Fofanan Man, a 59-year-old businesswoman, poses for a photograph in front of textiles in her shop in Bouake, Ivory Coast. REUTERS/Thierry Gouegnon

Imagine what a life without economic opportunity would entail: the inability to secure a reliable job with a steady paycheck; the impossibility of a loan to start a business; the absence of a formal bank account to save whatever money can be earned.

Women’s empowerment depends on their economic opportunity and financial inclusion—participation in the labor market, both formal and informal; opportunities for entrepreneurship; and access to formal financial instruments such as credit and savings (which the next post in this series will explore in greater detail). But too many women lack this economic empowerment, holding them back from their full potential to earn and invest in themselves as well as their households, communities, and societies.

The Economic Gender Gap
 

Worldwide, women are less likely than men to be employed and earn less money than men on average. In South Asia, women’s labor market participation has actually decreased in recent years, even while their access to education has increased, according to the International Labour Organization. Across Sub-Saharan Africa women are less likely than men to participate in the labor force, and even among youth in the region, for whom unemployment is high, young women are less likely than young men to be working, studying, or training. When women do participate in the labor force, they face a gender pay gap in low- and high-income countries alike.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which form the backbone of rural economies and supply chains in low-income countries and are an important source of employment and income, also demonstrate an economic gender gap. A World Bank survey in 40 African countries found only eight countries with gender equity in SME ownership. In some countries in the survey, less than 20 percent of SMEs are owned or co-owned by a woman.

Time Poverty
 

“Time poverty” is the unseen force that, at least in part, drives this economic gender gap. Women, particularly in comparison with men, often suffer from time poverty due to daily hours of unpaid work—such as household chores or caring for children and the elderly—that leave less time for paid work or education, much less leisure time. This is especially true in rural areas of low-income countries, although the imbalance of men and women’s unpaid work is evident in wealthy countries as well. This disparity is not only true among adults—girls also devote more time than boys to household chores and caregiving.

Notably, in places where infrastructure like power grids or clean water sources are underdeveloped, women’s and girls’ labor fills the gap, with women and girls devoting much of their time to carrying water or collecting firewood and other fuel sources. In Sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls spend an estimated 40 billion hours each year fetching water—time equal to a year’s worth of labor from the entire French workforce. In India, women spend an average of six hours a day on unpaid work, while men typically devote less than an hour to such tasks.

Time poverty leaves women and girls with less time available to them for employment, educational opportunities—or time to devote to the creativity and initiative needed to launch their own business.

Empowering Women Accelerates Global Progress
 

Women’s economic empowerment brings not only individual, but also household-wide benefits. Research has shown that women’s income is more likely than men’s to positively influence their children’s food and nutrition security. Moreover, the entire global economy stands to gain from an increase in women’s economic empowerment: McKinsey Global Institute found that if women worldwide were equal to men within the labor market, it could add up to $28 trillion to the global annual GDP by 2025. The Economist has written that women are the world’s “most under-utilized resource.”

Policies and interventions to increase women’s economic empowerment are at hand: as the second post in this blog series highlighted, women’s land tenure is a tremendous tool for economic empowerment, and legal rights such as identification make it much easier for women to participate in labor markets, education, and financial systems. Improving girls’ education, as another previous post has observed, is also critical to enabling women to build the skills necessary to participate in the labor market or start their own enterprise. And globally, paid maternity leave and childcare are among the most important tools for enabling women’s labor market participation.

These interventions would be deeply beneficial for the agriculture sector, given that women make up nearly half of the world’s agricultural labor force. Opportunities abound to move women up the value agricultural chain, from subsistence farming to more lucrative forms of agricultural production: livestock rearing, for example, can generate income and act as a tool for savings and investment in the absence of formal bank accounts (as well as provide an important source of nutrition). Greater numbers of female extension agents to serve the needs of women farmers, particularly in low-income countries, is a key solution to helping to close to gender gap in agriculture, which could reduce the number of food insecure people worldwide by up to 17 percent.  And the important role of rural SMEs throughout agricultural supply chains offer substantial avenues for women’s entrepreneurship and innovation when they are not hindered by a lack of access and opportunity.

When women worldwide can become independent economic agents, equal to men, we will all be more prosperous and productive, and that much closer to achieving the global goal of gender equality by 2030.