Gendered economic inequalities are among the most persistent and significant of all global gender gaps. An important contributing factor remains the underlying gender norms that keep women excluded from economic gains. Often, economic interventions and approaches pay no attention to gender norms, and fail to explicitly tackle what continues to inhibit women’s rights and empowerment.

ALIGN’s new report outlines key evidence and learning from successful approaches to shift the norms that underpin gendered economic inequalities at community, workplace and policy levels.

It brings together evidence on how gender norms underpin some of the stickiest inequalities in:

• labour force participation
• control of assets
• returns to entrepreneurship
• control of finances and access to financial services.

The report focuses on the most promising ways to shift gender norms to realise women’s economic rights and promote women’s economic empowerment, through direct and indirect interventions. This ALIGN research provides cutting-edge evidence to be both a guide and inspiration to everyone concerned with tackling gendered economic inequalities: from policymakers and practitioners, to businesses, researchers and advocates.

Report by the Overseas Development Institute