Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
Did you know that Zimbabwe is one of four low- and lower-middle-income countries (LICs and LMCs) where a severe economic contraction in 2020 combines with very low levels of women’s wellbeing and low capacity of the state to target government payments and other social assistance to women and girls?
We know that the coronavirus pandemic is affecting men and women differently and may exacerbate gender inequalities, and we also know that gender roles will help shape adaptive responses to the pandemic. But do we have the granular information that is needed (on regions, sectors, coverage, and severity) to design effective, gender-informed mitigation and recovery policies?
“Who decides how money gets spent in your household?" Researchers have often asked this question through household surveys to gauge women’s level of agency and decision-making power relative to their spouses and other family members.
Disagreement exists over the usefulness of the concept of headship in household surveys, and of the use of female headship in the analysis of poverty. Some researchers even argue for getting rid of the headship concept altogether and for organizing the household roster instead around a chosen “primary respondent,” whatever her status in the household.
A focus on progressive legislation to promote gender equality at Biarritz is a move in the right direction
The call to economically empower women in developing and emerging economies at long last has significant financial backing.
In their recently released 2019 annual letter, Bill and Melinda Gates argue that data can be sexist. Missing or inaccurate data on women and girls can block their progress and that of society and economic development at large, they state, since robust gender data has the power to encourage change to achieve greater gender equality.
The broad scope of the Sustainable Development Goals acknowledges that human development is multifaceted and that gender equality is crosscutting.
In the drive to measure these concepts and gauge progress, there has been a proliferation of indices in recent years. The allure of indices is twofold: they reduce complex concepts and multiple indicators into one number, and this number can be used to rank countries and, so the theory goes, drive change. In one fell swoop then, indices seem to bring simplicity, order, and transformative potential.
Growing a business is not easy, and for women firm owners the challenges can be acute, especially when they are poor and run subsistence level firms. In developing countries, 22 percent of women discontinue their established businesses due to a lack of funds, and women are more likely than men to report exiting their businesses over finance problems, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Meanwhile, personal savings are a crucial source of entrepreneurial financing, and nearly 95 percent of entrepreneurs globally state that they used their own funds to start or scale up their businesses. Women, however, face unique constraints in accumulating savings to invest in growing their firms.
Eight years and millions of mobile financial transactions later, we came together again at a private CGD roundtable in London to discuss the potential of mobile banking and savings for women’s economic empowerment. We were pleased to hear the richness of research evidence and interventions on women’s financial inclusion that have emerged over the past decade. What follows are some takeaways from our deliberations, informed by this research and practice.
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