3 steps to close the global gender gap
- Women have been hit harder by the COVID-19 pandemic than men.
- The response to the crisis can and should focus on closing gender gaps in entrepreneurship, financial inclusion and access to safety nets.
- It is possible to close the gender gap.
A wide range of evidence documents the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women compared to men, threatening to reverse many advances made in gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls over the past decades. These impacts range from job and income losses to mental health impacts and increased gender-based violence. Businesses run by women were more likely to experience a decline in sales and profits during the pandemic and were more likely to close than those owned by men. Similarly, female entrepreneurs took on more unpaid care work than their male counterparts when schools closed and family members fell ill. Even before the pandemic, women lagged behind men in financial inclusion, and women were overrepresented in the informal sector in low-income countries and had greater gaps in work experience.
Yet the crisis has opened a window of opportunity to tackle persistent and stubborn gender gaps and accelerate progress towards equality. By focusing on the opportunity to revive economies and ensure a strong recovery, the crisis response could help reduce long-standing gender gaps that limit women’s economic empowerment while promoting inclusive growth. during the recovery phase and beyond. Centering gender equality in policies that address the effects of the pandemic can allow us to limit setbacks and reinvigorate efforts to secure a more equal and resilient future.
Policy directions to reduce gender gaps
In the spirit of identifying such opportunities, this blog summarizes three briefs on key policy directions that the crisis response can and should take to close the gender gaps in entrepreneurship, financial inclusion and access to safety nets.
Reducing gender gaps in entrepreneurship can have a significant impact on poverty reduction, job creation, growth and innovation. And harnessing the untapped potential of female talent has positive effects on economic growth at the macro level. The business case for supporting women entrepreneurs in post-COVID responses is clear: women have been hit hardest by the crisis and, among other things, they often lack the resources that are critical to survival and recovery. crisis.
The first one guidance note highlights three opportunities to support women entrepreneurs. One is to invest in connecting women to digital technologies to sell (e-commerce), save and obtain finance. Another is supporting the development of skills and information for micro, small and medium enterprises to grow, especially with digital platforms. Access to the right information at the right time is essential to making informed business decisions that can lead to successful results. Third, financial products and services should be designed to meet the unique needs of women entrepreneurs, for example, by overcoming barriers to accessing finance and building support networks.
The second note proposes a policy agenda for greater financial inclusion through digital systems for women. The crucial starting point is to provide access to digital connectivity, including addressing the fundamental need to close gender gaps in mobile phone ownership, followed by the need to invest in new fintech approaches to the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Mobile usage data, such as digital transaction histories, airtime purchases, Internet browsing habits, and rent and utility bill payments, can be used to create important financial records for underserved SMEs, which then enables these businesses to access other financial services.
Gender gap in account ownership
Image: World Bank Blogs
Investment in digital financial capabilities, an essential part of digital transformation, is necessary to ensure that female customers can use digital financial services with ease and confidence. These should be integrated into policy responses to COVID-19 in all countries where gender equality is a challenge. For example, in Jordan, people receiving COVID-19 relief payments have the option of using a demo e-wallet to build confidence and comfort in using digital payments. An enabling regulatory framework is needed to support these investments and close gender gaps. A number of recent adjustments to regulatory frameworks aim to increase financial inclusion, such as the relaxation of know-your-customer requirements and new flexibility in remote account opening.
The third policy note emphasizes maximize the potential of safety nets promote gender equality. Employed in virtually every country, social protection measures have emerged as a primary policy tool to mitigate the socio-economic impact of the pandemic-induced crisis. The Covid response has provided an opportunity to design more open systems, support a global recovery, and address specific gender gaps. For example, the project in Jordan mentioned above also has a communications campaign with messages aimed at raising awareness about addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, heightened risks of gender-based violence, as well as promoting healthy conflict resolution. and stress management within the household. Messaging is designed to be culturally sensitive and delivered via SMS, online tools, or other more traditional means.
The World Economic Forum has been measuring gender gaps since 2006 in the annual Global Gender Gap Report.
The Global Gender Gap Report tracks progress in closing gender gaps at the national level. To turn this information into concrete actions and national progress, we have developed the Closing the Gender Gap Accelerators model for public-private collaboration.
These accelerators were convened in ten countries from three regions. Accelerators are established in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Panama in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank in Latin America and the Caribbean, Egypt and Jordan in the Middle East and North Africa, and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.
All National Accelerators, as well as Knowledge Partner countries demonstrating global leadership in closing gender gaps, are part of a larger ecosystem, the Global Learning Network, which facilitates the exchange of ideas and knowledge. experiences via the Forum platform.
In 2019, Egypt became the first country in the Middle East and Africa to launch a Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator. While more women than men are now enrolled in university, women make up just over a third of professional and technical workers in Egypt. Women who are in the labor force are also less likely to be paid the same as their male colleagues for equivalent work or to rise to managerial positions.
In these countries, CEOs and Ministers work together over a three-year period on policies that help to further reduce the economic gender gaps in their countries. This includes extended parental leave, subsidized childcare, and removing unconscious bias in recruitment, retention, and promotion practices.
If you are a business in one of the Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator countries, you can join the local member base.
If you are a company or government in a country where we do not currently have a Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator, you can contact us to explore the possibilities of creating one.
To ensure a robust recovery, social protection systems, of which safety nets are a part, must cover not only the poorest, but also other excluded populations. Schemes can consider differentiated benefits for particularly vulnerable groups, which in many cases include certain groups of women. This expansion, coupled with efforts to shift to digital delivery of assistance, can have multiple benefits, especially for women. Digital payments create a gateway to savings, credit and other financial services, provided the payments go hand in hand with financial and digital literacy efforts. Additionally, as assistance scales, transitioning from cash transfer programs to more ambitious economic inclusion programs can address many barriers to gender equality.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the value and importance of investing in adaptive delivery systems for safety nets. Redesigning social registries using a gender lens can improve the ability to more accurately identify vulnerable people. Efforts in these areas are based on the need for fundamental identification systems for rapid and effective crisis response. Yet several policy and other structural barriers still need to be overcome before women can easily access ID cards.
The response to COVID-19 offers an opportunity to accelerate gender equality
COVID-19 has highlighted and exacerbated longstanding gender inequalities. As governments around the world expand and adopt new policies and programs to support households and businesses as they offset the impacts of COVID-19, these efforts present an opportunity. Designing and implementing policies to address and address persistent and newly widening gender gaps, including in female entrepreneurship, digital financial inclusion and access to social safety nets, can reduce poverty, grow businesses, get people back to work faster, and enable countries to accelerate gender equality to deliver greater shared prosperity.
