Policies to Close Gender Inequality Gaps

Gender inequality harms people everywhere – whether as women denied their rights, girls excluded from education or boys recruited into armed groups. It prevents people from being able to take full advantage of economic opportunities and, ultimately, to enjoy their lives. Addressing it should be the top priority for all governments if they want to reduce poverty and create prosperous, sustainable societies.

After decades of seemingly continuous progress, recent years have seen a slowdown and even regress on key measures of gender equality. This article surveys current levels and trends of gender inequality worldwide, explains why this has happened and identifies policies that can accelerate the decline in gender gaps.

To be effective, policy actions must address both the symptoms and the root causes of gender gaps. Symptoms include the lack of women’s access to jobs, the inability to invest in their human capital and a failure to pass on economic benefits to future generations. The roots of gender gaps include a combination of gender bias (e.g., discriminatory laws and customs), preference / comparative advantage between men and women, and limited policy options to counter gender bias.

Ideally, reforms would target these root causes directly, but that seems to be a long-term challenge given the time needed to change attitudes and norms. In the meantime, some policies have greater impact on the root causes – such as legal reforms to remove gender barriers or educational programs that focus on the issue. Others are more effective at addressing the symptoms – such as family planning and financial access policies that have an immediate effect on women’s ability to make decisions that affect their lives.

Some gaps have closed as a result of policies, but others remain stubbornly persistent. This is often because the policies have not been targeted at the root causes or are only partially successful (e.g., in the case of tertiary enrollment rates). The COVID-19 pandemic also exacerbated gender inequality by disproportionately harming women (Albanesi and Kim 2021).

The fact that most global indicators have not progressed as expected underscores that there are still important challenges ahead. In addition, policies must not contribute to the evaporation of the gains that have already been made. As such, policies should not only be designed to address gender inequality but must ensure that they are implemented well. This requires better and more standardized data, including on time use, so that countries can track progress in improving gender equality, while ensuring that the benefits of reducing inequality are fully realized by everyone.