It is well established that a wide range of legal impediments in countries' domestic laws have prevented women from achieving full economic empowerment, which in turn has negative macroeconomic implications. In many countries, laws often reflect and perpetuate gender norms that limit women's...

This paper provides an overview of the relation between tax policy and gender equality, covering labor, capital and wealth, as well as consumption taxes. It considers implicit and explicit gender biases and corrective taxation. On labor taxes, we discuss the well-established findings on female...

Achieving gender equality remains a significant challenge, that has only deepened with the on-set of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gender budgeting (GB) can help promote gender equality by applying a gender perspective to fiscal policies and the budget process. This paper takes stock of GB practices in...

This paper considers various dimensions and sources of gender inequality and presents policies and best practices to address these. With women accounting for fifty percent of the global population, inclusive growth can only be achieved if it promotes gender equality. Despite recent progress,...

The labor structure in sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by a high share of informal employment in the rural agricultural sector. The impact of COVID-19 on female employment may not appear to be large as the share of such employment is particularly high among women. Nevertheless, widespread...

Gender budgeting is an approach to budgeting that uses fiscal policy and administration to promote gender equality and girls and women's development. This paper posits that, properly designed, gender budgeting improves budgeting, and it places budgeting for this purpose in the context of sound...

This paper reviews gender budgeting efforts in Asia. The countries in the region have achieved mixed success in improving gender equality. Gender budgeting is ideally a fiscal innovation that translates gender-related goals into budgetary commitments and can help countries to achieve the...

Of the countries in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands, Timor-Leste has the most well-developed gender budgeting initiative. In the Pacific Islands, a few gender budgeting efforts were initiated but did not continue. In the Caribbean, there have been no well-developed gender budgeting efforts,...

This paper surveys European gender budgeting efforts, which have enjoyed sustained support for more than a decade and a half. In a number of countries, gender budgeting led to significant changes in budget legislation and administrative practices. In some countries, it is also possible to tie...

Gender budgeting uses fiscal policies to promote gender equality and women's advancement, but is struggling to take hold in the Middle East and Central Asia. We provide an overview of two gender budgeting efforts in the region-Morocco and Afghanistan. Achievements in these two countries include...