only for new mothers – has been shown to promote a more equitable division of childrearing responsibilities. Legal changes to human resources procedures, and reinforcing equal pay for comparable work, could help offset cultural biases that work against women who ask for a raise. Research shows that more equal laws boost women’s participation in the workforce.
And it’s not just about the workplace. Women in several countries face extra documentation hurdles when trying to get a national identity card. Beyond making it tougher to access public services or contracts with others, no proof of ID means no chance of getting a bank loan to start or expand a business. Inheritance and marital property laws affect women’s access to financial institutions – access to property tends to make for greater equality within the household.
The economic cost of gender inequality is staggering. The McKinsey Global Institute recently estimated that if women participated in the economy identically to men, with equal wages and labour force participation, it would add up to $28tn to global GDP by 2025: a 26% increase over business as usual, equivalent to adding a new United States and China to the world economy.
A more modest scenario, under which countries match the gender parity progress of their best-performing regional neighbour, would add $12tn to the global economy – about the collective economic weight of Japan, Germany, and the UK.
The implications are no less revolutionary for individual households. Literate mothers have healthier children. When women earn an income, they spend a higher proportion of it than men do on their children’s health, education and nutrition.
Governments can’t credibly claim to be concerned about stagnant growth and ageing workforces unless they are actively seeking to empower women economically. One way they can speed up progress towards gender-equal economic opportunity is to change laws that are holding women back. Another would be to direct a greater share of public procurement contracts to female-owned businesses.
If fuller inclusion for women makes for more robust economies, the reverse is also true. Healthy economies and abundant opportunities for productive work make it possible for women to command the incomes they need to invest in themselves and their families.
In developing countries, where large numbers of people are engaged in low-productivity subsistence work, tapping into international trade and investment can generate more productive, better paying jobs. That’s why the International Trade Centre works to help businesses in developing countries connect to world markets. But our surveys from developing countries suggest that only about a fifth of businesses that trade across borders are run by women. Moreover, since these businesses tend to be on the smaller side, they find it harder to clear regulatory hurdles in foreign markets.
Earlier this year, we brought together thought leaders from governments, the private sector, international organisations, and civil society to identify means to economically empower more women. The result was a call to action to connect one million female entrepreneurs to markets by 2020. It sets out a framework for companies, governments, and other organisations to make specific, measurable pledges that contribute to this goal. Multinationals, for instance, can pledge to source more from suppliers owned or run by women. Signatories urge lawmakers to guarantee women’s rights to own property and businesses, to enter into contracts, to access finance, and to inherit.
Technology is making it easier for women to connect to business opportunities around the world. Legal obstacles must not be allowed to stand in their way. That’s not just because it’s economically smart. It’s because discrimination shouldn’t be the law.
Arancha González is executive director of the International Trade Centre. ITC and the government of Kenya will arrange the first International Forum on Women in Business in Nairobi on 14 December. The Guardian Global Development Professionals Network is media partner for the event.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com
