To mark this year’s International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we are spotlighting some of our recent work on gender equality and looking at the many ways women bridge research and reality.
Gender is a cross-cutting theme of IGC’s research, with real-world and policy impact spanning women’s growth as entrepreneurs, access to public spaces, greater representation in politics, and more.
Jordan
Women’s labour force participation rate in Jordan is 14% - among the lowest rates in the world. To better understand this, IGC researchers and economists have analysed the labour market dynamics in Jordan and global evidence on bringing more women into the workforce in a new synthesis paper, Unlocking the potential of Jordan’s labour market (available in Arabic and English). We launched this paper at a symposium in Amman. Organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, the event convened researchers and policymakers to discuss the challenges preventing women’s participation in the labour force (along with youth unemployment).
IGC Jordan Country Economist and co-author, Salma Shaheen, reflects on how the key element of IGC’s work is its demand-driven nature and alignment with the government's priorities.
Zambia
In February, we co-hosted a public lecture on how inter-gender collaboration and addressing the structural barriers that women face are key to boosting women’s economic empowerment. Organised with the Zambia Institute for Policy Analysis and Research and the Economics Association of Zambia, the lecture featured a keynote from Professor Nava Ashraf.
Prof. Ashraf stresses that there is plenty of evidence to show how gender equity improves economic growth, particularly through:
the investment in the human capital of the next generation and
a better allocation of talent.
IGC Zambia Country Economist Thandiwe Ng’ombe discusses the barriers to these channels in Zambia: limited access to finance, restricted legal framework, and unpaid care work. She calls for gender-responsive budgeting, recognition of informal labour, and tailored financial products for women entrepreneurs to help overcome these challenges.
Gender equality blog series
Like every year, we ran our gender equality blog campaign. This year’s blogs drew research insights from employment and welfare outcomes for women in Cox’s Bazar’s refugee camps in Bangladesh, connecting women entrepreneurs over WhatsApp in Ghana, the impact on forest conversations under women politicians in India, and increasing women’s mobility in Pakistan. These join our gender equality blog series, which also includes how conflicts affect women more, the role of midday/school meals for children in improving the health outcomes of mothers, improving access to capital for women entrepreneurs, and the impact of women’s representation in elections and climate policy.
VoxDev podcast
We also collaborated with VoxDev on a podcast discussing IGC’s research on women’s mobility and employment challenges in Pakistan. Kate Vyborny shared how the promise of safe, subsidised, and women-only transport can make a significant positive difference by encouraging women who are currently not working or looking for work because of perceived challenges to enter the workforce.
Achieving gender equality is crucial for countries to benefit from the social and economic gains that follow women’s economic empowerment.
At the IGC, we strive to lend evidence-informed, gender-sensitive nuance to policymaking and find effective ways to empower women with more agency, information, and network support.