OXFAM BRIEFING PAPER – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY MARCH 2017
Clockwise from top left: Margaret Mumbua, a domestic worker in Nairobi, Kenya washes clothes (photo: Allan Gichigi/Oxfam); A woman
works in a garment factory in Hanoi, Vietnam (photo: Eleanor Farmer/Oxfam); A woman speaks at an event in Morocco held to encourage
women’s political participation (photo: Ellie Kealey/Oxfam); Flonira Mukamana works on her tree tomato plantation in Musanze District,
Rwanda (photo: Aurelie Marrier d'Unienville/Oxfam).
AN ECONOMY THAT
WORKS FOR WOMEN
Achieving women’s economic empowerment in an increasingly
unequal world
Women’s economic empowerment could reduce poverty for everyone. In order
to achieve it, we need to first fix the current broken economic model which is
undermining gender equality and causing extreme economic inequality. The
neoliberal model has made it harder for women to have better quality and better
paid jobs, address inequality in unpaid care work, and women’s influence and
decision making power is constrained. To achieve women’s economic
empowerment, we need a human economy that works for women and men alike,
and for everyone, not just the richest 1%.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
‘Despite important progress in promoting gender equality, there remains an urgent
need to address structural barriers to women’s economic empowerment and full
inclusion in economic activity...If the world is to achieve the Sustainable Development
Goals, we need a quantum leap in women’s economic empowerment.’1
– UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, January 2016
‘Women had no voice in this community. They had no right to join other women. The
co-op has changed women’s lives in this community. They [men] saw us being self
reliant – bringing home money, bringing sugar for porridge, they have really changed
their mindset on women.’
– Flonira Mukamana, member of COPAPF women’s cooperative in Kinigi sector, Musanze District, Northern
Rwanda.
Women’s economic empowerment requires the creation of decent, quality work
opportunities with fair pay, and an increase in women’s decision making It is
vital for fulfilling women’s rights, reducing poverty and achieving broader development
goals. To end extreme poverty will take much more than just money. But gender
inequality in the economy costs women in developing countries $9 trillion a year3 – a
sum which would not only benefit women but would unleash new spending power
across communities and provide a massive boost to the economy as a whole.
However, progress in making women equal to men in the economy is painfully slow,
and women are still more likely than men to live in Across the world, women
consistently earn less than men and are concentrated in the lowest-paid and least
secure forms of Globally, the average gender pay gap is 23 percent6 and 700
million fewer women than men are in paid The World Economic Forum has
warned that instead of improving in 2016, gender inequality in the economy reverted to
where it stood in At the current rate of progress, it will take 170 years for women
and men to be employed at the same rates, paid the same for equal work, and have
the same levels of Clearly, a structural change is needed.
Evidence shows that although gender equality supports economic growth, not all
economic growth supports gender Our current economic model is
concentrating wealth at the top of the economy, causing extreme economic inequality
and leaving the poorest women and girls behind. Currently eight men own as much as
the poorest people on the Rising inequality has slowed down
reductions in poverty, and the majority of the world’s poor continue to be women.
To achieve women’s economic empowerment, we need to make the economy work for
women. Harmful social norms devalue and restrict women’s work: research in 67
developing countries revealed that on average, one in five men disagreed that women
should have work outside the home, even if they are qualified to do Inequalities
also persist in the law and regulation. 155 countries have at least one law which means
women have fewer economic rights than There has also been a failure to
recognize that economic policy impacts women and girls differently to men and boys.
This report looks at how this economic model, neoliberalism, constrains women’s
economic empowerment in three main ways:
• Neoliberal policies have led to poor labour rights and low pay. Countries are
pursuing economic development strategies that prioritize cheap and
precarious work, the majority of which is done by women.
2
For example, women working in garment factories in Vietnam and Myanmar
interviewed by Oxfam work very long hours, sometimes up to 18 hours a day, or they
have to work through the night. Yet they are still not earning enough to sustain
themselves and their families. This is despite the industry being one with famous
brands and huge profits – brands like Zara, whose owner, Amancio Ortega, is one of
the eight richest men on earth,14 or H&M, owned by Stefan Persson, ranked 32 in the
Forbes
Women are also concentrated in the informal sector where they often lack rights and
privileges such as a secure contract, minimum wages and social protection. The
example of domestic workers in Kenya (see page 11 in the full report) illustrates the
challenges this creates, such as vulnerability to exploitation.
• Unpaid care work has failed to be recognized and valued for its contribution
to the economy. Current economic policies have undermined investment in
infrastructure and public services like education, healthcare and social
protection, meaning women have increased responsibility for unpaid care
work.
Worldwide, women carry out between two and 10 times more unpaid care work than
This work is worth $10 trillion to the global economy each year,17 equivalent to
over an eighth of the world’s entire GDP, and more than the GDPs of India, Japan and
Brazil Women’s disproportionate responsibility for this work squeezes the
amount of time that they have to go to school and earn a living. Recent research
showed that globally, 57 million unpaid workers are filling in the gaps caused by
inadequate healthcare The majority are women who have given up
employment to carry out this role.
• Women’s collective voice and influence on economic decision making is
hampered by restrictions placed on labour organizing and undue influence of
the richest in society over economic policy.
Women’s collective action and organizing is a proven factor in improving their rights,
including key aspects of economic empowerment, as shown by the story of women
strawberry pickers in Morocco (see page 22 in the full report). However women are
often concentrated in informal sectors that are harder to organize, or face restrictions
that mean their voices are not heard in labour movements. Investing in women’s
organizations and movements, and implementing policies such as gender budgeting,
can ensure economic policies reflect women’s priorities and are designed to support
gender equality rather than undermine it.
In recent years, we have seen greater recognition by governments and policy makers
that women’s economic and workforce participation can pay powerful economic
dividends. At the same time we have seen less concern with making sure that the
benefits of their work are also experienced by women themselves. While the focus
remains on making women work for the good of the economy, making the
economy work for women has yet to be seriously addressed. Feminist economists
and women’s organizations have consistently drawn attention to this – but their
contributions continue to be sidelined in male-dominated economic spheres.
Oxfam is calling for a ‘human economy’ which works for everyone, not just the few; one
that benefits women and men alike. It would create fairer, better societies. It would
ensure secure jobs paying decent wages, and treat women and men equally. The
people who should benefit disproportionately from our economies are people living in
poverty. Our economy would thrive within the limits of our planet, and hand a better,
3
more sustainable world to every new generation. Building a human economy requires
us to fundamentally reject the current economic model, and agree to rebuild our
economies in a different way.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Ensure decent work, including a fair income, secure contracts and safe
working conditions.
Governments and businesses should address the quality and security of women’s
economic opportunities by:
• Assessing current labour and wage standards to ensure domestic workers, migrant
workers and informally employed workers are covered by all current and future
labour standards legislation.
• Addressing workplace violence and discrimination through legislation, prosecution,
public information campaigns and holding corporate actors to account.
• Committing to lifting minimum wages to living wage standards, and setting out a
roadmap to do so in consultation with workers and unions.
• Undertaking concerted efforts to end the gender pay gap, including ensuring equal
pay for equal value and promoting decent work opportunities for women.
• Repealing laws that discriminate against women’s economic equality, and
implementing legislation and regulatory frameworks that support women’s rights.
• Promoting positive social norms and attitudes to women’s work and to the
rebalancing of power at the household, local, national and international levels.
• Ensuring women have pathways to better-paid positions, and improving access to
education and training for well-paid careers. Encouraging transparent promotion
pathways and policies that encourage employers to hire and train low-skilled, low-
wage workers.
2. Recognize, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work.
• Governments should invest in public services and infrastructure which reduces and
redistributes unpaid care work, including universal free public healthcare, social
care, child care, water and sanitation, and education services.
• Governments and International Finance Institutions should include unpaid care
work as part of their economic development strategies.
• Governments and businesses should recognize women’s greater responsibility for
unpaid care work and help to reduce the proportion borne by women through
providing child, dependent adult, and elderly care and paid family and medical
leave, flexible working hours and paid parental leave.
• Governments should promote the redistribution of unpaid care work through
policies that encourage men to do their fair share of this work. These include
flexible working and parental leave for both parents. Social norms on the gender
distribution of care work should also be challenged, for example through advertising
or public campaigns.
• Governments and international institutions should collect better data on the
distribution of unpaid care work and its contribution to the overall economy.
Governments should maximize fiscal space for women’s economic empowerment,
through progressive and gender sensitive tax policies. They should crack down on
tax dodging by rich corporations and individuals; raise taxes on the richest and
4
reduce them on the poorest; and use these additional revenues to invest in public
services.
3. Support women’s voices – in labour and feminist movements, collective
enterprise, and political participation and leadership.
• Governments should adopt gender budgeting approaches that systematically
involve women’s organizations and civil society, to provide proper scrutiny and fully
assess the impact of economic policies on women and girls. They should support
the training of organizations and women in this area and improve data collection
that would enable it.
• Governments, international institutions and civil society should provide increased,
accessible funding to women’s organizations to enable them to consistently and
effectively raise the concerns of women, in government, civil society and corporate
sector spaces.
• Governments should ensure laws are in place that protect the rights of women
workers to unionize and strike, and rescind laws in opposition to those rights.
• All actors should support women’s collective enterprises and cooperatives,
including through providing training and integrating them fairly into supply chains.
• Governments and civil society should implement policies to promote women’s
political participation and leadership.
Governments, business and civil society should recognize the danger that confronts
women advocating for women’s rights. They should establish effective measures to
ensure that women human rights defenders, including trade unionists, enjoy full
protection and a safe environment in which to carry out their actions without fear of
reprisal.
5
NOTES
1 UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, quoted in UN Secretary-General announces first-ever High-
Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment – UN Women, 21st January 2016, available at:
accessed 25th
January 2017.
2 N. Kabeer (2008) Paid Work, Women’s Empowerment and Gender Justice: Critical Pathways of
Social Change, Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Working Paper, available at:
3 Staszewska (2015) Close the gap! The cost of inequality in women’s work, ActionAid UK
4 UN Women (2015a) Summary Report: The Beijing Declaration and Platform For Action Turns 20,
available at:
%
5 UN Women (2015b) Progress of the World’s Women: Transforming Economies, Realizing
Rights, available at:
6 International Labour Organization (2016) Women at Work: Trends 2016, ILO, available at:
publ/documents/publication/
7 UN Women (2015a) Summary Report: The Beijing Declaration And Platform For Action Turns
20, op. cit.; UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment
(2016) Leave No One Behind: A Call to Action for Gender Equality and Women’s Economic
Empowerment, United Nations, available at:
8 World Economic Forum (2016) Global Gender Gap report , accessed on 13 December 2016 at:
9 Ibid.
10 N. Kabeer and L. Natali (2013) Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Is there a Win-Win?
available at:
win
11 D. Hardoon (2017) An economy for the 99%: It’s time to build a human economy that benefits
everyone, not just the privileged few. Oxfam, available at:
12 A. Hunt and E. Samman (2016) Women’s economic empowerment: navigating enablers and
constraints, ODI, available at:
empowerment-navigating-enablers-and-constraints
13 World Bank, (2016) Women, Business and the Law 2016, available at
14 Ortega’s annual dividends in 2016 were € 1,108m. Source: Ugalde, R. (2016, 9 March),
Amancio Ortega se lleva millones en dividendo y, cada empleado, 479 euros extra, El
Confidencial,
millones-endividendo-y-sus-empleados-479-euros-por-bonus_1165620/.
15 Persson’s annual dividends were €658m, given that he owns 636,849,332 shares of H&M (See
H&M Group Shareholders:The 20 Largest Shareholders as of January 31, 2017.
and last year the company decided to pay
out SEK per share (H&M Group Dividend
16 G. Ferrant, L. M. Pesando and K. Nowacka (2014) Unpaid Care Work: The missing link in the
analysis of gender gaps in labour outcomes, OECD, available at:
17 McKinsey & Company (2015) The Power of Parity, available at
equality-can-add-12-trillion-to-global-growth
18 The CIA World Factbook calculates the world’s GDP for 2015 at $ trillion (official exchange
rate) (see the annual
GDP of India as $ trillion; Japan as $ trillion; and Brazil as $ trillion in 2015, together
totalling $ trillion, (all official exchange rate) accessed from
6
on 17th Feb
2017
19 X. Scheil-Adlung (2016) Health workforce: a global supply chain approach: new data on the
employment effects of health economies in 185 countries, ILO, available at:
soc_sec/documents/publication/
7
© Oxfam International March 2017
This paper was written by Francesca Rhodes with support from Rowan Harvey and Anam
Parvez. The authors would like to thank all who contributed to its production. It is part of a
series of papers written to inform public debate on development and humanitarian policy
issues.
For further information on the issues raised in this paper please email
advocacy@
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The information in this publication is correct at the time of going to press.
Published by Oxfam GB for Oxfam International under
ISBN 978-0-85598-902-6 in March 2017.
Oxfam GB, Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2JY, UK.
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