gender inequality essay short

Gender Inequality Essay

500+ words essay on gender inequality.

For many years, the dominant gender has been men while women were the minority. It was mostly because men earned the money and women looked after the house and children. Similarly, they didn’t have any rights as well. However, as time passed by, things started changing slowly. Nonetheless, they are far from perfect. Gender inequality remains a serious issue in today’s time. Thus, this gender inequality essay will highlight its impact and how we can fight against it.

  About Gender Inequality Essay

Gender inequality refers to the unequal and biased treatment of individuals on the basis of their gender. This inequality happens because of socially constructed gender roles. It happens when an individual of a specific gender is given different or disadvantageous treatment in comparison to a person of the other gender in the same circumstance.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Impact of Gender Inequality

The biggest problem we’re facing is that a lot of people still see gender inequality as a women’s issue. However, by gender, we refer to all genders including male, female, transgender and others.

When we empower all genders especially the marginalized ones, they can lead their lives freely. Moreover, gender inequality results in not letting people speak their minds. Ultimately, it hampers their future and compromises it.

History is proof that fighting gender inequality has resulted in stable and safe societies. Due to gender inequality, we have a gender pay gap. Similarly, it also exposes certain genders to violence and discrimination.

In addition, they also get objectified and receive socioeconomic inequality. All of this ultimately results in severe anxiety, depression and even low self-esteem. Therefore, we must all recognize that gender inequality harms genders of all kinds. We must work collectively to stop these long-lasting consequences and this gender inequality essay will tell you how.

How to Fight Gender Inequality

Gender inequality is an old-age issue that won’t resolve within a few days. Similarly, achieving the goal of equality is also not going to be an easy one. We must start by breaking it down and allow it time to go away.

Firstly, we must focus on eradicating this problem through education. In other words, we must teach our young ones to counter gender stereotypes from their childhood.

Similarly, it is essential to ensure that they hold on to the very same beliefs till they turn old. We must show them how sports are not gender-biased.

Further, we must promote equality in the fields of labour. For instance, some people believe that women cannot do certain jobs like men. However, that is not the case. We can also get celebrities on board to promote and implant the idea of equality in people’s brains.

All in all, humanity needs men and women to continue. Thus, inequality will get us nowhere. To conclude the gender inequality essay, we need to get rid of the old-age traditions and mentality. We must teach everyone, especially the boys all about equality and respect. It requires quite a lot of work but it is possible. We can work together and achieve equal respect and opportunities for all genders alike.

FAQ of Gender Inequality Essay

Question 1: What is gender inequality?

Answer 1: Gender inequality refers to the unequal and biased treatment of individuals on the basis of their gender. This inequality happens because of socially constructed gender roles. It happens when an individual of a specific gender is given different or disadvantageous treatment in comparison to a person of the other gender in the same circumstance.

Question 2: How does gender inequality impact us?

Answer 2:  The gender inequality essay tells us that gender inequality impacts us badly. It takes away opportunities from deserving people. Moreover, it results in discriminatory behaviour towards people of a certain gender. Finally, it also puts people of a certain gender in dangerous situations.

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Essays About Gender Inequality: Top 5 Examples and 8 Helpful Prompts

Essays about gender inequality discuss a timely subject. Discover our guide with examples and prompts to assist you in writing.

Gender inequality is a global issue where one person’s perception and treatment of others depend on predetermined social expectations, leading to discrimination. Children can learn negative stereotypes, live with these biases, and carry them into adulthood. Parents who teach their kids prejudice are one of the reasons for gender inequality that spills into everyone else’s lives. 

Organizations like UNICEF actively form partnerships worldwide to stop and promote gender equality . Their efforts include career support, higher quality maternal care, skills development, and more. Your gender inequality essay can help promote gender equality that prevents violence against all genders. In addition, by discussing the topic, more people can better understand the seriousness of the issue. Check out our round-up of the best essay writing apps to get started!

5 Essay Examples 

1. gender inequality: sources and consequences by anonymous on edubirdie.com, 2. the issue of gender inequality in the media in america by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 3. gender inequality is a huge issue from past by joshua blake, 4. the problem of gender inequality in the workplace by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 5. gender inequality: are there any positive changes by anonymous on eduzaurus.com, 1. gender inequality: defined, 2. impact of gender inequality, 3. fighting gender inequality, 4. types and causes of gender inequality, 5. gender inequality as a global problem, 6. politics and gender inequality, 7. who are the most affected by gender inequality, 8. gender inequality and family dynamics.

“Humanity requires both men and women to move forward together, and they both are equally important. There are no reasons why women should be seen as the “weaker” sex.”

The author firmly believes that people must control old habits and notions about genders for everyone’s sake. This essay further delves into how culture and history devalue ​​women and prove that men are more powerful as they bring money and do more physical work. The media also assists in making viewers think women are sexual objects, with how most magazines and promotions cater to men’s satisfaction.

The writer understands that gender inequality is impossible to fix immediately. So they recommend parents teach their children to avoid stereotyping. Companies should also ensure equal treatment for both genders when providing job opportunities. They also mention that more influential people will speak about the problem as the unjust treatment continues.

“There is no doubt that every form of media today will have some sort of gender stereotypes and generalizations about male and female roles.”

In this gender inequality essay, the writer explains not only what stereotypes are but also how the media harms the lives of young men and women when these labels are reinforced. This includes the stereotype of being a housewife, the most common stereotype.

The writer describes how the media is at fault for promoting a negative body image. When mainstream channels portray the “perfect” male or female body, and viewers see that they are far from what those ideal types look like, it can lead to physical and mental health problems. 

“It is certain that gender inequality is a huge issue from the past to present especially [as it] occurs among women.”

To identify the causes of gender inequality, Blake uses various studies to prove that Hofstede and Schwartz’s framework on the cultural dimension influences the differences between men and women.

A good example is Schwartz’s hierarchy and Hofstede’s power distance, which both refer to unequal power distribution and sources. Some dimensions are very similar and correspond to each other, such as masculinity and mastery, femininity and harmony, autonomy and individualism, conservatism, and collectivism.

“Both genders can have the same education and experience, yet the male gets a higher wage payment compared to female.”

In discussing the topic, the author uses various statistical data to prove that gender inequality in the workplace is still present today but is improving. For example, according to their findings, American men earn one dollar while women earn only 89 cents. 

Americans are also against the women who return to work after giving birth and say men shall continue without paternity leave. But ultimately, the writer believes that when there’s gender inequality in a company, they lose the opportunity to keep their best resources.

“Gender inequality can be defined as not giving equal opportunities to people because of their biological sex.”

The essay mentions how TV shows and personalities like Emma Watson , who speak their minds on how the media portrays genders, help shed more light on gender inequality. Therefore, they encourage others to become a part of something revolutionary. However, it also shows little change in gender differences after more people became aware of the situation. The piece also notes how today’s parents are raising their children, allowing them to eliminate gender-based oppression.

8 Prompts for Essays About Gender Inequality

Explain to your readers the main topic and how inequality occurs in modern society. Give an example of gender inequality that is very common and how both sexes react to it. Conclude your essay with recommendations on how these issues can be resolved and avoided.

In reality, gender inequality has negative impacts on everyone. Discuss how this problem takes away opportunities, develops destructive behaviors, and puts people in dangerous situations. Offer real-life examples, surveys, and data to support your claims to make the essay more informative and credible.

Gender inequality has been a prevalent issue since the beginning of time and is still a pressing matter today. Use this prompt to identify and discuss steps governments, organizations, schools, churches, parents, and individuals should take to avoid being gender biased. 

Share ways to promote gender equality through simple tasks like sharing household chores between housemates, no matter the gender, calling out sexist jokes, and learning more about the topic.

To make your essay more effective, incorporate convincing and powerful writing. Read our guide on persuasive writing to know more.

Talk about the various types of gender inequality, such as gender discrimination in education, sexual violence, unequal pay and recognition, racism, and ownership inequality. Add their causes and roots. 

It’s best if you can interview someone who experiences this imbalance. Let them relay what they felt and why they think it happened. Include other examples to allow your readers to visualize and understand the situations.

Do thorough research and find survey data showing the number of people who are still victims of gender inequality. Look for the best and most reliable source and check how it differs from one location to the other. Discuss your findings and share your opinion on what contributes to this discrimination.

Use this prompt if you want to tackle fundamental problems related to gender inequality. Discuss how women and men are treated in politics and give examples of situations that demonstrate it. The more famous the incidents are, the better. You can also compare if there’s a relevant difference between how female and male politicians lead.

Although all are affected by this bias, who are the most prone to it? Search for applicable data from reputable sources to determine and expound on the number of people involved. Include how these people are influenced and why.

Gender inequality also occurs in wealthy families or nobility, where whoever is in charge of a business or place needs power and the ability to dominate others. Search for countries and cultures that still follow a patriarchal structure. Add your opinion on whether it’s time to modify these structures or its best to keep them as is for traditions’ sake.

If you’re still stuck, maybe this topic is not for you. Check out our general resource of essay writing topics.

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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What does gender equality look like today?

Date: Wednesday, 6 October 2021

Progress towards gender equality is looking bleak. But it doesn’t need to.

A new global analysis of progress on gender equality and women’s rights shows women and girls remain disproportionately affected by the socioeconomic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, struggling with disproportionately high job and livelihood losses, education disruptions and increased burdens of unpaid care work. Women’s health services, poorly funded even before the pandemic, faced major disruptions, undermining women’s sexual and reproductive health. And despite women’s central role in responding to COVID-19, including as front-line health workers, they are still largely bypassed for leadership positions they deserve.

UN Women’s latest report, together with UN DESA, Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2021 presents the latest data on gender equality across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The report highlights the progress made since 2015 but also the continued alarm over the COVID-19 pandemic, its immediate effect on women’s well-being and the threat it poses to future generations.

We’re breaking down some of the findings from the report, and calling for the action needed to accelerate progress.

The pandemic is making matters worse

One and a half years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the toll on the poorest and most vulnerable people remains devastating and disproportionate. The combined impact of conflict, extreme weather events and COVID-19 has deprived women and girls of even basic needs such as food security. Without urgent action to stem rising poverty, hunger and inequality, especially in countries affected by conflict and other acute forms of crisis, millions will continue to suffer.

A global goal by global goal reality check:

Goal 1. Poverty

In 2021, extreme poverty is on the rise and progress towards its elimination has reversed. An estimated 435 million women and girls globally are living in extreme poverty.

And yet we can change this .

Over 150 million women and girls could emerge from poverty by 2030 if governments implement a comprehensive strategy to improve access to education and family planning, achieve equal wages and extend social transfers.

Goal 2. Zero hunger

The global gender gap in food security has risen dramatically during the pandemic, with more women and girls going hungry. Women’s food insecurity levels were 10 per cent higher than men’s in 2020, compared with 6 per cent higher in 2019.

This trend can be reversed , including by supporting women small-scale producers, who typically earn far less than men, through increased funding, training and land rights reforms.

Goal 3. Good health and well-being

Disruptions in essential health services due to COVID-19 are taking a tragic toll on women and girls. In the first year of the pandemic, there were an estimated 1.4 million additional unintended pregnancies in lower and middle-income countries.

We need to do better .

Response to the pandemic must include prioritizing sexual and reproductive health services, ensuring they continue to operate safely now and after the pandemic is long over. In addition, more support is needed to ensure life-saving personal protection equipment, tests, oxygen and especially vaccines are available in rich and poor countries alike as well as to vulnerable population within countries.

Goal 4. Quality education

A year and a half into the pandemic, schools remain partially or fully closed in 42 per cent of the world’s countries and territories. School closures spell lost opportunities for girls and an increased risk of violence, exploitation and early marriage .

Governments can do more to protect girls education .

Measures focused specifically on supporting girls returning to school are urgently needed, including measures focused on girls from marginalized communities who are most at risk.

Goal 5. Gender equality

The pandemic has tested and even reversed progress in expanding women’s rights and opportunities. Reports of violence against women and girls, a “shadow” pandemic to COVID-19, are increasing in many parts of the world. COVID-19 is also intensifying women’s workload at home, forcing many to leave the labour force altogether.

Building forward differently and better will hinge on placing women and girls at the centre of all aspects of response and recovery, including through gender-responsive laws, policies and budgeting.

Goal 6. Clean water and sanitation

In 2018, nearly 2.3 billion people lived in water-stressed countries. Without safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and menstrual hygiene facilities, women and girls find it harder to lead safe, productive and healthy lives.

Change is possible .

Involve those most impacted in water management processes, including women. Women’s voices are often missing in water management processes. 

Goal 7. Affordable and clean energy

Increased demand for clean energy and low-carbon solutions is driving an unprecedented transformation of the energy sector. But women are being left out. Women hold only 32 per cent of renewable energy jobs.

We can do better .

Expose girls early on to STEM education, provide training and support to women entering the energy field, close the pay gap and increase women’s leadership in the energy sector.

Goal 8. Decent work and economic growth

The number of employed women declined by 54 million in 2020 and 45 million women left the labour market altogether. Women have suffered steeper job losses than men, along with increased unpaid care burdens at home.

We must do more to support women in the workforce .

Guarantee decent work for all, introduce labour laws/reforms, removing legal barriers for married women entering the workforce, support access to affordable/quality childcare.

Goal 9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure

The COVID-19 crisis has spurred striking achievements in medical research and innovation. Women’s contribution has been profound. But still only a little over a third of graduates in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics field are female.

We can take action today.

 Quotas mandating that a proportion of research grants are awarded to women-led teams or teams that include women is one concrete way to support women researchers. 

Goal 10. Reduced inequalities

Limited progress for women is being eroded by the pandemic. Women facing multiple forms of discrimination, including women and girls with disabilities, migrant women, women discriminated against because of their race/ethnicity are especially affected.

Commit to end racism and discrimination in all its forms, invest in inclusive, universal, gender responsive social protection systems that support all women. 

Goal 11. Sustainable cities and communities

Globally, more than 1 billion people live in informal settlements and slums. Women and girls, often overrepresented in these densely populated areas, suffer from lack of access to basic water and sanitation, health care and transportation.

The needs of urban poor women must be prioritized .

Increase the provision of durable and adequate housing and equitable access to land; included women in urban planning and development processes.

Goal 12. Sustainable consumption and production; Goal 13. Climate action; Goal 14. Life below water; and Goal 15. Life on land

Women activists, scientists and researchers are working hard to solve the climate crisis but often without the same platforms as men to share their knowledge and skills. Only 29 per cent of featured speakers at international ocean science conferences are women.

 And yet we can change this .

Ensure women activists, scientists and researchers have equal voice, representation and access to forums where these issues are being discussed and debated. 

Goal 16. Peace, justice and strong institutions

The lack of women in decision-making limits the reach and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other emergency recovery efforts. In conflict-affected countries, 18.9 per cent of parliamentary seats are held by women, much lower than the global average of 25.6 per cent.

This is unacceptable .

It's time for women to have an equal share of power and decision-making at all levels.

Goal 17. Global partnerships for the goals

There are just 9 years left to achieve the Global Goals by 2030, and gender equality cuts across all 17 of them. With COVID-19 slowing progress on women's rights, the time to act is now.

Looking ahead

As it stands today, only one indicator under the global goal for gender equality (SDG5) is ‘close to target’: proportion of seats held by women in local government. In other areas critical to women’s empowerment, equality in time spent on unpaid care and domestic work and decision making regarding sexual and reproductive health the world is far from target. Without a bold commitment to accelerate progress, the global community will fail to achieve gender equality. Building forward differently and better will require placing women and girls at the centre of all aspects of response and recovery, including through gender-responsive laws, policies and budgeting.

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• 06 September 2023

Gender equality: the route to a better world

You have full access to this article via your institution.

The Mosuo people of China include sub-communities in which inheritance passes down either the male or the female line. Credit: TPG/Getty

The fight for global gender equality is nowhere close to being won. Take education: in 87 countries, less than half of women and girls complete secondary schooling, according to 2023 data. Afghanistan’s Taliban continues to ban women and girls from secondary schools and universities . Or take reproductive health: abortion rights have been curtailed in 22 US states since the Supreme Court struck down federal protections, depriving women and girls of autonomy and restricting access to sexual and reproductive health care .

SDG 5, whose stated aim is to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”, is the fifth of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, all of which Nature is examining in a series of editorials. SDG 5 includes targets for ending discrimination and violence against women and girls in both public and private spheres, eradicating child marriage and female genital mutilation, ensuring sexual and reproductive rights, achieving equal representation of women in leadership positions and granting equal rights to economic resources. Globally, the goal is not on track to being achieved, and just a handful of countries have hit all the targets.

How the world should oppose the Taliban’s war on women and girls

In July, the UN introduced two new indices (see go.nature.com/3eus9ue ), the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) and the Global Gender Parity Index (GGPI). The WEI measures women’s ability and freedoms to make their own choices; the GGPI describes the gap between women and men in areas such as health, education, inclusion and decision making. The indices reveal, depressingly, that even achieving a small gender gap does not automatically translate to high levels of women’s empowerment: 114 countries feature in both indices, but countries that do well on both scores cover fewer than 1% of all girls and women.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made things worse, with women bearing the highest burden of extra unpaid childcare when schools needed to close, and subjected to intensified domestic violence. Although child marriages declined from 21% of all marriages in 2016 to 19% in 2022, the pandemic threatened even this incremental progress, pushing up to 10 million more girls into risk of child marriage over the next decade, in addition to the 100 million girls who were at risk before the pandemic.

Of the 14 indicators for SDG 5, only one or two are close to being met by the 2030 deadline. As of 1 January 2023, women occupied 35.4% of seats in local-government assemblies, an increase from 33.9% in 2020 (the target is gender parity by 2030). In 115 countries for which data were available, around three-quarters, on average, of the necessary laws guaranteeing full and equal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights had been enacted. But the UN estimates that worldwide, only 57% of women who are married or in a union make their own decisions regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Systemic discrimination against girls and women by men, in many contexts, remains a colossal barrier to achieving gender equality. But patriarchy is not some “natural order of things” , argues Ruth Mace, an anthropologist at University College London. Hundreds of women-centred societies exist around the world. As the science writer Angela Saini describes in her latest book, The Patriarchs , these are often not the polar opposite of male-dominated systems, but societies in which men and women share decision making .

After Roe v. Wade: dwindling US abortion access is harming health a year later

One example comes from the Mosuo people in China, who have both ‘matrilineal’ and ‘patrilineal’ communities, with rights such as inheritance passing down either the male or female line. Researchers compared outcomes for inflammation and hypertension in men and women in these communities, and found that women in matrilineal societies, in which they have greater autonomy and control over resources, experienced better health outcomes. The researchers found no significant negative effect of matriliny on health outcomes for men ( A.  Z. Reynolds et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117 , 30324–30327; 2020 ).

When it comes to the SDGs, evidence is emerging that a more gender-equal approach to politics and power benefits many goals. In a study published in May, Nobue Amanuma, deputy director of the Integrated Sustainability Centre at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Hayama, Japan, and two of her colleagues tested whether countries with more women legislators, and more younger legislators, are performing better in the SDGs ( N. Amanuma et al. Environ. Res. Lett. 18 , 054018; 2023 ). They found it was so, with the effect more marked for socio-economic goals such as ending poverty and hunger, than for environmental ones such as climate action or preserving life on land. The researchers recommend further qualitative and quantitative studies to better understand the reasons.

The reality that gender equality leads to better outcomes across other SDGs is not factored, however, into most of the goals themselves. Of the 230 unique indicators of the SDGs, 51 explicitly reference women, girls, gender or sex, including the 14 indicators in SDG 5. But there is not enough collaboration between organizations responsible for the different SDGs to ensure that sex and gender are taken into account. The indicator for the sanitation target (SDG 6) does not include data disaggregated by sex or gender ( Nature 620 , 7; 2023 ). Unless we have this knowledge, it will be hard to track improvements in this and other SDGs.

The road to a gender-equal world is long, and women’s power and freedom to make choices is still very constrained. But the evidence from science is getting stronger: distributing power between genders creates the kind of world we all need and want to be living in.

Nature 621 , 8 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02745-9

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Social Inequality — Gender Inequality

Essays on Gender Inequality

Gender inequality essay topics and outline examples, essay title 1: unveiling gender inequality: root causes, impact, and paths to equality.

Thesis Statement: This essay delves into the multifaceted issue of gender inequality, examining its underlying causes, its pervasive impact on society, and the strategies and movements aimed at achieving gender equality and justice.

• Introduction
• Understanding Gender Inequality: Social Constructs, Stereotypes, and Bias
• Economic Disparities: Gender Wage Gap, Occupational Segregation, and Glass Ceilings
• Education and Empowerment: Gender Disparities in Access and Opportunities
• Violence Against Women: Domestic Violence, Harassment, and Human Rights Violations
• Global Perspectives: Gender Inequality in Different Cultural and Geographical Contexts
• The Role of Advocacy: Movements, Legislation, and Progress Towards Equality
• Conclusion: The Ongoing Struggle for Gender Equality

Essay Title 2: Intersectionality and Gender Inequality: Examining the Overlapping Forms of Discrimination

Thesis Statement: This essay explores the concept of intersectionality within the context of gender inequality, analyzing how overlapping factors such as race, class, sexuality, and disability intersect with gender to create unique experiences of discrimination and privilege.

• Intersectionality Defined: Interplay of Identity, Power, and Discrimination
• Race and Gender: The Experiences of Women of Color
• Socioeconomic Factors: Poverty, Wealth, and Economic Disparities
• Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: LGBTQ+ Issues and Discrimination
• Disability and Gender: Challenges Faced by Disabled Women
• Intersectionality in Action: Real-Life Examples and Case Studies
• Empowerment and Solidarity: Intersectional Feminism and Social Change
• Conclusion: Embracing Intersectionality in the Fight Against Gender Inequality

Essay Title 3: Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Women's Leadership and Gender Equality in the Corporate World

Thesis Statement: This essay focuses on women's leadership in the corporate world, examining the challenges and barriers they face in reaching leadership positions, the importance of diversity in leadership, and the potential for change in the business sphere.

• The Gender Leadership Gap: Statistics and Trends in Corporate Leadership
• Barriers to Women's Advancement: Stereotypes, Bias, and Family-Work Balance
• The Business Case for Gender Diversity: Benefits to Companies and Economies
• Women Breaking Barriers: Success Stories and Female Role Models in Business
• Initiatives for Change: Corporate Policies, Mentorship Programs, and Gender Parity Goals
• The Future of Women in Leadership: Prospects for Gender Equality in the Corporate World
• Conclusion: Advancing Women's Leadership for a More Inclusive Future

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How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World? Expository Essay

Facts about gender inequality, manifestation of gender inequality.

Gender inequality is a complex phenomenon that does not seem to have a conclusive argument. According to Rives and Yousefi (1997), the statement above is right in its articulation that the problem is prevalent and widely spread all over the world (p. 90).

This has prompted scholars to critically debate about the issue with varying opinions among those that support it and those that oppose it.

The argument supporting gender inequality derives its support from the belief that there is injustice that stems from unequal access to resources and opportunities based on gender or sex.

Rhode (1997) says that as a result, gender equality movements have sprang up allover the world from the beginning of the last century culminating to passage of various acts by different governments allowing inheritance of property by people of both genders and criminalizing any act that is contrary to those (p.102).

Despite the strides made by society in stemming gender inequality, it will be naive to assume that gender equality has been achieved in the world today.

Rhodes (1997) further says that Even the most advanced societies that boast of constitutions that guarantee universal freedoms and human rights experience different forms of discrimination based on sex (p. 114).

Rhode (1997) concludes that gender inequality nowadays has become synonymous with the struggle of women fighting for the same treatment as men (p.76). It is not correct however to assume that only women are negatively affected by gender inequality.

Historically however, traditions of different peoples who inhabit the earth have been biased against women often showing open prejudice against them compared to men REFERENCE (own words).

Women have since time immemorial been subjected to restrictions that have ensured they are treated as sub humans. All cultures from European, Asian, and African have considered women to be subordinates to their men.

These discrimination has been passed on to successful generations through socialization and has over time been accepted a way of life REFERENCE (own words).

Rives and Yousefi (1997) say that little boys are taught from a young age to behave in a superior manner while girls are taught to respect men and look upon them as the providers and ultimate destiny deciders (p.106).

Men are regarded as the heads of the family and major decision makers. Women are traditionally not allowed to inherit property as it is assumed that they will get married and would have access to the husband’s property. Even then, few have a major say on the how family property should be managed REFERENCE (own words).

Rhode (1997, p. 28) says that besides general cultural traditions, religion has played a major role on propagating gender inequality and sex discrimination. For instance, the world’s two major religions; Christianity and Islam have openly shown preference of the men folk to women.

Women are not allowed to hold high positions in these religions because they were not considered full human beings. Only men went out to talk to God, wrote the holy books, and up to date, carry out religious functions.

The language itself used in these books makes no effort to hide its prejudice against women as human beings are referred to as men.

While some sections of Christianity have undergone reforms and accommodated women in their ranks, many have not. Islam on its part is more or less, what it used to be since its inception as far as women issues are concerned (Rhode 1997 p. 28).

According Ridgeway (1992, p.86), it may not be correct per se to say that its only women who are aggrieved by the gender imbalance but majority of the cases that depict gender inequalities involve women on the receiving end

According to Oxfam (2011, p 1), quoting UN (2005, pp 2), gender inequality that has resulted in the discrimination of women through denial of basic human rights is a leading cause of poverty in the world today.

Oxfam (2011, p 2) adds that majority of women in the world have little or no control on matters of sexuality, reproduction and marital choices.

Oxfam (2011 p 2) further adds that women have diminished recourse to legal and political protection and recognition. Women also rank poorly in terms of access to public knowledge, and decision-making power compared to their male counterparts.

According to Robeyns (2002, p.457), positions like the above mean women have reduced participation in public affairs hence increasing their vulnerability to abuse and subordination.

Many organizations have carried out research to paint the clear picture of the problem. This paper will focus on some of the studies carried out so far, the sectors that have been hardest hit by gender discrimination and some of the forms through which gender inequality has manifested itself in the society.

Oxfam (2011, p 3) referring to IPU (2009) estimated in 2009 that only 18.4% of women made up composition of parliaments in the world. Far less women contributed to major decision making in the world. It therefore means few women participated in making laws and decisions that directly affect them

UNESCO estimates that there are almost 780 million illiterate people in the world (United Nations 2005, pp 2). Furthermore, there are over 75 million school drops out in the world according to the UN body.

Two thirds of the illiterate population is women while over 55% of the school dropouts are girls (United Nations 2005, pp 2). The blatant lack of access to information as shown above clearly puts women at a disadvantage in terms of access to information and knowledge REFERENCE(own words).

Statistics about wage earnings too paint a grim picture about the position of women. According ITUC, women make an average of 84% of what men mage in income.

This is besides the fact that they are largely concentrated in the informal sector and exposed to dangerous working conditions. Ridgeway, (2011, p 326) says that the instability associated with this work and the low earnings have compounded the problem leading to income disparities between men and women.

By virtue of giving birth, women are exposed to more risk than men are.

The world health organization estimates that over half a million women die from complications related to pregnancy while millions ranging from 8-20 million suffer irreversible injuries and permanent disabilities from pregnancy related complications (United Nations 2005, pp 3).

Factors cited earlier as low pay and lack of education contribute greatly to this situation. Further highlighting the poor treatment of women in healthcare, the UN estimates that more than half of the people living with HIV in the world are women (United Nations 2005, pp 3).

According to Ridgeway (2011), both men and women are exposed to the same risk of contracting the virus.

However, lack of access to health care by women in equal measure as men, coupled with low pay, minimal rights to decide sexual matters and lack of adequate information due to illiteracy have contributed o the high cases of HIV in women (p.127).

Though both men and women experience domestic and sexual violence, the problem is more prevalent in women than men are. Systematic rape is common in many countries that leave women traumatized, pregnant, or infected hence living disjointed lives.

The UN estimates that between 10-68% of women experience domestic violence and abuse from their sexual partners. The high cases show trend where culprits are not brought to book due to weak institutions or laws that are biased against women or not updated to deal with delicate women issues (United Nations 2005, pp 4).

While men suffer as causalities in conflicts, women and children make up over 85% of refuges in the camps. The women are usually not well looked after and the men who survive the conflicts often flee their families.

Laws to address the situation that is highly disadvantageous to women are almost non-existent (United Nations 2005, pp 4).

The above statistics depict a precarious situation for women and do not at all reinforce a notion that gender inequality may be a two-way phenomenon where men are also negatively affected. Even if there is a situation like that, women are clearly more affected than men are REFERENCE (own words.)

Gender inequality has manifested itself through many ways in society. In most of these cases, its women who bear the brunt of the injustices that are as a result of the inequalities.

According to Jacobs (1995) there are numerous practices carried out all over the world that amount to gender discrimination, the Asian and Middle East region has some of the most disturbing cultural practices that do not favor women (p. 68).

Miller et al (2009, p. 257) says that in western cultures, divorce is accessed by either partner who feels aggrieved hence cannot continue to stay in the arrangement.

However, some cultures like in Lebanon the divorce process is extremely punitive to women until many prefer to stay in their dysfunctional marriages to divorce. The laws governing such places have heaped both legal and financial obstacles on the part of women who would like to divorce effectively locking them out of the process.

Egyptian women are allowed to initiate divorce if they wish. However, the law makes it difficult for them to be granted their wish since it requires them or their families to repay dowries. The law further demends that they give up all the rights on the couple’s finances.

In Lebanon, women who experience domestic violence must produce an eyewitness for them to be granted divorce proceedings, a requirement that is quite stringent and difficult to fulfill.

The situation is no different in Israel. The right to divorce can only be given by the husband and never the wife. On the other hand, men in the above territories can do as they please as far as divorce is concerned Miller et al (2009, p. 305).

According to Spade, and Valentine (2008, p. 203), access to education by girls is lower compared to that of boys. Everywhere in the world with the exception of a few countries, the enrollment of boys is always higher than that of girls.

In Afghanistan for instance, the Taliban regime that aggressively enforced fundamental Islamic practices banned enrolment of girls to school. Still the literacy rate of women in the country is low owing to the fact that there is a shortage of female teachers, who must teach girls from a certain age.

The most discriminative practice in the country involves taking girls to school at puberty, effectively ensuring lack of uniform education among women from an early age.

Some communities in the Middle East and Africa demand that women walk accompanied by a male relative, even if the male companion is the age of a child. In other countries of the Middle East, husbands have the right to restrict their wife’s movements by filling papers at the airport that ban their women from traveling.

In other countries like Libya, married women must have a written permission from the husband authorizing her travel abroad. The practices are quite discriminative to women especially considering the demand places women at par with children Miller et al (2009, p. 310).

Women in such communities cannot decide what is right for them. Jacobs (1995) says that religious and selfish interests reign supreme and women are the losers at the end of it all (p. 56).

In the Middle East there are no laid down judicial procedures combating violence against women, especially sexual violence. Men have absolute control over women and battering is always treated as a domestic matter outside the state’s jurisdiction.

The system is not favorable at all to women who experience violence of any kind. Police stations do not allow reporting of cases of abuse nor do they take actions when actual cases are reported (Jacobs 1995, p 80).

Female infant discrimination

Blau (2006, p.308) says that there is a traditional believe that boys are better than girls are. Preference for boys over girls has led to increased infanticide, neglect, and abandonment of girls by parents who are desperate for boys.

In China and India, for instance there are high abortion rates of female fetuses by parents in search of boys. Such cases show the level of discrimination and outdated thinking that people have towards women.

Sectors hardest him by gender inequality

According to Tischler (2007, p.48), effects of gender inequality are universal. Many systems through which human beings operate have had negative impacts of gender inequality.

Education, the economy and labor markets and politics are some of the sectors that have experienced gender inequality and the negative consequences that are associated with it.

According to UNFPA, education for girls ensures long-term economic benefits for the entire society, access to more economic opportunities by girls and engagement in public life (United Nations 2005, pp 5). Educated women tend to make wise choices about health by bearing fewer children.

On the other hand, education increases girls bargaining power in sexual matters resulting in reduced chances of infection by HIV. The agency however casts some doubt about the achievement of millennium development goals on gender balance in the enrollment of girls into school.

According to the organization, there has been some progress but regions like south western Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa still lag behind in the enrollment of girls to school.

Blau (2006, p.308) adds that in countries that fall in these regions, choices about sending children to school are made and more often than not boys are sent to school while girls are left out (p.198).

Some of the issues that discourage girls from going to school include provision of safe transport, construction of separate amenities from both genders and discouragement of gender stereotyping in classrooms.

The above are very prevalent and greatly contribute in to the gender inequality that is witnessed in the education sector. The same situation is witnessed in the secondary school level where enrolment of girls is same as that in primary school. In some cases its lower (United Nations 2005, pp 5)

Labor Market

Bruckner (2004) says that, to ensure economic security for women and sustainable development and growth of economies, gender inequality must be done a way with in the labor sectors (p.84).

According to the UN, gender inequality in the Labor market is manifested through occupational discrimination, wage gaps based on gender and the uneven representation in informal employment, unpaid work, and high rates of unemployment (United Nations 2005, pp 5).

The UN further says that the majority of the working poor in the world are women. The working number up to 500 million and out of that, women comprise 60%.

The undervaluation of women’s work and the potential of clashing of their careers and other obligations like giving birth and raising families, contributes to the situation above (United Nations 2005, pp 5).

Kendall (2007, p. 248) says that some countries have even gone further and placed restrictions on the type of work that women should do and the earnings they should make.

Further more women earn less even when they do the same kind of work as men. Bruckner (2004, p.157) asserts that far less women own businesses compared to men and over 60% of all women who work in household businesses are not paid for their services.

National assemblies

There has been significant increase in the number of women elected to their national assemblies over the last decade. Despite the progress, national parliaments are yet to achieve the gender parity that they are supposed to have.

Lie & Brym, (2006, p. 69) assert that some of the factors that have ensured limited women participation include traditions about the role of a woman in different cultures. Women traditionally were not expected to live a public life. The tradition is still existent and greatly hinders women’s ascension to politics.

According to Bruckner (2004 ), another factor that has hindered their full participation is their economic status is that many belong to the low cadre class and cannot afford the resources necessary to join politics (p. 58).

Owners of such resources are mostly men. Finally the role of women in society as care givers and major raisers of families have complicated their chances of joining politics and vis avis the national assemblies (United Nations 2005, pp 6)

Towards gender equality

The 19 th century Suffragette movement gave rise to the struggle for gender equality. Since then much has been achieved though more needs to be done. A number of countries now have laws that criminalize discrimination on the basis of sex.

However, considering the fact that subordination of women is ages old, it will take an extremely long time to undo the negatives that womenfolk have gone through for them to be in the same level as men.

Blau, D. F. (2006) The Declining Significance of Gender ? New York: Russell sage foundation.

Bruckner, H. (2004) Gender inequality in the life course: social change and stability in West Germany . New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Jacobs, J. A. (1995) Gender inequality at work. Philadelphia: Sage Publications, the University of Michigan

Kendall, D. (2007) Sociology in Our Times: The Essentials . Belmont: Wadsworth- Cengage Learning.

Lie, J. & Brym, J. R. (2006) Sociology: your compass for a new world . Belmont: Thomson Learning.

Miller et al. (2009) Gender Inequality . New York, VDM Publishing House Ltd.

Oxfam. (2011) Gender inequality: key facts. Web.

Rhode, L. D. (1997) Speaking of Sex: The Denial of Gender Inequality . New York: New York Law and Publishing Company.

Ridgeway, L. C. (1992) Gender, interaction, and inequality . London, Springer Verlag New York Inc.

Ridgeway, L. C. (2011) Framed by Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rives, M. J, and Yousefi, M. (1997) Economic dimensions of gender inequality: a global perspective. United States, Greenwood Publishing Group.

Robeyns, I. (2002) Gender inequality: a capability perspective . Cambridge: University of Cambridge, Faculty of Economics and Politics.

Spade, J. Z. and Valentine, G. C. (2008) The kaleidoscope of gender: prisms, patterns, and possibilities . London: Sage Publications.

Tischler, L. H. (2007) Introduction to Sociology . Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage learning.

United Nations. (2005) State of the World Population: Gender Equality Fact Sheet. UN. Nd

• Gender Stereotypes About Women Still Exist
• Gender Differences Across Cultures
• Poverty and Inequality in the US
• Gender Inequality in America
• Do You Think There Is Gender War
• Gender Inequality in Workplace
• Global Inequalities: Are they Gendered?
• Gender Equality: Male Dominance
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• Gender Equality Essay

Introduction to Gender Equality

In a society, everyone has the right to lead his/her life accordingly without any discrimination. When this state is achieved where all individuals are considered to be equal irrespective of their caste, gender, colour, profession, and status, we call it equality. Equality can also be defined as the situation where every individual has the same rights and equal opportunity to grow and prosper. 

Every individual of society dreams for equal rights and access to resources available at their disposal, but there is a lot of discrimination. This discrimination can be due to cultural differences, geographical differences, the colour of the individual, social status and even gender. The most prevalent discrimination is gender inequality. It is not a localised issue and is limited to only certain spheres of life but is prevalent across the globe. Even in progressive societies and top organisations, we can see many examples of gender bias. 

Gender equality can only be achieved when both male and female individuals are treated similarly. But discrimination is a social menace that creates division. We stop being together and stand together to tackle our problems. This social stigma has been creeping into the underbelly of all of society for many centuries. This has also been witnessed in gender-based cases. Gender inequality is the thing of the past as both men and women are creating history in all segments together.

Gender Equality builds a Nation

In this century, women and men enjoy the same privileges. The perception is changing slowly but steadily. People are now becoming more aware of their rights and what they can do in a free society. It has been found that when women and men hold the same position and participate equally, society progresses exclusively and creates a landmark. When a community reaches gender equality, everyone enjoys the same privileges and gets similar scopes in education, health, occupation, and political aspect. Even in the family, when both male and female members are treated in the same way, it is the best place to grow, learn, and add great value.

A nation needs to value every gender equally to progress at the right place. A society attains better development in all aspects when both genders are entitled to similar opportunities. Equal rights in decision making, health, politics, infrastructure, profession, etc will surely advance our society to a new level. The social stigma of women staying inside the house has changed. Nowadays, girls are equally competing with boys in school. They are also creating landmark development in their respective profession. Women are now seeking economic independence before they get married. It gives them the confidence to stand against oppression and make better decisions for themselves.

The age-old social structure dictated that women need to stay inside the home taking care of all when men go out to earn bread and butter. This has been practised for ages when the world outside was not safe. Now that the time has changed and we have successfully made our environment quite safer, women can step forward, get educated, pursue their passion, bring economic balance in their families, and share the weight of a family with men. This, in a cumulative way, will also make a country’s economy progress faster and better.

Methods to measure Gender Equality

Gender equality can be measured and a country’s growth can be traced by using the following methods.

Gender Development Index (GDI) is a gender-based calculation done similar to the Human Development Index. 

Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) is a detailed calculation method of the percentage of female members in decision-making roles. 

Gender Equity Index (GEI) considers economic participation, education, and empowerment.

Global Gender Gap Index assesses the level of gender inequality present on the basis of four criteria: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, health and survival .

According to the Gender Gap Index (GGI), India ranks 140 among 156 participating countries. This denotes that the performance of India has fallen from the previous years, denoting negative growth in terms of closing the gender gap. In the current environment where equality and equal opportunities are considered supreme, this makes India be at a significant disadvantage.

Roadblocks to Gender Equality  

Indian society is still wrecked by such stigmas that dictate that women are meant to manage the home and stay indoors. This is being done for ages, leading to neglect of women in areas like education, health, wealth, and socio-economic fields. 

In addition to that, the dowry system is further crippling society. This ill practice had led to numerous female feticides. It has created a notion that girls are a burden on a family, which is one of the primary reasons a girl child cannot continue her education. Even if they excel in education and become independent, most of them are forced to quit their job as their income is considered a backup source, which is not fair. New-age women are not only independent, but they are confident too. The only thing they demand from society is support, which we should provide them.  

Along with dowry, there is one more burning issue that has a profound impact on women's growth. It is prevalent in all kinds of society and is known as violence. Violence against women is present in one or another form in public and private spaces. Sometimes, violence is accompanied by other burning issues such as exploitation, harassment, and trafficking, making the world unsafe for women. We must take steps to stop this and ensure a safe and healthy place for women.  

Poverty is also one of the major roadblocks towards gender equality. It has led to other malpractices such as child marriage, sale of children, trafficking and child labour, to name a few. Providing equal job opportunities and upliftment of people below the poverty line can help bring some checks onto this.

Initiative Towards Gender Equality

Any kind of discrimination acts as a roadblock in any nation’s growth, and a nation can only prosper when all its citizens have equal rights. Most of the developed countries has comparatively less gender discrimination and provide equal opportunity to both genders. Even the Indian government is taking multiple initiatives to cut down gender discrimination. 

They have initiated a social campaign called “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana” to encourage the education of girl children. Besides this, the government runs multiple other schemes, such as the Women Helpline Scheme, UJJAWALA, National Mission for Empowerment of Women, etc., to generate awareness among the people. Moreover, as responsible citizens, it is our responsibility to spread knowledge on gender discrimination to create a beautiful world for wome n [1] [2] .

FAQs on Gender Equality Essay

1. What Makes Women Unequal to Men?

The social stigmas and beliefs that have been running deeply in the veins of all families make women unequal to men. Women are considered to be a burden by many families and are not provided with the same rights men enjoy in society. We are ill-informed regarding women’s rights and tend to continue age-old practices. This is made worse with social menaces such as the dowry system, child labor, child marriage, etc. Women can gather knowledge, get educated, and compete with men. This is sometimes quite threatening to the false patriarchal society.

2. How can We Promote Gender Equality?

Education is the prime measure to be taken to make society free from such menaces. When we teach our new generation regarding the best social practices and gender equal rights, we can eradicate such menaces aptly. Our society is ill-informed regarding gender equality and rights. Many policies have been designed and implemented by the government. As our country holds the second position in terms of population, it is hard to tackle these gender-based problems. It can only be erased from the deepest point by using education as the prime weapon.

3. Why should Women be Equal to Men?

Women might not be similar to men in terms of physical strength and physiological traits. Both are differently built biologically but they have the same brain and organs to function. Women these days are creating milestones that are changing society. They have traveled to space, running companies, creating history, and making everyone proud. Women are showing their capabilities in every phase and hence, they should be equal to men in all aspects.

4. Mention a few initiatives started by the Indian Government to enable gender equality.

The Indian government has initiated a social campaign called “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana” to encourage girls’ education. Besides this, the government runs multiple other schemes, such as the  Women Helpline Scheme, UJJAWALA, National Mission for Empowerment of Women, etc., to generate awareness among the people.

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. There has been progress over the last decades, but the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030.

Women and girls represent half of the world’s population and therefore also half of its potential. But gender inequality persists everywhere and stagnates social progress. On average, women in the labor market still earn 23 percent less than men globally and women spend about three times as many hours in unpaid domestic and care work as men.

Sexual violence and exploitation, the unequal division of unpaid care and domestic work, and discrimination in public office, all remain huge barriers. All these areas of inequality have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic: there has been a surge in reports of sexual violence, women have taken on more care work due to school closures, and 70% of health and social workers globally are women.

At the current rate, it will take an estimated 300 years to end child marriage, 286 years to close gaps in legal protection and remove discriminatory laws, 140 years for women to be represented equally in positions of power and leadership in the workplace, and 47 years to achieve equal representation in national parliaments.

Political leadership, investments and comprehensive policy reforms are needed to dismantle systemic barriers to achieving Goal 5 Gender equality is a cross-cutting objective and must be a key focus of national policies, budgets and institutions.

How much progress have we made?

International commitments to advance gender equality have brought about improvements in some areas: child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) have declined in recent years, and women’s representation in the political arena is higher than ever before. But the promise of a world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality, and where all legal, social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed, remains unfulfilled. In fact, that goal is probably even more distant than before, since women and girls are being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Are they any other gender-related challenges?

Yes. Worldwide, nearly half of married women lack decision-making power over their sexual and reproductive health and rights. 35 per cent of women between 15-49 years of age have experienced physical and/ or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence.1 in 3 girls aged 15-19 have experienced some form of female genital mutilation/cutting in the 30 countries in Africa and the Middle East, where the harmful practice is most common with a high risk of prolonged bleeding, infection (including HIV), childbirth complications, infertility and death.

This type of violence doesn’t just harm individual women and girls; it also undermines their overall quality of life and hinders their active involvement in society.

Why should gender equality matter to me?

Regardless of where you live in, gender equality is a fundamental human right. Advancing gender equality is critical to all areas of a healthy society, from reducing poverty to promoting the health, education, protection and the well-being of girls and boys.

What can we do?

If you are a girl, you can stay in school, help empower your female classmates to do the same and fight for your right to access sexual and reproductive health services. If you are a woman, you can address unconscious biases and implicit associations that form an unintended and often an invisible barrier to equal opportunity.

If you are a man or a boy, you can work alongside women and girls to achieve gender equality and embrace healthy, respectful relationships.

You can fund education campaigns to curb cultural practices like female genital mutilation and change harmful laws that limit the rights of women and girls and prevent them from achieving their full potential.

The Spotlight Initiative is an EU/UN partnership, and a global, multi-year initiative focused on eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls – the world’s largest targeted effort to end all forms of violence against women and girls.

Facts and figures

Goal 5 targets.

• With only seven years remaining, a mere 15.4 per cent of Goal 5 indicators with data are “on track”, 61.5 per cent are at a moderate distance and 23.1 per cent are far or very far off track from 2030 targets.
• In many areas, progress has been too slow. At the current rate, it will take an estimated 300 years to end child marriage, 286 years to close gaps in legal protection and remove discriminatory laws, 140 years for women to be represented equally in positions of power and leadership in the workplace, and 47 years to achieve equal representation in national parliaments.
• Political leadership, investments and comprehensive policy reforms are needed to dismantle systemic barriers to achieving Goal 5. Gender equality is a cross-cutting objective and must be a key focus of national policies, budgets and institutions.
• Around 2.4 billion women of working age are not afforded equal economic opportunity. Nearly 2.4 Billion Women Globally Don’t Have Same Economic Rights as Men  
• 178 countries maintain legal barriers that prevent women’s full economic participation. Nearly 2.4 Billion Women Globally Don’t Have Same Economic Rights as Men
• In 2019, one in five women, aged 20-24 years, were married before the age of 18. Girls | UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children

Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023

5.1 End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere

5.2 Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation

5.3 Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation

5.4 Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate

5.5 Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decisionmaking in political, economic and public life

5.6 Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences

5.A  Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws

5.B Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women

5.C Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels

He for She campaign

United Secretary-General Campaign UNiTE to End Violence Against Women

Every Woman Every Child Initiative

Spotlight Initiative

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

UN Population Fund: Gender equality

UN Population Fund: Female genital mutilation

UN Population Fund: Child marriage

UN Population Fund: Engaging men & boys

UN Population Fund: Gender-based violence

World Health Organization (WHO)

UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)

UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Gender Statistics

Fast Facts: Gender Equality

Infographic: Gender Equality

The Initiative is so named as it brings focused attention to this issue, moving it into the spotlight and placing it at the centre of efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

An initial investment in the order of EUR 500 million will be made, with the EU as the main contributor. Other donors and partners will be invited to join the Initiative to broaden its reach and scope. The modality for the delivery will be a UN multi- stakeholder trust fund, administered by the Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office, with the support of core agencies UNDP, UNFPA and UN Women, and overseen by the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General.

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English Compositions

Short Essay on Gender Equality [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF 

In this lesson today, you will learn how you can actually write short essays on Gender Equality. I will write three sets of sample essays here that will cover different word limits. 

Short Essay on Gender Equality in 100 Words

In our society, for thousands of years, men have had the upper hand and women have been viewed as a gender inferior to men. Even until recent times, women were restricted to their houses, were denied education and didn’t have the right to vote. Women are still paid less than their male counterparts in many fields of work.

This discriminatory attitude towards women is unfair and unjust and needs to be changed. Women are not inferior to men. Men and women may be built differently in biological terms but that does not mean one is lesser than the other. Only when everyone gets equal opportunities and rights irrespective of their gender, will our society grow and develop healthily. 

Short Essay on Gender Equality in 200 Words

Gender equality is the state where every human being has equal access to opportunities and resources as well as equal rights in society, irrespective of their gender or sex. For thousands of years, men have held a position superior to women in society. Traditionally, men were given the role of doing outdoor work while women managed household chores and focused on raising children.

However, this setup gave men all the power and limited the rights and freedom of women, creating a patriarchal society. Women couldn’t participate in decision-making, own property, work outside their homes or live lives the way they wanted. For the majority of women, even the decisions concerning their own lives, like marriage and career, were not in their own hands. 

Today, society is changing and more and more people are realising that this system has been unfair and unjust towards women. With this realization, people are asking for equal rights, resources and opportunities for all. Today, women have access to many opportunities that were previously only reserved for men, like higher studies, various jobs and even the right to vote.

However, a huge number of women still cannot exercise their rights because of family and societal pressure. Many women still don’t have a voice and are suffering because of gender inequality. It is on us to bring a change in our society and make gender equality a reality for everyone. 

Equality is when everyone has equal opportunities and rights and there is no discrimination amongst people based on their caste, creed, religion or gender. Thus, gender equality is the state where every human being has equal access to opportunities and resources as well as equal rights in society, irrespective of their gender or sex.

For thousands of years, men have held a position superior to women in society. Traditionally, men were given the role of doing outdoor work while women managed household chores and focused on raising children.

However, even now, although women have stepped into the outside world and have established themselves, they are still discriminated against. They are denied powerful positions at their jobs, they aren’t allowed to make important decisions for their families, and they are paid less than their male counterparts in many fields of work.

A huge number of women in small towns and villages do not know their rights and even if they are aware, they still cannot exercise their rights because of family and societal pressures. Many women still don’t have a voice and are being forced to live a life controlled by others. 

Gender equality can only become a reality for everyone when we all work together to bring about a change in our society. We need to educate women about their rights and give them the confidence to fight for themselves.

We should also lend our voices to those who are unable to stand for themselves and stand with those who are being discriminated against. For our society to grow and develop in a healthy way, men and women need to work together and for that to happen, we need gender equality. The right to equality is also a basic human right and it shouldn’t be denied. 

Hopefully, after going through this session, you have understood all aspects of this topic and will be able to write such short essays on your own. If you still have any doubts regarding this context, kindly let me know through the comment section below. Keep browsing our website to read more such essays on various other important topics. 

Thank you for being with us. Have a great day.

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Gender inequality as a barrier to economic growth: a review of the theoretical literature

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• Published: 15 January 2021
• Volume 19 , pages 581–614, ( 2021 )

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• Manuel Santos Silva 1 &
• Stephan Klasen 1  

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In this article, we survey the theoretical literature investigating the role of gender inequality in economic development. The vast majority of theories reviewed argue that gender inequality is a barrier to development, particularly over the long run. Among the many plausible mechanisms through which inequality between men and women affects the aggregate economy, the role of women for fertility decisions and human capital investments is particularly emphasized in the literature. Yet, we believe the body of theories could be expanded in several directions.

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1 Introduction

Theories of long-run economic development have increasingly relied on two central forces: population growth and human capital accumulation. Both forces depend on decisions made primarily within households: population growth is partially determined by households’ fertility choices (e.g., Becker & Barro 1988 ), while human capital accumulation is partially dependent on parental investments in child education and health (e.g., Lucas 1988 ).

In an earlier survey of the literature linking family decisions to economic growth, Grimm ( 2003 ) laments that “[m]ost models ignore the two-sex issue. Parents are modeled as a fictive asexual human being” (p. 154). Footnote 1 Since then, however, economists are increasingly recognizing that gender plays a fundamental role in how households reproduce and care for their children. As a result, many models of economic growth are now populated with men and women. The “fictive asexual human being” is a dying species. In this article, we survey this rich new landscape in theoretical macroeconomics, reviewing, in particular, micro-founded theories where gender inequality affects economic development.

For the purpose of this survey, gender inequality is defined as any exogenously imposed difference between male and female economic agents that, by shaping their behavior, has implications for aggregate economic growth. In practice, gender inequality is typically modeled as differences between men and women in endowments, constraints, or preferences.

Many articles review the literature on gender inequality and economic growth. Footnote 2 Typically, both the theoretical and empirical literature are discussed, but, in almost all cases, the vast empirical literature receives most of the attention. In addition, some of the surveys examine both sides of the two-way relationship between gender inequality and economic growth: gender equality as a cause of economic growth and economic growth as a cause of gender equality. As a result, most surveys end up only scratching the surface of each of these distinct strands of literature.

There is, by now, a large and insightful body of micro-founded theories exploring how gender equality affects economic growth. In our view, these theories merit a separate review. Moreover, they have not received sufficient attention in empirical work, which has largely developed independently (see also Cuberes & Teignier 2014 ). By reviewing the theoretical literature, we hope to motivate empirical researchers in finding new ways of putting these theories to test. In doing so, our work complements several existing surveys. Doepke & Tertilt ( 2016 ) review the theoretical literature that incorporates families in macroeconomic models, without focusing exclusively on models that include gender inequality, as we do. Greenwood, Guner and Vandenbroucke ( 2017 ), in turn, review the theoretical literature from the opposite direction; they study how macroeconomic models can explain changes in family outcomes. Doepke, Tertilt and Voena ( 2012 ) survey the political economy of women’s rights, but without focusing explicitly on their impact on economic development.

To be precise, the scope of this survey consists of micro-founded macroeconomic models where gender inequality (in endowments, constraints, preferences) affects economic growth—either by influencing the economy’s growth rate or shaping the transition paths between multiple income equilibria. As a result, this survey does not cover several upstream fields of partial-equilibrium micro models, where gender inequality affects several intermediate growth-related outcomes, such as labor supply, education, health. Additionally, by focusing on micro-founded macro models, we do not review studies in heterodox macroeconomics, including the feminist economics tradition using structuralist, demand-driven models. For recent overviews of this literature, see Kabeer ( 2016 ) and Seguino ( 2013 , 2020 ). Overall, we find very little dialogue between the neoclassical and feminist heterodox literatures. In this review, we will show that actually these two traditions have several points of contact and reach similar conclusions in many areas, albeit following distinct intellectual routes.

Although the incorporation of gender in macroeconomic models of economic growth is a recent development, the main gendered ingredients of those models are not new. They were developed in at least two strands of literature. First, since the 1960s, “new home economics” has applied the analytical toolbox of rational choice theory to decisions being made within the boundaries of the family (see, e.g., Becker 1960 , 1981 ). Footnote 3 A second literature strand, mostly based on empirical work at the micro level in developing countries, described clear patterns of gender-specific behavior within households that differed across regions of the developing world (see, e.g., Boserup 1970 ). Footnote 4 As we shall see, most of the (micro-founded) macroeconomic models reviewed in this article use several analytical mechanisms from "new home economics”; these mechanisms can typically rationalize several of the gender-specific regularities observed in early studies of developing countries. The growth theorist is then left to explore the aggregate implications for economic development.

The first models we present focus on gender discrimination in (or on access to) the labor market as a distortionary tax on talent. If talent is randomly distributed in the population, men and women are imperfect substitutes in aggregate production, and, as a consequence, gender inequality (as long as determined by non-market processes) will misallocate talent and lower incentives for female human capital formation. These theories do not rely on typical household functions such as reproduction and childrearing. Therefore, in these models, individuals are not organized into households. We review this literature in section 2 .

From there, we proceed to theories where the household is the unit of analysis. In sections 3 and 4 , we cover models that take the household as given and avoid marriage markets or other household formation institutions. This is a world where marriage (or cohabitation) is universal, consensual, and monogamous; families are nuclear, and spouses are matched randomly. The first articles in this tradition model the household as a unitary entity with joint preferences and interests, and with an efficient and centralized decision making process. Footnote 5 These theories posit how men and women specialize into different activities and how parents interact with their children. Section 3 reviews these theories. Over time, the literature has incorporated intra-household dynamics. Now, family members are allowed to have different preferences and interests; they bargain, either cooperatively or not, over family decisions. Now, the theorist recognizes power asymmetries between family members and analyzes how spouses bargain over decisions. Footnote 6 These articles are surveyed in section 4 .

The final set of articles we survey take into account how households are formed. These theories show how gender inequality can influence economic growth and long-run development through marriage market institutions and family formation patterns. Among other topics, this literature has studied ages at first marriage, relative supply of potential partners, monogamy and polygyny, arranged and consensual marriages, and divorce risk. Upon marriage, these models assume different bargaining processes between the spouses, or even unitary households, but they all recognize, in one way or another, that marriage, labor supply, consumption, and investment decisions are interdependent. We review these theories in section 5 .

Table 1 offers a schematic overview of the literature. To improve readability, the table only includes studies that we review in detail, with articles listed in order of appearance in the text. The table also abstracts from models’ extensions and sensitivity checks, and focuses exclusively on the causal pathways leading from gender inequality to economic growth.

The vast majority of theories reviewed argue that gender inequality is a barrier to economic development, particularly over the long run. The focus on long-run supply-side models reflects a recent effort by growth theorists to incorporate two stylized facts of economic development in the last two centuries: (i) a strong positive association between gender equality and income per capita (Fig. 1 ), and (ii) a strong association between the timing of the fertility transition and income per capita (Fig. 2 ). Footnote 7 Models that endogenize a fertility transition are able to generate a transition from a Malthusian regime of stagnation to a modern regime of sustained economic growth, thus replicating the development experience of human societies in the very long run (e.g., Galor 2005a , b ; Guinnane 2011 ). In contrast, demand-driven models in the heterodox and feminist traditions have often argued that gender wage discrimination and gendered sectoral and occupational segregation can be conducive to economic growth in semi-industrialized export-oriented economies. Footnote 8 In these settings—that fit well the experience of East and Southeast Asian economies—gender wage discrimination in female-intensive export industries reduces production costs and boosts exports, profits, and investment (Blecker & Seguino 2002 ; Seguino 2010 ).

Income level and gender equality. Income is the natural log of per capita GDP (PPP-adjusted). The Gender Development Index is the ratio of gender-specific Human Development Indexes: female HDI/male HDI. Data are for the year 2000. Sources: UNDP

Income level and timing of the fertility transition. Income is the natural log of per capita GDP (PPP-adjusted) in 2000. Years since fertility transition are the number of years between 2000 and the onset year of the fertility decline. See Reher ( 2004 ) for details. Sources: UNDP and Reher ( 2004 )

In most long-run, supply-side models reviewed here, irrespectively of the underlying source of gender differences (e.g., biology, socialization, discrimination), the opportunity cost of women’s time in foregone labor market earnings is lower than that of men. This gender gap in the value of time affects economic growth through two main mechanisms. First, when the labor market value of women’s time is relatively low, women will be in charge of childrearing and domestic work in the family. A low value of female time means that children are cheap. Fertility will be high, and economic growth will be low, both because population growth has a direct negative impact on long-run economic performance and because human capital accumulates at a slower pace (through the quantity-quality trade-off). Second, if parents expect relatively low returns to female education, due to women specializing in domestic activities, they will invest relatively less in the education of girls. In the words of Harriet Martineau, one of the first to describe this mechanism, “as women have none of the objects in life for which an enlarged education is considered requisite, the education is not given” (Martineau 1837 , p. 107). In the long run, lower human capital investments (on girls) lead to slower economic development.

Overall, gender inequality can be conceptualized as a source of inefficiency, to the extent that it results in the misallocation of productive factors, such as talent or labor, and as a source of negative externalities, when it leads to higher fertility, skewed sex ratios, or lower human capital accumulation.

We conclude, in section 6 , by examining the limitations of the current literature and pointing ways forward. Among them, we suggest deeper investigations of the role of (endogenous) technological change on gender inequality, as well as greater attention to the role and interests of men in affecting gender inequality and its impact on growth.

2 Gender discrimination and misallocation of talent

Perhaps the single most intuitive argument for why gender discrimination leads to aggregate inefficiency and hampers economic growth concerns the allocation of talent. Assume that talent is randomly distributed in the population. Then, an economy that curbs women’s access to education, market employment, or certain occupations draws talent from a smaller pool than an economy without such restrictions. Gender inequality can thus be viewed as a distortionary tax on talent. Indeed, occupational choice models with heterogeneous talent (as in Roy 1951 ) show that exogenous barriers to women’s participation in the labor market or access to certain occupations reduce aggregate productivity and per capita output (Cuberes & Teignier 2016 , 2017 ; Esteve-Volart 2009 ; Hsieh, Hurst, Jones and Klenow 2019 ).

Hsieh et al. ( 2019 ) represent the US economy with a model where individuals sort into occupations based on innate ability. Footnote 9 Gender and race identity, however, are a source of discrimination, with three forces preventing women and black men from choosing the occupations best fitting their comparative advantage. First, these groups face labor market discrimination, which is modeled as a tax on wages and can vary by occupation. Second, there is discrimination in human capital formation, with the costs of occupation-specific human capital being higher for certain groups. This cost penalty is a composite term encompassing discrimination or quality differentials in private or public inputs into children’s human capital. The third force are group-specific social norms that generate utility premia or penalties across occupations. Footnote 10

Assuming that the distribution of innate ability across race and gender is constant over time, Hsieh et al. ( 2019 ) investigate and quantify how declines in labor market discrimination, barriers to human capital formation, and changing social norms affect aggregate output and productivity in the United States, between 1960 and 2010. Over that period, their general equilibrium model suggests that around 40 percent of growth in per capita GDP and 90 percent of growth in labor force participation can be attributed to reductions in the misallocation of talent across occupations. Declining in barriers to human capital formation account for most of these effects, followed by declining labor market discrimination. Changing social norms, on the other hand, explain only a residual share of aggregate changes.

Two main mechanisms drive these results. First, falling discrimination improves efficiency through a better match between individual ability and occupation. Second, because discrimination is higher in high-skill occupations, when discrimination decreases, high-ability women and black men invest more in human capital and supply more labor to the market. Overall, better allocation of talent, rising labor supply, and faster human capital accumulation raise aggregate growth and productivity.

Other occupational choice models assuming gender inequality in access to the labor market or certain occupations reach similar conclusions. In addition to the mechanisms in Hsieh et al. ( 2019 ), barriers to women’s work in managerial or entrepreneurial occupations reduce average talent in these positions, resulting in aggregate losses in innovation, technology adoption, and productivity (Cuberes & Teignier 2016 , 2017 ; Esteve-Volart 2009 ). The argument can be readily applied to talent misallocation across sectors (Lee 2020 ). In Lee’s model, female workers face discrimination in the non-agricultural sector. As a result, talented women end up sorting into ill-suited agricultural activities. This distortion reduces aggregate productivity in agriculture. Footnote 11

To sum up, when talent is randomly distributed in the population, barriers to women’s education, employment, or occupational choice effectively reduce the pool of talent in the economy. According to these models, dismantling these gendered barriers can have an immediate positive effect on economic growth.

3 Unitary households: parents and children

In this section, we review models built upon unitary households. A unitary household maximizes a joint utility function subject to pooled household resources. Intra-household decision making is assumed away; the household is effectively a black-box. In this class of models, gender inequality stems from a variety of sources. It is rooted in differences in physical strength (Galor & Weil 1996 ; Hiller 2014 ; Kimura & Yasui 2010 ) or health (Bloom et al. 2015 ); it is embedded in social norms (Hiller 2014 ; Lagerlöf 2003 ), labor market discrimination (Cavalcanti & Tavares 2016 ), or son preference (Zhang, Zhang and Li 1999 ). In all these models, gender inequality is a barrier to long-run economic development.

Galor & Weil ( 1996 ) model an economy with three factors of production: capital, physical labor (“brawn”), and mental labor (“brain”). Men and women are equally endowed with brains, but men have more brawn. In economies starting with very low levels of capital per worker, women fully specialize in childrearing because their opportunity cost in terms of foregone market earnings is lower than men’s. Over time, the stock of capital per worker builds up due to exogenous technological progress. The degree of complementarity between capital and mental labor is higher than that between capital and physical labor; as the economy accumulates capital per worker, the returns to brain rise relative to the returns to brawn. As a result, the relative wages of women rise, increasing the opportunity cost of childrearing. This negative substitution effect dominates the positive income effect on the demand for children and fertility falls. Footnote 12 As fertility falls, capital per worker accumulates faster creating a positive feedback loop that generates a fertility transition and kick starts a process of sustained economic growth.

The model has multiple stable equilibria. An economy starting from a low level of capital per worker is caught in a Malthusian poverty trap of high fertility, low income per capita, and low relative wages for women. In contrast, an economy starting from a sufficiently high level of capital per worker will converge to a virtuous equilibrium of low fertility, high income per capita, and high relative wages for women. Through exogenous technological progress, the economy can move from the low to the high equilibrium.

Gender inequality in labor market access or returns to brain can slow down or even prevent the escape from the Malthusian equilibrium. Wage discrimination or barriers to employment would work against the rise of relative female wages and, therefore, slow down the takeoff to modern economic growth.

The Galor and Weil model predicts how female labor supply and fertility evolve in the course of development. First, (married) women start participating in market work and only afterwards does fertility start declining. Historically, however, in the US and Western Europe, the decline in fertility occurred before women’s participation rates in the labor market started their dramatic increase. In addition, these regions experienced a mid-twentieth century baby boom which seems at odds with Galor and Weil’s theory.

Both these stylized facts can be addressed by adding home production to the modeling, as do Kimura & Yasui ( 2010 ). In their article, as capital per worker accumulates, the market wage for brains rises and the economy moves through four stages of development. In the first stage, with a sufficiently low market wage, both husband and wife are fully dedicated to home production and childrearing. The household does not supply labor to the market; fertility is high and constant. In the second stage, as the wage rate increases, men enter the labor market (supplying both brawn and brain), whereas women remain fully engaged in home production and childrearing. But as men partially withdraw from home production, women have to replace them. As a result, their time cost of childrearing goes up. At this stage of development, the negative substitution effect of rising wages on fertility dominates the positive income effect. Fertility starts declining, even though women have not yet entered the labor market. The third stage arrives when men stop working in home production. There is complete specialization of labor by gender; men only do market work, and women only do home production and childrearing. As the market wage rises for men, the positive income effect becomes dominant and fertility increases; this mimics the baby-boom period of the mid-twentieth century. In the fourth and final stage, once sufficient capital is accumulated, women enter the market sector as wage-earners. The negative substitution effect of rising female opportunity costs dominates once again, and fertility declines. The economy moves from a “breadwinner model” to a “dual-earnings model”.

Another important form of gender inequality is discrimination against women in the form of lower wages, holding male and female productivity constant. Cavalcanti & Tavares ( 2016 ) estimate the aggregate effects of wage discrimination using a model-based general equilibrium representation of the US economy. In their model, women are assumed to be more productive in childrearing than men, so they pay the full time cost of this activity. In the labor market, even though men and women are equally productive, women receive only a fraction of the male wage rate—this is the wage discrimination assumption. Wage discrimination works as a tax on female labor supply. Because women work less than they would without discrimination, there is a negative level effect on per capita output. In addition, there is a second negative effect of wage discrimination operating through endogenous fertility. Since lower wages reduce women’s opportunity costs of childrearing, fertility is relatively high, and output per capita is relatively low. The authors calibrate the model to US steady state parameters and estimate large negative output costs of the gender wage gap. Reducing wage discrimination against women by 50 percent would raise per capita income by 35 percent, in the long run.

Human capital accumulation plays no role in Galor & Weil ( 1996 ), Kimura & Yasui ( 2010 ), and Cavalcanti & Tavares ( 2016 ). Each person is exogenously endowed with a unit of brains. The fundamental trade-off in the these models is between the income and substitution effects of rising wages on the demand for children. When Lagerlöf ( 2003 ) adds education investments to a gender-based model, an additional trade-off emerges: that between the quantity and the quality of children.

Lagerlöf ( 2003 ) models gender inequality as a social norm: on average, men have higher human capital than women. Confronted with this fact, parents play a coordination game in which it is optimal for them to reproduce the inequality in the next generation. The reason is that parents expect the future husbands of their daughters to be, on average, relatively more educated than the future wives of their sons. Because, in the model, parents care for the total income of their children’s future households, they respond by investing relatively less in daughters’ human capital. Here, gender inequality does not arise from some intrinsic difference between men and women. It is instead the result of a coordination failure: “[i]f everyone else behaves in a discriminatory manner, it is optimal for the atomistic player to do the same” (Lagerlöf 2003 , p. 404).

With lower human capital, women earn lower wages than men and are therefore solely responsible for the time cost of childrearing. But if, exogenously, the social norm becomes more gender egalitarian over time, the gender gap in parental educational investment decreases. As better educated girls grow up and become mothers, their opportunity costs of childrearing are higher. Parents trade-off the quantity of children by their quality; fertility falls and human capital accumulates. However, rising wages have an offsetting positive income effect on fertility because parents pay a (fixed) “goods cost” per child. The goods cost is proportionally more important in poor societies than in richer ones. As a result, in poor economies, growth takes off slowly because the positive income effect offsets a large chunk of the negative substitution effect. As economies grow richer, the positive income effect vanishes (as a share of total income), and fertility declines faster. That is, growth accelerates over time even if gender equality increases only linearly.

The natural next step is to model how the social norm on gender roles evolves endogenously during the course of development. Hiller ( 2014 ) develops such a model by combining two main ingredients: a gender gap in the endowments of brawn (as in Galor & Weil 1996 ) generates a social norm, which each parental couple takes as given (as in Lagerlöf 2003 ). The social norm evolves endogenously, but slowly; it tracks the gender ratio of labor supply in the market, but with a small elasticity. When the male-female ratio in labor supply decreases, stereotypes adjust and the norm becomes less discriminatory against women.

The model generates a U-shaped relationship between economic development and female labor force participation. Footnote 13 In the preindustrial stage, there is no education and all labor activities are unskilled, i.e., produced with brawn. Because men have a comparative advantage in brawn, they supply more labor to the market than women, who specialize in home production. This gender gap in labor supply creates a social norm that favors boys over girls. Over time, exogenous skill-biased technological progress raises the relative returns to brains, inducing parents to invest in their children’s education. At the beginning, however, because of the social norm, only boys become educated. The economy accumulates human capital and grows, generating a positive income effect that, in isolation, would eventually drive up parental investments in girls’ education. Footnote 14 But endogenous social norms move in the opposite direction. When only boys receive education, the gender gap in returns to market work increases, and women withdraw to home production. As female relative labor supply in the market drops, the social norm becomes more discriminatory against women. As a result, parents want to invest relatively less in their daughters’ education.

In the end, initial conditions determine which of the forces dominates, thereby shaping long-term outcomes. If, initially, the social norm is very discriminatory, its effect is stronger than the income effect; the economy becomes trapped in an equilibrium with high gender inequality and low per capita income. If, on the other hand, social norms are relatively egalitarian to begin with, then the income effect dominates, and the economy converges to an equilibrium with gender equality and high income per capita.

In the models reviewed so far, human capital or brain endowments can be understood as combining both education and health. Bloom et al. ( 2015 ) explicitly distinguish these two dimensions. Health affects labor market earnings because sick people are out of work more often (participation effect) and are less productive per hour of work (productivity effect). Female health is assumed to be worse than male health, implying that women’s effective wages are lower than men’s. As a result, women are solely responsible for childrearing. Footnote 15

The model produces two growth regimes: a Malthusian trap with high fertility and no educational investments; and a regime of sustained growth, declining fertility, and rising educational investments. Once wages reach a certain threshold, the economy goes through a fertility transition and education expansion, taking off from the Malthusian regime to the sustained growth regime.

Female health promotes growth in both regimes, and it affects the timing of the takeoff. The healthier women are, the earlier the economy takes off. The reason is that a healthier woman earns a higher effective wage and, consequently, faces higher opportunity costs of raising children. When female health improves, the rising opportunity costs of children reduce the wage threshold at which educational investments become attractive; the fertility transition and mass education periods occur earlier.

In contrast, improved male health slows down economic growth and delays the fertility transition. When men become healthier, there is only a income effect on the demand for children, without the negative substitution effect (because male childrearing time is already zero). The policy conclusion would be to redistribute health from men to women. However, the policy would impose a static utility cost on the household. Because women’s time allocation to market work is constrained by childrearing responsibilities (whereas men work full-time), the marginal effect of health on household income is larger for men than for women. From the household’s point of view, reducing the gender gap in health produces a trade-off between short-term income maximization and long-term economic development.

In an extension of the model, the authors endogeneize health investments, while keeping the assumption that women pay the full time cost of childrearing. Because women participate less in the labor market (due to childrearing duties), it is optimal for households to invest more in male health. A health gender gap emerges from rational household behavior that takes into account how time-constraints differ by gender; assuming taste-based discrimination against girls or gender-specific preferences is not necessary.

In the models reviewed so far, parents invest in their children’s human capital for purely altruistic reasons. This is captured in the models by assuming that parents derive utility directly from the quantity and quality of children. This is the classical representation of children as durable consumption goods (e.g., Becker 1960 ). In reality, of course, parents may also have egoistic motivations for investing in child quantity and quality. A typical example is that, when parents get old and retire, they receive support from their children. The quantity and quality of children will affect the size of old-age transfers and parents internalize this in their fertility and childcare behavior. According to this view, children are best understood as investment goods.

Zhang et al. ( 1999 ) build an endogenous growth model that incorporates the old-age support mechanism in parental decisions. Another innovative element of their model is that parents can choose the gender of their children. The implicit assumption is that sex selection technologies are freely available to all parents.

At birth, there is a gender gap in human capital endowment, favoring boys over girls. Footnote 16 In adulthood, a child’s human capital depends on the initial endowment and on the parents’ human capital. In addition, the probability that a child survives to adulthood is exogenous and can differ by gender.

Parents receive old-age support from children that survive until adulthood. The more human capital children have, the more old-age support they provide to their parents. Beyond this egoistic motive, parents also enjoy the quantity and the quality of children (altruistic motive). Son preference is modeled by boys having a higher relative weight in the altruistic-component of the parental utility function. In other words, in their enjoyment of children as consumer goods, parents enjoy “consuming” a son more than “consuming” a girl. Parents who prefer sons want more boys than girls. A larger preference for sons, a higher relative survival probability of boys, and a higher human capital endowment of boys positively affect the sex ratio at birth, because, in the parents’ perspective, all these forces increase the marginal utility of boys relative to girls.

Zhang et al. ( 1999 ) show that, if human capital transmission from parents to children is efficient enough, the economy grows endogenously. When boys have a higher human capital endowment than girls, and the survival probability of sons is not smaller than the survival probability of daughters, then only sons provide old-age support. Anticipating this, parents invest more in the human capital of their sons than on the human capital of their daughters. As a result, the gender gap in human capital at birth widens endogenously.

When only boys provide old-age support, an exogenous increase in son preference harms long-run economic growth. The reason is that, when son preference increases, parents enjoy each son relatively more and demand less old-age support from him. Other things equal, parents want to “consume” more sons now and less old-age support later. Because parents want more sons, the sex ratio at birth increases; but because each son provides less old-age support, human capital investments per son decrease (such that the gender gap in human capital narrows). At the aggregate level, the pace of human capital accumulation slows down and, in the long run, economic growth is lower. Thus, an exogenous increase in son preference increases the sex ratio at birth, and reduces human capital accumulation and long-run growth (although it narrows the gender gap in education).

In summary, in growth models with unitary households, gender inequality is closely linked to the division of labor between family members. If women earn relatively less in market activities, they specialize in childrearing and home production, while men specialize in market work. And precisely due to this division of labor, the returns to female educational investments are relatively low. These household behaviors translate into higher fertility and lower human capital and thus pose a barrier to long-run development.

4 Intra-household bargaining: husbands and wives

In this section, we review models populated with non-unitary households, where decisions are the result of bargaining between the spouses. There are two broad types of bargaining processes: non-cooperative, where spouses act independently or interact in a non-cooperative game that often leads to inefficient outcomes (e.g., Doepke & Tertilt 2019 , Heath & Tan 2020 ); and cooperative, where the spouses are assumed to achieve an efficient outcome (e.g., De la Croix & Vander Donckt 2010 ; Diebolt & Perrin 2013 ). As in the previous section, all of these non-unitary models take the household as given, thereby abstracting from marriage markets or other household formation institutions, which will be discussed separately in section 5 . When preferences differ by gender, bargaining between the spouses matters for economic growth. If women care more about child quality than men do and human capital accumulation is the main engine of growth, then empowering women leads to faster economic growth (Prettner & Strulik 2017 ). If, however, men and women have similar preferences but are imperfect substitutes in the production of household public goods, then empowering women has an ambiguous effect on economic growth (Doepke & Tertilt 2019 ).

A separate channel concerns the intergenerational transmission of human capital and woman’s role as the main caregiver of children. If the education of the mother matters more than the education of the father in the production of children’s human capital, then empowering women will be conducive to growth (Agénor 2017 ; Diebolt & Perrin 2013 ), with the returns to education playing a crucial role in the political economy of female empowerment (Doepke & Tertilt 2009 ).

However, different dimensions of gender inequality have different growth impacts along the development process (De la Croix & Vander Donckt 2010 ). Policies that improve gender equality across many dimensions can be particularly effective for economic growth by reaping complementarities and positive externalities (Agénor 2017 ).

The idea that women might have stronger preferences for child-related expenditures than men can be easily incorporated in a Beckerian model of fertility. The necessary assumption is that women place a higher weight on child quality (relative to child quantity) than men do. Prettner & Strulik ( 2017 ) build a unified growth theory model with collective households. Men and women have different preferences, but they achieve efficient cooperation based on (reduced-form) bargaining parameters. The authors study the effect of two types of preferences: (i) women are assumed to have a relative preference for child quality, while men have a relative preference for child quantity; and (ii) parents are assumed to have a relative preference for the education of sons over the education of daughters. In addition, it is assumed that the time cost of childcare borne by men cannot be above that borne by women (but it could be the same).

When women have a relative preference for child quality, increasing female empowerment speeds up the economy’s escape from a Malthusian trap of high fertility, low education, and low income per capita. When female empowerment increases (exogenously), a woman’s relative preference for child quality has a higher impact on household’s decisions. As a consequence, fertility falls, human capital accumulates, and the economy starts growing. The model also predicts that the more preferences for child quality differ between husband and wife, the more effective is female empowerment in raising long-run per capita income, because the sooner the economy escapes the Malthusian trap. This effect is not affected by whether parents have a preference for the education of boys relative to that of girls. If, however, men and women have similar preferences with respect to the quantity and quality of their children, then female empowerment does not affect the timing of the transition to the sustained growth regime.

Strulik ( 2019 ) goes one step further and endogeneizes why men seem to prefer having more children than women. The reason is a different preference for sexual activity: other things equal, men enjoy having sex more than women. Footnote 17 When cheap and effective contraception is not available, a higher male desire for sexual activity explains why men also prefer to have more children than women. In a traditional economy, where no contraception is available, fertility is high, while human capital and economic growth are low. When female bargaining power increases, couples reduce their sexual activity, fertility declines, and human capital accumulates faster. Faster human capital accumulation increases household income and, as a consequence, the demand for contraception goes up. As contraception use increases, fertility declines further. Eventually, the economy undergoes a fertility transition and moves to a modern regime with low fertility, widespread use of contraception, high human capital, and high economic growth. In the modern regime, because contraception is widely used, men’s desire for sex is decoupled from fertility. Both sex and children cost time and money. When the two are decoupled, men prefer to have more sex at the expense of the number of children. There is a reversal in the gender gap in desired fertility. When contraceptives are not available, men desire more children than women; once contraceptives are widely used, men desire fewer children than women. If women are more empowered, the transition from the traditional equilibrium to the modern equilibrium occurs faster.

Both Prettner & Strulik ( 2017 ) and Strulik ( 2019 ) rely on gender-specific preferences. In contrast, Doepke & Tertilt ( 2019 ) are able to explain gender-specific expenditure patterns without having to assume that men and women have different preferences. They set up a non-cooperative model of household decision making and ask whether more female control of household resources leads to higher child expenditures and, thus, to economic development. Footnote 18

In their model, household public goods are produced with two inputs: time and goods. Instead of a single home-produced good (as in most models), there is a continuum of household public goods whose production technologies differ. Some public goods are more time-intensive to produce, while others are more goods-intensive. Each specific public good can only be produced by one spouse—i.e., time and good inputs are not separable. Women face wage discrimination in the labor market, so their opportunity cost of time is lower than men’s. As a result, women specialize in the production of the most time-intensive household public goods (e.g., childrearing activities), while men specialize in the production of goods-intensive household public goods (e.g., housing infrastructure). Notice that, because the household is non-cooperative, there is not only a division of labor between husband and wife, but also a division of decision making, since ultimately each spouse decides how much to provide of his or her public goods.

When household resources are redistributed from men to women (i.e., from the high-wage spouse to the low-wage spouse), women provide more public goods, in relative terms. It is ambiguous, however, whether the total provision of public goods increases with the re-distributive transfer. In a classic model of gender-specific preferences, a wife increases child expenditures and her own private consumption at the expense of the husband’s private consumption. In Doepke & Tertilt ( 2019 ), however, the rise in child expenditures (and time-intensive public goods in general) comes at the expense of male consumption and male-provided public goods.

Parents contribute to the welfare of the next generation in two ways: via human capital investments (time-intensive, typically done by the mother) and bequests of physical capital (goods-intensive, typically done by the father). Transferring resources to women increases human capital, but reduces the stock of physical capital. The effect of such transfers on economic growth depends on whether the aggregate production function is relatively intensive in human capital or in physical capital. If aggregate production is relatively human capital intensive, then transfers to women boost economic growth; if it is relatively intensive in physical capital, then transfers to women may reduce economic growth.

There is an interesting paradox here. On the one hand, transfers to women will be growth-enhancing in economies where production is intensive in human capital. These would be more developed, knowledge intensive, service economies. On the other hand, the positive growth effect of transfers to women increases with the size of the gender wage gap, that is, decreases with female empowerment. But the more advanced, human capital intensive economies are also the ones with more female empowerment (i.e., lower gender wage gaps). In other words, in settings where human capital investments are relatively beneficial, the contribution of female empowerment to human capital accumulation is reduced. Overall, Doepke and Tertilt’s ( 2019 ) model predicts that female empowerment has at best a limited positive effect and at worst a negative effect on economic growth.

Heath & Tan ( 2020 ) argue that, in a non-cooperative household model, income transfers to women may increase female labor supply. Footnote 19 This result may appear counter-intuitive at first, because in collective household models unearned income unambiguously reduces labor supply through a negative income effect. In Heath and Tan’s model, husband and wife derive utility from leisure, consuming private goods, and consuming a household public good. The spouses decide separately on labor supply and monetary contributions to the household public good. Men and women are identical in preferences and behavior, but women have limited control over resources, with a share of their income being captured by the husband. Female control over resources (i.e., autonomy) depends positively on the wife’s relative contribution to household income. Thus, an income transfer to the wife, keeping husband unearned income constant, raises the fraction of her own income that she privately controls. This autonomy effect unambiguously increases women’s labor supply, because the wife can now reap an additional share of her wage bill. Whenever the autonomy effect dominates the (negative) income effect, female labor supply increases. The net effect will be heterogeneous over the wage distribution, but the authors show that aggregate female labor supply is always weakly larger after the income transfer.

Diebolt & Perrin ( 2013 ) assume cooperative bargaining between husband and wife, but do not rely on sex-specific preferences or differences in ability. Men and women are only distinguished by different uses of their time endowments, with females in charge of all childrearing activities. In line with this labor division, the authors further assume that only the mother’s human capital is inherited by the child at birth. On top of the inherited maternal endowment, individuals can accumulate human capital during adulthood, through schooling. The higher the initial human capital endowment, the more effective is the accumulation of human capital via schooling.

A woman’s bargaining power in marriage determines her share in total household consumption and is a function of the relative female human capital of the previous generation. An increase in the human capital of mothers relative to that of fathers has two effects. First, it raises the incentives for human capital accumulation of the next generation, because inherited maternal human capital makes schooling more effective. Second, it raises the bargaining power of the next generation of women and, because women’s consumption share increases, boosts the returns on women’s education. The second effect is not internalized in women’s time allocation decisions; it is an intergenerational externality. Thus, an exogenous increase in women’s bargaining power would promote economic growth by speeding up the accumulation of human capital across overlapping generations.

De la Croix & Vander Donckt ( 2010 ) contribute to the literature by clearly distinguishing between different gender gaps: a gap in the probability of survival, a wage gap, a social and institutional gap, and a gender education gap. The first three are exogenously given, while the fourth is determined within the model.

By assumption, men and women have identical preferences and ability, but women pay the full time cost of childrearing. As in a typical collective household model, bargaining power is partially determined by the spouses’ earnings potential (i.e., their levels of human capital and their wage rates). But there is also a component of bargaining power that is exogenous and captures social norms that discriminate against women—this is the social and institutional gender gap.

Husbands and wives bargain over fertility and human capital investments for their children. A standard Beckerian result emerges: parents invest relatively less in the education of girls, because girls will be more time-constrained than boys and, therefore, the female returns to education are lower in relative terms.

There are at least two regimes in the economy: a corner regime and an interior regime. The corner regime consists of maximum fertility, full gender specialization (no women in the labor market), and large gender gaps in education (no education for girls). Reducing the wage gap or the social and institutional gap does not help the economy escaping this regime. Women are not in labor force, so the wage gap is meaningless. The social and institutional gap will determine women’s share in household consumption, but does not affect fertility and growth. At this stage, the only effective instruments for escaping the corner regime are reducing the gender survival gap or reducing child mortality. Reducing the gender survival gap increases women’s lifespan, which increases their time budget and attracts them to the labor market. Reducing child mortality decreases the time costs of kids, therefore drawing women into the labor market. In both cases, fertility decreases.

In the interior regime, fertility is below the maximum, women’s labor supply is above zero, and both boys and girls receive education. In this regime, with endogenous bargaining power, reducing all gender gaps will boost economic growth. Footnote 20 Thus, depending on the growth regime, some gender gaps affect economic growth, while others do not. Accordingly, the policy-maker should tackle different dimensions of gender inequality at different stages of the development process.

Agénor ( 2017 ) presents a computable general equilibrium that includes many of the elements of gender inequality reviewed so far. An important contribution of the model is to explicitly add the government as an agent whose policies interact with family decisions and, therefore, will impact women’s time allocation. Workers produce a market good and a home good and are organized in collective households. Bargaining power depends on the spouses’ relative human capital levels. By assumption, there is gender discrimination in market wages against women. On top, mothers are exclusively responsible for home production and childrearing, which takes the form of time spent improving children’s health and education. But public investments in education and health also improve these outcomes during childhood. Likewise, public investment in public infrastructure contributes positively to home production. In particular, the ratio of public infrastructure capital stock to private capital stock is a substitute for women’s time in home production. The underlying idea is that improving sanitation, transportation, and other infrastructure reduces time spent in home production. Health status in adulthood depends on health status in childhood, which, in turn, relates positively to mother’s health, her time inputs into childrearing, and government spending. Children’s human capital depends on similar factors, except that mother’s human capital replaces her health as an input. Additionally, women are assumed to derive less utility from current consumption and more utility from children’s health relative to men. Wives are also assumed to live longer than their husbands, which further down-weights female’s emphasis on current consumption. The final gendered assumption is that mother’s time use is biased towards boys. This bias alone creates a gender gap in education and health. As adults, women’s relative lower health and human capital are translated into relative lower bargaining power in household decisions.

Agénor ( 2017 ) calibrates this rich setup for Benin, a low income country, and runs a series of policy experiments on different dimensions of gender inequality: a fall in childrearing costs, a fall in gender pay discrimination, a fall in son bias in mother’s time allocation, and an exogenous increase in female bargaining power. Footnote 21 Interestingly, despite all policies improving gender equality in separate dimensions, not all unambiguously stimulate economic growth. For example, falling childrearing costs raise savings and private investments, which are growth-enhancing, but increase fertility (as children become ‘cheaper’) and reduce maternal time investment per child, thus reducing growth. In contrast, a fall in gender pay discrimination always leads to higher growth, through higher household income that, in turn, boosts savings, tax revenues, and public spending. Higher public spending further contributes to improved health and education of the next generation. Lastly, Agénor ( 2017 ) simulates the effect of a combined policy that improves gender equality in all domains simultaneously. Due to complementarities and positive externalities across dimensions, the combined policy generates more economic growth than the sum of the individual policies. Footnote 22

In the models reviewed so far, men are passive observers of women’s empowerment. Doepke & Tertilt ( 2009 ) set up an interesting political economy model of women’s rights, where men make the decisive choice. Their model is motivated by the fact that, historically, the economic rights of women were expanded before their political rights. Because the granting of economic rights empowers women in the household, and this was done before women were allowed to participate in the political process, the relevant question is why did men willingly share their power with their wives?

Doepke & Tertilt ( 2009 ) answer this question by arguing that men face a fundamental trade-off. On the one hand, husbands would vote for their wives to have no rights whatsoever, because husbands prefer as much intra-household bargaining power as possible. But, on the other hand, fathers would vote for their daughters to have economic rights in their future households. In addition, fathers want their children to marry highly educated spouses, and grandfathers want their grandchildren to be highly educated. By assumption, men and women have different preferences, with women having a relative preference for child quality over quantity. Accordingly, men internalize that, when women become empowered, human capital investments increase, making their children and grandchildren better-off.

Skill-biased (exogenous) technological progress that raises the returns to education over time can shift male incentives along this trade-off. When the returns to education are low, men prefer to make all decisions on their own and deny all rights to women. But once the returns to education are sufficiently high, men voluntarily share their power with women by granting them economic rights. As a result, human capital investments increase and the economy grows faster.

In summary, gender inequality in labor market earnings often implies power asymmetries within the household, with men having more bargaining power than women. If preferences differ by gender and female preferences are more conducive to development, then empowering women is beneficial for growth. When preferences are the same and the bargaining process is non-cooperative, the implications are less clear-cut, and more context-specific. If, in addition, women’s empowerment is curtailed by law (e.g., restrictions on women’s economic rights), then it is important to understand the political economy of women’s rights, in which men are crucial actors.

5 Marriage markets and household formation

Two-sex models of economic growth have largely ignored how households are formed. The marriage market is not explicitly modeled: spouses are matched randomly, marriage is universal and monogamous, and families are nuclear. In reality, however, household formation patterns vary substantially across societies, with some of these differences extending far back in history. For example, Hajnal ( 1965 , 1982 ) described a distinct household formation pattern in preindustrial Northwestern Europe (often referred to as the “European Marriage Pattern”) characterized by: (i) late ages at first marriage for women, (ii) most marriages done under individual consent, and (iii) neolocality (i.e., upon marriage, the bride and the groom leave their parental households to form a new household). In contrast, marriage systems in China and India consisted of: (i) very early female ages at first marriage, (ii) arranged marriages, and (iii) patrilocality (i.e., the bride joins the parental household of the groom).

Economic historians argue that the “European Marriage Pattern” empowered women, encouraging their participation in market activities and reducing fertility levels. While some view this as one of the deep-rooted factors explaining Northwestern Europe’s earlier takeoff to sustained economic growth (e.g., Carmichael, de Pleijt, van Zanden and De Moor 2016 ; De Moor & Van Zanden 2010 ; Hartman 2004 ), others have downplayed the long-run significance of this marriage pattern (e.g., Dennison & Ogilvie 2014 ; Ruggles 2009 ). Despite this lively debate, the topic has been largely ignored by growth theorists. The few exceptions are Voigtländer and Voth ( 2013 ), Edlund and Lagerlöf ( 2006 ), and Tertilt ( 2005 , 2006 ).

After exploring different marriage institutions, we zoom in on contemporary monogamous and consensual marriage and review models where gender inequality affects economic growth through marriage markets that facilitate household formation (Du & Wei 2013 ; Grossbard & Pereira 2015 ; Grossbard-Shechtman 1984 ; Guvenen & Rendall 2015 ). In contrast with the previous two sections, where the household is the starting point of the analysis, the literature on marriage markets and household formation recognizes that marriage, labor supply, and investment decisions are interlinked. The analysis of these interlinkages is sometimes done with unitary households (upon marriage) (Du & Wei 2013 ; Guvenen & Rendall 2015 ), or with non-cooperative models of individual decision-making within households (Grossbard & Pereira 2015 ; Grossbard-Shechtman 1984 ).

Voigtländer and Voth ( 2013 ) argue that the emergence of the “European Marriage Pattern” is a direct consequence of the mid-fourteen century Black Death. They set up a two-sector agricultural economy consisting of physically demanding cereal farming, and less physically demanding pastoral production. The economy is populated by many male and female peasants and by a class of idle, rent-maximizing landlords. Female peasants are heterogeneous with respect to physical strength, but, on average, are assumed to have less brawn relative to male peasants and, thus, have a comparative advantage in the pastoral sector. Both sectors use land as a production input, although the pastoral sector is more land-intensive than cereal production. All land is owned by the landlords, who can rent it out for peasant cereal farming, or use it for large-scale livestock farming, for which they hire female workers. Crucially, women can only work and earn wages in the pastoral sector as long as they are unmarried. Footnote 23 Peasant women decide when to marry and, upon marriage, a peasant couple forms a new household, where husband and wife both work on cereal farming, and have children at a given time frequency. Thus, the only contraceptive method available is delaying marriage. Because women derive utility from consumption and children, they face a trade-off between earned income and marriage.

Initially, the economy rests in a Malthusian regime, where land-labor ratios are relatively low, making the land-intensive pastoral sector unattractive and depressing relative female wages. As a result, women marry early and fertility is high. The initial regime ends in 1348–1350, when the Black Death kills between one third and half of Europe’s population, exogenously generating land abundance and, therefore, raising the relative wages of female labor in pastoral production. Women postpone marriage to reap higher wages, and fertility decreases—moving the economy to a regime of late marriages and low fertility.

In addition to late marital ages and reduced fertility, another important feature of the “European Marriage Pattern” was individual consent for marriage. Edlund and Lagerlöf ( 2006 ) study how rules of consent for marriage influence long-run economic development. In their model, marriages can be formed according to two types of consent rules: individual consent or parental consent. Under individual consent, young people are free to marry whomever they wish, while, under parental consent, their parents are in charge of arranging the marriage. Depending on the prevailing rule, the recipient of the bride-price differs. Under individual consent, a woman receives the bride-price from her husband, whereas, under parental consent, her father receives the bride-price from the father of the groom. Footnote 24 In both situations, the father of the groom owns the labor income of his son and, therefore, pays the bride-price, either directly, under parental consent, or indirectly, under individual consent. Under individual consent, the father needs to transfer resources to his son to nudge him into marrying. Thus, individual consent implies a transfer of resources from the old to the young and from men to women, relative to the rule of parental consent. Redistributing resources from the old to the young boosts long-run economic growth. Because the young have a longer timespan to extract income from their children’s labor, they invest relatively more in the human capital of the next generation. In addition, under individual consent, the reallocation of resources from men to women can have additional positive effects on growth, by increasing women’s bargaining power (see section 4 ), although this channel is not explicitly modeled in Edlund and Lagerlöf ( 2006 ).

Tertilt ( 2005 ) explores the effects of polygyny on long-run development through its impact on savings and fertility. In her model, parental consent applies to women, while individual consent applies to men. There is a competitive marriage market where fathers sell their daughters and men buy their wives. As each man is allowed (and wants) to marry several wives, a positive bride-price emerges in equilibrium. Footnote 25 Upon marriage, the reproductive rights of the bride are transferred from her father to her husband, who makes all fertility decisions on his own and, in turn, owns the reproductive rights of his daughters. From a father’s perspective, daughters are investments goods; they can be sold in the marriage market, at any time. This feature generates additional demand for daughters, which increases overall fertility, and reduces the incentives to save, which decreases the stock of physical capital. Under monogamy, in contrast, the equilibrium bride-price is negative (i.e., a dowry). The reason is that maintaining unmarried daughters is costly for their fathers, so they are better-off paying a (small enough) dowry to their future husbands. In this setting, the economic returns to daughters are lower and, consequently, so is the demand for children. Fertility decreases and savings increase. Thus, moving from polygny to monogamy lowers population growth and raises the capital stock in the long run, which translates into higher output per capita in the steady state.

Instead of enforcing monogamy in a traditionally polygynous setting, an alternative policy is to transfer marriage consent from fathers to daughters. Tertilt ( 2006 ) shows that when individual consent is extended to daughters, such that fathers do not receive the bride-price anymore, the consequences are qualitatively similar to a ban on polygyny. If fathers stop receiving the bride-price, they save more physical capital. In the long run, per capita output is higher when consent is transferred to daughters.

Grossbard-Shechtman ( 1984 ) develops the first non-cooperative model where (monogamous) marriage, home production, and labor supply decisions are interdependent. Footnote 26 Spouses are modeled as separate agents deciding over production and consumption. Marriage becomes an implicit contract for ‘work-in-household’ (WiHo), defined as “an activity that benefits another household member [typically a spouse] who could potentially compensate the individual for these efforts” (Grossbard 2015 , p. 21). Footnote 27 In particular, each spouse decides how much labor to supply to market work and WiHo, and how much labor to demand from the other spouse for WiHo. Through this lens, spousal decisions over the intra-marriage distribution of consumption and WiHo are akin to well-known principal-agent problems faced between firms and workers. In the marriage market equilibrium, a spouse benefiting from WiHo (the principal) must compensate the spouse producing it (the agent) via intra-household transfers (of goods or leisure). Footnote 28 Grossbard-Shechtman ( 1984 ) and Grossbard ( 2015 ) show that, under these conditions, the ratio of men to women (i.e., the sex ratio) in the marriage market is inversely related to female labor supply to the market. The reason is that, as the pool of potential wives shrinks, prospective husbands have to increase compensation for female WiHo. From the potential wife’s point of view, as the equilibrium price for her WiHo increases, market work becomes less attractive. Conversely, when sex ratios are lower, female labor supply outside the home increases. Although the model does not explicit derive growth implications, the relative increase in female labor supply is expected to be beneficial for economic growth, as argued by many of the theories reviewed so far.

In an extension of this framework, Grossbard & Pereira ( 2015 ) analyze how sex ratios affect gendered savings over the marital life-cycle. Assuming that women supply a disproportionate amount of labor for WiHo (due, for example, to traditional gender norms), the authors show that men and women will have very distinct saving trajectories. A higher sex ratio increases savings by single men, who anticipate higher compensation transfers for their wives’ WiHo, whereas it decreases savings by single women, who anticipate receiving those transfers upon marriage. But the pattern flips after marriage: precautionary savings raise among married women, because the possibility of marriage dissolution entails a loss of income from WiHo. The opposite effect happens for married men: marriage dissolution would imply less expenditures in the future. The higher the sex ratio, the higher will be the equilibrium compensation paid by husbands for their wives’ WiHo. Therefore, the sex ratio will positively affect savings among single men and married women, but negatively affect savings among single women and married men. The net effect on the aggregate savings rate and on economic growth will depend on the relative size of these demographic groups.

In a related article, Du & Wei ( 2013 ) propose a model where higher sex ratios worsen marriage markets prospects for young men and their families, who react by increasing savings. Women in turn reduce savings. However, because sex ratios shift the composition of the population in favor of men (high saving type) relative to women (low saving type) and men save additionally to compensate for women’s dis-saving, aggregate savings increase unambiguously with sex ratios.

In Guvenen & Rendall ( 2015 ), female education is, in part, demanded as insurance against divorce risk. The reason is that divorce laws often protect spouses’ future labor market earnings (i.e., returns to human capital), but force them to share their physical assets. Because, in the model, women are more likely to gain custody of their children after divorce, they face higher costs from divorce relative to their husbands. Therefore, the higher the risk of divorce, the more women invest in human capital, as insurance against a future vulnerable economic position. Guvenen & Rendall ( 2015 ) shows that, over time, divorce risk has increased (for example, consensual divorce became replaced by unilateral divorce in most US states in the 1970s). In the aggregate, higher divorce risk boosted female education and female labor supply.

In summary, the rules regulating marriage and household formation carry relevant theoretical consequences for economic development. While the few studies on this topic have focused on age at marriage, consent rules and polygyny, and the interaction between sex ratios, marriage, and labor supply, other features of the marriage market remain largely unexplored (Borella, De Nardi and Yang 2018 ). Growth theorists would benefit from further incorporating theories of household formation in gendered macro models. Footnote 29

6 Conclusion

In this article, we surveyed micro-founded theories linking gender inequality to economic development. This literature offers many plausible mechanisms through which inequality between men and women affects the aggregate economy (see Table 1 ). Yet, we believe the body of theories could be expanded in several directions. We discuss them below and highlight lessons for policy.

The first direction for future research concerns control over fertility. In models where fertility is endogenous, households are always able to achieve their preferred number of children (see Strulik 2019 , for an exception). The implicit assumption is that there is a free and infallible method of fertility control available for all households—a view rejected by most demographers. The gap between desired fertility and achieved fertility can be endogeneized at three levels. First, at the societal level, the diffusion of particular contraceptive methods may be influenced by cultural and religious norms. Second, at the household level, fertility control may be object of non-cooperative bargaining between the spouses, in particular, for contraceptive methods that only women perfectly observe (Ashraf, Field and Lee 2014 ; Doepke & Kindermann 2019 ). More generally, the role of asymmetric information within the household is not yet explored (Walther 2017 ). Third, if parents have preferences over the gender composition of their offspring, fertility is better modeled as a sequential and uncertain process, where household size is likely endogenous to the sex of the last born child (Hazan & Zoabi 2015 ).

A second direction worth exploring concerns gender inequality in a historical perspective. In models with multiple equilibria, an economy’s path is often determined by its initial level of gender equality. Therefore, it would be useful to develop theories explaining why initial conditions varied across societies. In particular, there is a large literature on economic and demographic history documenting how systems of marriage and household formation differed substantially across preindustrial societies (e.g., De Moor & Van Zanden 2010 ; Hajnal 1965 , 1982 ; Hartman 2004 ; Ruggles 2009 ). In our view, more theoretical work is needed to explain both the origins and the consequences of these historical systems.

A third avenue for future research concerns the role of technological change. In several models, technological change is the exogenous force that ultimately erodes gender gaps in education or labor supply (e.g., Bloom et al. 2015 ; Doepke & Tertilt 2009 ; Galor & Weil 1996 ). For that to happen, technological progress is assumed to be skill-biased, thus raising the returns to education—or, in other words, favoring brain over brawn. As such, new technologies make male advantage in physical strength ever more irrelevant, while making female time spent on childrearing and housework ever more expensive. Moreover, recent technological progress increased the efficiency of domestic activities, thereby relaxing women’s time constraints (e.g., Cavalcanti & Tavares 2008 ; Greenwood, Seshadri and Yorukoglu 2005 ). These mechanisms are plausible, but other aspects of technological change need not be equally favorable for women. In many countries, for example, the booming science, technology, and engineering sectors tend to be particularly male-intensive. And Tejani & Milberg ( 2016 ) provide evidence for developing countries that as manufacturing industries become more capital intensive, their female employment share decreases.

Even if current technological progress is assumed to weaken gender gaps, historically, technology may have played exactly the opposite role. If technology today is more complementary to brain, in the past it could have been more complementary to brawn. An example is the plow that, relative to alternative technologies for field preparation (e.g., hoe, digging stick), requires upper body strength, on which men have a comparative advantage over women (Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn 2013 ; Boserup 1970 ). Another, even more striking example, is the invention of agriculture itself—the Neolithic Revolution. The transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to sedentary agriculture involved a relative loss of status for women (Dyble et al. 2015 ; Hansen, Jensen and Skovsgaard 2015 ). One explanation is that property rights on land were captured by men, who had an advantage on physical strength and, consequently, on physical violence. Thus, in the long view of human history, technological change appears to have shifted from being male-biased towards being female-biased. Endogeneizing technological progress and its interaction with gender inequality is a promising avenue for future research.

Fourth, open economy issues are still almost entirely absent. An exception is Rees & Riezman ( 2012 ), who model the effect of globalization on economic growth. Whether global capital flows generate jobs primarily in female or male intensive sectors matters for long-run growth. If globalization creates job opportunities for women, their bargaining power increases and households trade off child quantity by child quality. Fertility falls, human capital accumulates, and long-run per capita output is high. If, on the other hand, globalization creates jobs for men, their intra-household power increases; fertility increases, human capital decreases, and steady-state income per capita is low. The literature would benefit from engaging with open economy demand-driven models of the feminist tradition, such as Blecker & Seguino ( 2002 ), Seguino ( 2010 ). Other fruitful avenues for future research on open economy macro concern gender analysis of global value chains (Barrientos 2019 ), gendered patterns of international migration (Cortes 2015 ; Cortes & Tessada 2011 ), and the diffusion of gender norms through globalization (Beine, Docquier and Schiff 2013 ; Klasen 2020 ; Tuccio & Wahba 2018 ).

A final point concerns the role of men in this literature. In most theoretical models, gender inequality is not the result of an active male project that seeks the domination of women. Instead, inequality emerges as a rational best response to some underlying gender gap in endowments or constraints. Then, as the underlying gap becomes less relevant—for example, due to skill-biased technological change—, men passively relinquish their power (see Doepke & Tertilt 2009 , for an exception). There is never a male backlash against the short-term power loss that necessarily comes with female empowerment. In reality, it is more likely that men actively oppose losing power and resources towards women (Folbre 2020 ; Kabeer 2016 ; Klasen 2020 ). This possibility has not yet been explored in formal models, even though it could threaten the typical virtuous cycle between gender equality and growth. If men are forward-looking, and the short-run losses outweigh the dynamic gains from higher growth, they might ensure that women never get empowered to begin with. Power asymmetries tend to be sticky, because “any group that is able to claim a disproportionate share of the gains from cooperation can develop social institutions to fortify their position” (Folbre 2020 , p. 199). For example, Eswaran & Malhotra ( 2011 ) set up a household decision model where men use domestic violence against their wives as a tool to enhance male bargaining power. Thus, future theories should recognize more often that men have a vested interest on the process of female empowerment.

More generally, policymakers should pay attention to the possibility of a male backlash as an unintended consequence of female empowerment policies (Erten & Keskin 2018 ; Eswaran & Malhotra 2011 ). Likewise, whereas most theories reviewed here link lower fertility to higher economic growth, the relationship is non-monotonic. Fertility levels below the replacement rate will eventually generate aggregate social costs in the form of smaller future workforces, rapidly ageing societies, and increased pressure on welfare systems, to name a few.

Many theories presented in this survey make another important practical point: public policies should recognize that gender gaps in separate dimensions complement and reinforce one another and, therefore, have to be dealt with simultaneously. A naïve policy targeting a single gap in isolation is unlikely to have substantial growth effects in the short run. Typically, inequalities in separate dimensions are not independent from each other (Agénor 2017 ; Bandiera & Does 2013 ; Duflo 2012 ; Kabeer 2016 ). For example, if credit-constrained women face weak property rights, are unable to access certain markets, and have mobility and time constraints, then the marginal return to capital may nevertheless be larger for men. Similarly, the return to male education may well be above the female return if demand for female labor is low or concentrated in sectors with low productivity. In sum, “the fact that women face multiple constraints means that relaxing just one may not improve outcomes” (Duflo 2012 , p. 1076).

Promising policy directions that would benefit from further macroeconomic research are the role of public investments in physical infrastructure and care provision (Agénor 2017 ; Braunstein, Bouhia and Seguino 2020 ), gender-based taxation (Guner, Kaygusuz and Ventura 2012 ; Meier & Rainer 2015 ), and linkages between gender equality and pro-environmental agendas (Matsumoto 2014 ).

See Echevarria & Moe ( 2000 ) for a similar complaint that “theories of economic growth and development have consistently neglected to include gender as a variable” (p. 77).

A non-exhaustive list includes Bandiera & Does ( 2013 ), Braunstein ( 2013 ), Cuberes & Teignier ( 2014 ), Duflo ( 2012 ), Kabeer ( 2016 ), Kabeer & Natali ( 2013 ), Klasen ( 2018 ), Seguino ( 2013 , 2020 ), Sinha et al. ( 2007 ), Stotsky ( 2006 ), World Bank ( 2001 , 2011 ).

For an in-depth history of “new home economics” see Grossbard-Shechtman ( 2001 ) and Grossbard ( 2010 , 2011 ).

For recent empirical reviews see Duflo ( 2012 ) and Doss ( 2013 ).

Although the unitary approach has being rejected on theoretical (e.g., Echevarria & Moe 2000 ; Folbre 1986 ; Knowles 2013 ; Sen 1989 ) and empirical grounds (e.g., Doss 2013 ; Duflo 2003 ; Lundberg et al. 1997 ), these early models are foundational to the subsequent literature. As it turns out, some of the key mechanisms survive in non-unitary theories of the household.

For nice conceptual perspectives on conflict and cooperation in households see Sen ( 1989 ), Grossbard ( 2011 ), and Folbre ( 2020 ).

The relationship depicted in Fig. 1 is robust to using other composite measures of gender equality (e.g., UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index or OECD’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) (see Branisa, Klasen and Ziegler 2013 )), and other years besides 2000. In Fig. 2 , the linear prediction explains 56 percent of the cross-country variation in per capita income.

See Seguino ( 2013 , 2020 ) for a review of this literature.

The model allows for sorting on ability (“some people are better teachers”) or sorting on occupation-specific preferences (“others derive more utility from working as a teacher”) (Hsieh et al. 2019 , p. 1441). Here, we restrict our presentation to the case where sorting occurs primarily on ability. The authors find little empirical support for sorting on preferences.

Because the home sector is treated as any other occupation, the model can capture, in a reduced-form fashion, social norms on women’s labor force participation. For example, a social norm on traditional gender roles can be represented as a utility premium obtained by all women working on the home sector.

Note, however, that discrimination against women raises productivity in the non-agricultural sector. The reason is that the few women who end up working outside agriculture are positively selected on talent. Lee ( 2020 ) shows that this countervailing effect is modest and dominated by the loss of productivity in agriculture.

This is not the classic Beckerian quantity-quality trade-off because parents cannot invest in the quality of their children. Instead, the mechanism is built by assumption in the household’s utility function. When women’s wages increase relative to male wages, the substitution effect dominates the income effect.

The hypothesis that female labor force participation and economic development have a U-shaped relationship—known as the feminization-U hypothesis—goes back to Boserup ( 1970 ). See also Goldin ( 1995 ). Recently, Gaddis & Klasen ( 2014 ) find only limited empirical support for the feminization-U.

The model does not consider fertility decisions. Parents derive utility from their children’s human capital (social status utility). When household income increases, parents want to “consume” more social status by investing in their children’s education—this is the positive income effect.

Bloom et al. ( 2015 ) build their main model with unitary households, but show that the key conclusions are robust to a collective representation of the household.

This assumption does not necessarily mean that boys are more talented than girls. It can be also interpreted as a reduced-form way of capturing labor market discrimination against women.

Many empirical studies are in line with this assumption, which is rooted in evolutionary psychology. See Strulik ( 2019 ) for references. There are several other evolutionary arguments for men wanting more children (including with different women). See, among others, Mulder & Rauch ( 2009 ), Penn & Smith ( 2007 ), von Rueden & Jaeggi ( 2016 ). However, for a different view, see Fine ( 2017 ).

They do not model fertility decisions. So there is no quantity-quality trade-off.

In their empirical application, Heath & Tan ( 2020 ) study the Hindu Succession Act, which, through improved female inheritance rights, increased the lifetime unearned income of Indian women. Other policies consistent with the model are, for example, unconditional cash transfers to women.

De la Croix & Vander Donckt ( 2010 ) show this with numerical simulations, because the interior regime becomes analytically intractable.

We focus on gender-related policies in our presentation, but the article simulates additional public policies.

Agénor and Agénor ( 2014 ) develop a similar model, but with unitary households, and Agénor and Canuto ( 2015 ) have a similar model of collective households for Brazil, where adult women can also invest time in human capital formation. Since public infrastructure substitutes for women’s time in home production, more (or better) infrastructure can free up time for female human capital accumulation and, thus, endogenously increase wives’ bargaining power.

Voigtländer and Voth ( 2013 ) justify this assumption arguing that, in England, employment contracts for farm servants working in animal husbandry were conditional on celibacy. However, see Edwards & Ogilvie ( 2018 ) for a critique of this assumption.

The bride-price under individual consent need not be paid explicitly as a lump-sum transfer. It could, instead, be paid to the bride implicitly in the form of higher lifetime consumption.

In Tertilt ( 2005 ), all men are similar (except in age). Widespread polygyny is possible because older men marry younger women and population growth is high. This setup reflects stylized facts for Sub-Saharan Africa. It differs from models that assume male heterogeneity in endowments, where polygyny emerges because a rich male elite owns several wives, while poor men remain single (e.g., Gould, Moav and Simhon 2008 ; Lagerlöf 2005 , 2010 ).

See Grossbard ( 2015 ) for more details and extensions of this model and Grossbard ( 2018 ) for a non-technical overview of the related literature. For an earlier application, see Grossbard ( 1976 ).

The concept of WiHo is closely related but not equivalent to the ‘black-box’ term home production used by much of the literature. It also relates to feminist perspectives on care and social reproduction labor (c.f. Folbre 1994 ).

In the general setup, the model need not lead to a corner solution where only one spouse specializes in WiHo.

For promising approaches, see, among others, Cubeddu and Ríos-Rull ( 2003 ), Goussé, Jacquemet and Robin ( 2017 ), Greenwood, Guner, Kocharkov and Santos ( 2016 ), Guler, Guvenen and Violante ( 2012 ), Walther ( 2017 ), Wong ( 2016 ).

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Editor, Shoshana Grossbard, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) initiative, a multi-funder partnership between the UK’s Department for International Development, the Hewlett Foundation and the International Development Research Centre. All views expressed here and remaining errors are our own. Manuel dedicates this article to Stephan Klasen, in loving memory.

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Santos Silva, M., Klasen, S. Gender inequality as a barrier to economic growth: a review of the theoretical literature. Rev Econ Household 19 , 581–614 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-020-09535-6

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Gender Inequality 101: Meaning, Facts, and Ways to Take Action

Gender inequality is the prejudicial treatment of people based on their gender. While it affects women and girls most prominently, gender inequality is not limited to the male/female binary.   

Gender inequality is a persistent and global problem. While equality in education and employment has improved, things like COVID-19 and climate change have stalled progress in many regions. In this article, we’ll discuss the meaning of gender inequality, the most important facts about it, and how you can take action.

What’s the meaning of gender inequality?

Gender inequality occurs when people face discrimination , fewer opportunities, and increased violence because of their gender. When gender inequality exists in a society, it produces unequal outcomes that hurt not just those targeted because of their gender, but everyone else, too. Six factors can help us define gender inequality’s meaning and impact:

#1. Economic inequality

A person’s gender impacts how much money they make. According to UN Women, women make just 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Group-specific gaps widen when you look at additional factors like a person’s ethnicity, race, age, immigration status, whether they have children, and so on. This has a huge impact on an individual’s life, but failing to close the gap impacts the global economy, too. According to a Moody’s Analytics report, the global economy could experience a $7 trillion boost if there was no gender gap. Currently, closing the gap could take as long as 132 years.

#2. Less political representation

Men have dominated the political world for centuries, while other genders lack significant representation. Based on data from January 2023, it would take another 130 years for women to achieve gender equality in the world’s highest positions of power . Only 17 countries have a female Head of State, while 19 have a female Head of Government. Several obstacles make political representation difficult, such as gender-imbalanced funding, discriminatory election rules, and gender stereotypes surrounding political ambition and power.

#3. Unequal education

Education access plays a huge role in gender inequality. When girls don’t get the same opportunities as boys, they face significant barriers for the rest of their lives. A lack of education can lead to poorly-paid and dangerous jobs, increased risks for gender-based violence, and poor health. Studies have shown links between good education and improved health not only for women, but their children, too. The gender gaps in education have been narrowing for years, but certain parts of the world still struggle. As an example, since the Taliban regained control in Afghanistan, most girls have been banned from receiving any education beyond the sixth grade .

#4. Worse healthcare 

Gender often affects a person’s access to quality healthcare. Bias is a big reason why. According to research, women are less represented in leadership, less represented in clinical studies, and less likely to have their symptoms taken seriously. Factors like race contribute to these issues. As an example, Black women in the United States are much more likely to die in childbirth compared to white women. Trans people are also affected by gender inequality in healthcare. They’re much more likely to endure discrimination and lower-quality treatments, which leads to worse health outcomes.

#5. Increased violence

Gender-based violence is one of the most persistent global problems. Based on data from the World Health Organization, at least 1 in 3 women have experienced sexual or physical violence . That includes violence perpetrated by an intimate partner or someone who isn’t their partner. Most jarringly, 1 in 4 of those women experience violence between 15-24 years old. Because many women do not report abuse because of stigma or fears of retaliation, gender-based violence is most likely more prevalent than reported. Trans people and others who do not conform to gender binaries also face increased risks of violence.

#6. Unequal household responsibilities

Gender inequality can manifest in the unequal distribution of household responsibilities. Within a single home, it may not seem significant, but globally, women perform more hours of unpaid work (childcare, cleaning, cooking, etc) than men. When combined, women perform 12.5 billion hours of work without pay . They subsidize labor that keeps families afloat, supports the economy, and fills in for social services. These responsibilities also give women less time to work for money.

What facts do you need to know about gender inequality?

Gender inequality is complex, but there are five facts everyone should know:

#1. No country has reached full parity

No country has achieved gender equality, but nine of the top 10 have closed at least 80% of their gaps. For 14 years, Iceland has been the most gender-equal country. It’s closed 91.2% of its gender gap. The healthcare and education gaps are closed entirely, and since 2018, Icelandic companies with more than 25 employees have been legally required to show they pay equal wages. Norway, Finland, and Sweden are the next most equal countries . Overall, health, education, and political empowerment improved around the world, but economic participation and the opportunity gap expanded.

#2. COVID-19 worsened gender inequality

The world was making decent progress on gender equality, but the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just pause improvements. It reversed them. A global study published in the Lancet found that women experienced harsher social and economic impacts than men. The worst gaps were in employment and unpaid labor. Women and girls were also more likely to leave school and face more gender-based violence. Why? COVID-19 exacerbated existing issues . Women make up more of the informal economy, which was hit hard by COVID-19, and are more likely to take on unpaid labor like caring for children and elderly family members. It will take a lot of hard work to get gender equality back on track.

#3. Climate change negatively impacts gender equality 

Climate change can’t have intentional biases against women, but it affects women differently regardless. This is especially true in areas most affected by drought, floods, famines, and other climate-driven events. In these regions, women rely on natural resources and agriculture for their livelihoods. As climate change makes agricultural activities harder, girls often need to leave school to help their families. Climate change also fuels conflict, which makes girls and women more vulnerable to human trafficking, child marriage, and other violence. When fighting for gender equality, experts and organizations cannot forget about climate change .

#4. Poverty is gendered

Women and girls are more likely to live in poverty than men. According to 2022 forecasts from the UNDP and the Pardee Center for International Futures, as many as 416 million women could be living in extreme poverty in 2030 compared to 401 million men. This represents a “high damage” scenario, but even in lower estimates, women are still more likely to live on just $2.15 a day. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa are most at risk.

#5. Gender inequality has mental health consequences

Mental health is a complex combination of factors, but studies show gender inequality’s negative effect on mental health. Studies show a link between gender-based discrimination and mental health issues like chronic stress and trauma. Women are also more likely to have anxiety, panic disorders, depression, eating disorders, PTSD, and so on. It’s difficult to get a full picture of society’s mental health because of stigma and research limitations. However, if men do suffer from mental illness at the same rate as women, but are either not seeking help or not reporting it, it could still be considered an effect of gender inequality. Gendering emotions and conditions like anxiety and depression hurt everyone.

In your opinion, which root of gender inequality needs to be addressed more?

• The gender pay gap
• Cultural norms and stereotypes
• A lack of educational opportunities
• Unequal distributions of unpaid labor and household responsibilities
• A lack of representation in work and political leadership

View Results

What are ways to take action against gender inequality?

Gender inequality spreads its roots across areas like work, household responsibilities, healthcare, education, and more. Here are four ways to take action:

#1. Increase funding for education and social services

While education equality has seen significant victories, it’s still being threatened in many places. Increasing funds to areas like teacher salaries, operating expenses, and programs for girls are vital, but you can also help education access by supporting communities. Girls often leave school because their labor fills in gaps in social services, but when communities have the social services they need, girls are more likely to stay in school. School needs to be a safe place, too, so action can be taken in areas like building safety, clean water and sanitation, policies on harassment and bullying, and teacher training.

#2. Fight for reproductive rights

Reproductive rights have suffered in recent years. Every year, millions of people don’t receive quality care for menstruation, pregnancy, abortion, and other reproductive health needs. People can take action by advocating for increased healthcare access and legal protections, and by donating time or money to organizations that provide essential health supplies and services. Gender equality is closely linked to reproductive freedom, so it’s essential people have the right to have or not have children.

#3. Advocate for increased economic protections and equal pay

The link between economic inequality and gender inequality is one of the toughest to address. When people can’t participate equally in the economy because of their gender, it ignites a trail of consequences that can affect the healthcare, housing, education, and wealth of generations to come. Economic protections like inheritance reform and land rights are essential, while equal pay for equal work, flexible work arrangements, and support for unpaid work matter, too.

#4. Speak out against discriminatory policies and behavior

Gender inequality is an economic and political reality, but it has social and cultural effects, as well. People can take action by calling out discriminatory policies. Some may not mention gender, but if the outcomes contribute to historical gender inequality or harmful discrimination, they need to be addressed. Discriminatory behavior and language should be called out, as well. While jokes may seem harmless, they hurt individuals and strengthen the mindsets that help gender inequality endure.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

Gender Inequality Essay and Paragraph for Students

Gender Inequality refers to treating people, especially women, unequally based on their gender identity or not giving them proper opportunities. For example, in some countries girls are discouraged from attending school on the pretext of violating the veil imposed by religion, or women are not paid the same as men for doing the same work. Here is a collection of short and long essays and paragraphs about Gender Inequality for students in all classes.

Table of Contents

Gender Inequality Essay for Students, 300 Words

By: Haque | For class 9-10/SSC/O-Level | 26-07-’22

Gender inequality is a social issue that has persisted for generations, affecting men and women across the globe. It refers to the unequal treatment and opportunities experienced by individuals of different genders, particularly women, who are often discriminated against and excluded from certain opportunities.

One of the most significant issues of gender inequality is the gender pay gap, where women are paid less than men for the same job. This gap exists across various industries, with women earning approximately 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. This disparity is especially prevalent in male-dominated industries, where women are often overlooked for promotions and leadership roles, resulting in a lack of diversity in top positions.

Gender inequality also affects women’s access to education and healthcare. In many parts of the world, women are denied an education, which limits their ability to gain meaningful employment and contribute to their families and communities. Additionally, women’s health issues are often ignored, with limited access to healthcare and inadequate resources allocated to research and development of treatments.

Women also experience gender-based violence, including domestic abuse, sexual assault, and harassment, which can have long-lasting effects on their mental and physical health. Despite efforts to address and prevent gender-based violence, it remains a pervasive problem in many societies.

Gender inequality is a complex issue that requires a multi-faceted approach to address. Governments, organizations, and individuals must work together to promote gender equality and create a more inclusive society. This includes implementing policies to close the gender pay gap, providing access to education and healthcare for women, and supporting initiatives to combat gender-based violence. Ultimately, it is only through collective action that we can achieve true gender equality and create a more just and equitable world for all individuals, regardless of their gender.

A Long Essay on Gender Inequality for Students

By: Haque | Words: 1400 | 19-02-’23

Introduction

Gender inequality is a pervasive issue that affects individuals of all genders in every corner of the world. It refers to the unequal treatment and opportunities experienced by individuals of different genders, particularly women, who are often discriminated against and excluded from certain opportunities. Despite the progress made in recent years towards gender equality, there is still much work to be done to ensure that everyone, regardless of their gender, has access to the same opportunities and freedoms.

The importance of addressing gender inequality cannot be overstated. Gender inequality not only harms individuals who are discriminated against, but it also has negative effects on society as a whole. It can limit economic growth, decrease social stability, and perpetuate harmful stereotypes and biases. Therefore, it is crucial that we understand the root causes of gender inequality and work towards eliminating them.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the causes and effects of gender inequality and to discuss strategies for addressing this complex issue. By examining the ways in which gender inequality affects individuals and society as a whole, we can better understand the importance of working towards gender equality. Additionally, by exploring effective strategies for addressing gender inequality, we can develop concrete steps for creating a more just and equitable world for all individuals, regardless of men and women.

Causes of Gender Inequality

Gender inequality is a complex issue with multiple underlying causes. Some of the most significant causes include:

A. Cultural and societal norms

• Traditional gender roles and expectations that limit opportunities for women.
• Discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.
• Stereotypes about women’s abilities and worth in society.
• The normalization of gender-based violence and harassment.

B. Discriminatory laws and policies

• Laws that limit women’s rights and freedoms.
• Lack of legal protections against gender-based discrimination and violence.
• Inadequate resources and funding for programs that address gender inequality.

C. Lack of education and opportunities

• Limited access to education and job training.
• Gender-based barriers to entering certain professions or industries.
• Lack of support for women’s entrepreneurship and leadership

D. Gender stereotypes and bias

• Implicit biases that favor men in hiring, promotion, and other opportunities.
• Lack of representation of women in leadership and decision-making roles.
• The perpetuation of harmful gender stereotypes through media and other forms of communication.

To address gender inequality, it is important to understand and challenge these underlying causes. By promoting education and awareness, challenging discriminatory laws and policies, and working to eliminate harmful stereotypes and biases, we can make progress toward a more just and equitable society for all individuals, regardless of their gender.

Effects of Gender Inequality

Gender inequality has a range of negative effects on individuals and society as a whole. Some of the most significant effects include:

A. Gender pay gap and economic disparities

• Women are paid less than men for the same job, resulting in a significant income gap over time.
• Lack of access to financial resources, such as credit and loans, which limits opportunities for entrepreneurship and business ownership.
• Economic insecurity and poverty, particularly for single mothers and women in low-paying jobs.

B. Limited access to education and healthcare

• Women and girls are often denied access to education, limiting their opportunities for personal and professional growth.
• Limited access to healthcare, particularly for reproductive and maternal health, which can have long-lasting impacts on women’s health and well-being.
• Higher rates of illness and mortality due to lack of healthcare and resources.

C. Gender-based violence and harassment

• Women and girls are at a higher risk of experiencing violence, including domestic abuse, sexual assault, and harassment, which can have long-lasting physical and emotional effects.
• Fear of violence and harassment can limit women’s mobility and access to public spaces, as well as their ability to participate in the workforce and other activities.

D. Psychological and emotional toll

• Women who experience gender inequality and discrimination may suffer from stress, anxiety, and depression.
• Lower self-esteem and self-worth, as well as feelings of powerlessness and helplessness.

These effects of gender inequality can have long-lasting impacts on individuals and society as a whole. By addressing the underlying causes of gender inequality, we can work towards creating a more just and equitable world for all individuals, regardless of their gender.

Examples of Gender Inequality

Gender inequality manifests in a variety of ways in different contexts around the world. Here are some examples of gender inequality in different areas:

A. Education

• Girls are less likely to attend school, particularly in certain regions of the world.
• Girls and women are often denied the same educational opportunities as boys and men, such as access to higher education or certain fields of study.

B. Employment

• Women are often paid less than men for the same job, even in developed countries.
• Women are underrepresented in leadership and management positions in many industries, including politics, academia, and business.
• Women are more likely to be employed in low-paying and undervalued jobs, such as domestic work and caregiving.

C. Healthcare

• Women often have limited access to healthcare, particularly reproductive and maternal health services.
• Women’s pain and health concerns are often dismissed or minimized by healthcare providers.
• Transgender individuals face significant barriers to accessing appropriate healthcare, including discrimination and lack of insurance coverage.

D. Politics and government

• Women are underrepresented in political leadership roles, both nationally and internationally.
• Women face significant barriers to running for office, including a lack of funding and harassment.
• Women’s issues are often not prioritized in political decision-making, leading to policies that perpetuate gender inequality.

These are just a few examples of the ways in which gender inequality is present in different areas of life. By recognizing these examples and working towards addressing them, we can move towards a more just and equitable world for all individuals, regardless of their gender.

Strategies for Addressing Gender Inequality

Addressing gender inequality requires a multi-faceted approach that involves individuals, organizations, and governments at all levels. Here are some strategies for addressing gender inequality:

A. Education and awareness-raising

• Promote education about gender inequality and its impacts on individuals and society.
• Challenge harmful stereotypes and biases through media literacy and education.
• Encourage critical thinking and dialogue about gender and its intersections with other identities, such as race and sexuality.

B. Legal and policy changes

• Advocate for laws that protect against gender-based discrimination and violence.
• Implement policies that promote gender equity in areas such as education, employment, and healthcare.
• Increase funding for programs that address gender inequality and support women’s empowerment.

C. Economic empowerment

• Increase access to financial resources, such as credit and loans, for women entrepreneurs and business owners.
• Promote equal pay for equal work and address the gender pay gap.
• Provide job training and opportunities for women in industries where they are underrepresented.

D. Health and well-being

• Increase access to healthcare, particularly for reproductive and maternal health.
• Address gender-based violence and harassment through prevention and support services.
• Promote mental health and well-being for individuals who have experienced gender inequality and discrimination.

E. Representation and leadership

• Increase the representation of women in leadership and decision-making roles.
• Encourage men to be allies in the fight against gender inequality.
• Support the leadership and empowerment of women in all areas of life.

These strategies can help address the underlying causes of gender inequality and promote a more just and equitable world for all individuals, regardless of their gender. By working together to challenge harmful norms and promote gender equity, we can create a more inclusive and equal society.

Gender inequality is a pervasive issue that affects individuals around the world. It manifests in a variety of ways, from unequal pay and limited access to education to gender-based violence and discrimination. However, by recognizing the causes and effects of gender inequality and implementing strategies to address it, we can work towards a more equitable and just society.

Education and awareness-raising, legal and policy changes, economic empowerment, health and well-being, and representation and leadership are all strategies that can help address gender inequality. However, addressing this issue requires a collective effort from individuals, organizations, and governments at all levels. By working together to challenge harmful norms and promote gender equity, we can create a world that values and uplifts individuals of all genders.

It is essential to recognize that gender inequality intersects with other forms of oppression, including racism, homophobia, and ableism. By taking an intersectional approach to addressing gender inequality, we can work towards a more comprehensive understanding of the issue and develop more effective solutions.

Ultimately, ending gender inequality requires a commitment to social justice and equality for all individuals. By taking action to address this issue, we can create a more just and equitable world for everyone.

Gender Inequality Paragraph, 100 Words

By: Haque | For class 4-5 | 19-02-’23

Gender inequality refers to the unequal treatment of individuals based on their gender or the social and cultural roles assigned to them based on their gender. This means that in many societies, girls, and women are not given the same opportunities as boys and men, and they may face discrimination or violence simply because of their gender. For example, girls may be discouraged from attending school, or women may not be paid the same as men for doing the same job. Gender inequality can be seen in many areas of life, but it is important to work towards a world where individuals of all genders are treated fairly and given the same opportunities to succeed.

Gender Inequality Paragraph, 200 Words

By: Haque | For class 6-8 | 19-02-’23

Gender inequality is caused by a complex set of societal, cultural, and economic factors. Social norms and stereotypes about gender roles often lead to unequal treatment of individuals based on their gender. Additionally, economic factors such as the gender pay gap and lack of access to economic resources can perpetuate gender inequality. The consequences of gender inequality can be severe, impacting individuals’ physical and mental health, educational and economic opportunities, and overall well-being. For example, women who experience gender-based violence or discrimination may suffer from mental health issues and have limited access to education and employment opportunities.

Remedies for gender inequality include education and awareness-raising about gender roles and stereotypes, policy and legal changes that promote gender equity, economic empowerment programs, and health and well-being support services. Increasing representation of women in leadership positions and addressing the gender pay gap are also important steps towards gender equality. Ultimately, addressing gender inequality requires a collective effort from individuals, organizations, and governments at all levels. By working together to challenge harmful norms and promote gender equity, we can create a more just and equitable society for all individuals, regardless of their gender.

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Tackling gender inequality in a climate-changed world, agrifood and social protection systems can empower women and girls to build climate resilience..

Uganda, 2024: Charity Naturinda, attends to her mother’s vegetable stall at their home. She has a disability in the leg had dropped out of school but was able to go back after joining the GEG (Girls Empowering Girls) programme - the first urban social protection programme in Uganda targeting vulnerable adolescent girls.

Air pollution, rising temperatures, crop failures, and water shortages are increasing pressures on health and agrifood systems. During these crises, households often reduce food consumption, sell assets, migrate or adjust labor allocation between men and women. Women and children are at greater risk of food insecurity due to lower access to and control of productive resources, services, household decision-making, income allocation, and perceived expendability.

Climate shocks affect women and girls more

Female-headed households lose 8 per cent more income due to heat stress and 3 per cent more due to floods. This causes lower off-farm income and significant reductions in livestock holdings and agricultural expenditures. Women do not have an adequate level of education, have limited access to infrastructure and markets, and perform the biggest share of unpaid care and support work. Resource constraints can limit women’s non-agricultural employment prospects, their ability to adapt and increase their vulnerability. Moderate or severe food insecurity among adult women rose from 27.5 per cent in 2019 to 31.9 per cent in 2021.

Children, especially girls, experience similar hardships. Altered rainfall patterns have led to girls spending more time fetching wood and water over longer distances and taking on additional domestic labor, leading to increased exposure to violence and a higher likelihood of missing school. Adolescent girls are more likely to be forced to marry to alleviate financial difficulties caused by extreme weather events. Climate-related displacement also places pressures on social and health services such as menstrual hygiene and sexual and reproductive health. 

Overcoming structural gender inequalities and barriers is fundamental for climate-resilient development. Inclusive and gender-responsive social protection and agrifood systems can provide access to resources, services, and economic opportunities for women and girls to build their resilience in the face of climate change. 

Under a worst-case climate scenario, up to 158.3 million more women and girls could be pushed into poverty by mid-century, exceeding the number of men and boys by at least 16 million.

Adaptive and gender-responsive social protection systems

Long-term investments in social protection systems and short-term adaptations can help women and girls  reduce their vulnerability to climate or economic shocks. Some adaptations measures include:

• cash and in-kind assistance alongside livelihood diversification
• connections to early warning systems and anticipatory action
• linkages for women and girls to access to social services, including health insurance

Social assistance helps households meet their basic needs and improve their coping responses. This facilitates the uptake of climate-adaptive practices and reduces the need for maladaptive actions like child marriage that often disproportionately harm women and girls.

Combining social protection instruments such as labor market policies with agriculture skills development and climate insurance can support the delivery of adaptation measures and help address inequalities women and girls may face in the green transition . This is possible only when adaptation measures are gender-responsive and age-sensitive, thus not increasing women’s and girls' time burden or reinforcing households' discriminatory divisions of labor.

It has been demonstrated that investments that improve access to social protection and decrease poverty can considerably reduce overall climate risk for 310 million children. For this reason, UNICEF, with support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development ( BMZ ) has initiated a 5-year evidence-collection process through the project ASPECT – Adaptive Social Protection: Evidence for Child Outcomes in fragile settings. Focused on fragile contexts, this project aims to generate evidence on the contributions of adaptive social protection in building the resilience of households to climate-related and other shocks for achieving better outcomes for children and their families.

Inclusive and gender-responsive agrifood systems

Agrifood systems represent a pivotal source of livelihood and are a major employer for women globally. In South Asia, 71 per cent of women work in agrifood systems, compared to 47 per cent of men. Projections suggest that if half the small-scale producers benefited from women’s empowerment within agrifood systems, the incomes of an additional 58 million people and the resilience of 235 million people could be enhanced .

Evidence has shown that gender-responsive interventions in agrifood systems are successful in strengthening resilience through:

• community-based approaches
• policy engagement
• increased access for women to essential resources, and
• services and social protection

Community-based approaches foster capacity development tailored to women's needs and enhance access to information, resources, finance, and collective agency.

Access to financial and advisory services can help build resilience; digitalization can further address mobility constraints and improve financial autonomy. For instance, IFAD's (International Fund for Agricultural Development) Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme ( ASAP+ ) has introduced sustainable technologies for gender-sensitive, climate-resilient agricultural practices while ensuring that women and girls constitute at least 50 per cent of the beneficiaries. Through these efforts, IFAD helps break down barriers that prevent women from realizing their full potential in rural societies. 

5 ways to adaptation

Climate financing should be directed towards inclusive agrifood and social protection systems by adopting an integrated approach, and formulating gender-responsive and transformative innovations that are locally informed and tailored to the needs and preferences of women and adolescent girls.

UNICEF, IFAD, FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), and IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) call on policymakers, multilateral donors, and international organizations to:

• Adopt and finance inclusive, gender-transformative, and adaptive social protection and agrifood systems for building the climate resilience of women, girls, and other at-risk groups.
• Ensure agrifood and social protection systems are designed with an inclusive gender, age, and disability lens to capture the needs of those facing specific risks due to social and economic vulnerabilities and exclusion.
• Improve women’s and girls' access to these systems to equip them with natural and productive resources, services, employment opportunities, social assistance and insurance.
• Collect, analyze and disseminate data disaggregated by gender, age and other social characteristics to generate evidence for guiding inclusive policies and investments related to climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience building.

Support gender-responsive budgeting for climate action to ensure adequate financial resources are allocated towards gender equality, including the empowerment of women and girls.

Clara Ceravolo is Social Protection and Gender Consultant, UNICEF. Ilaria Sisto is Gender and Development Officer, FAO. Lauren Whitehead is Social Protection and Gender Lead, UNICEF. Matthew Walsham is Social Protection Specialist (Climate), FAO. Morane Verhoeven is Gender and Social Inclusion Consultant, IFAD. Shalini Roy is Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI.

UNICEF Blog

The UNICEF Blog promotes children’s rights and well-being, and ideas about ways to improve their lives and the lives of their families. We bring you insights and opinions from the world's leading child rights experts and accounts from UNICEF's staff on the ground in more than 190 countries and territories. The opinions expressed on the UNICEF Blog are those of the author(s) and may not necessarily reflect UNICEF's official position.

Explore our blog topics:

Related topics, more on the blog, the climate crisis is a child rights crisis.

Introducing the Children’s Climate Risk Index

Children call for access to quality climate education

On Earth Day, UNICEF urges governments to empower every child with learning opportunities to be a champion for the planet

Teachers wanted

Empowering teachers at the forefront of the learning crisis

The urgent need for a child-centred Loss and Damage Fund

The Loss and Damage Fund should put children’s voices at the heart of climate justice

The Impact of Social Constructs on Gender Roles and Identity Formation

This essay about societal constructs examines their significant influence on gender roles and identity formation. It highlights how societal norms from childhood through adulthood shape perceptions and behaviors around gender, particularly affecting transgender and nonbinary individuals. The text discusses the role of education and advocacy in challenging these norms and promoting gender equality, underscoring the need for systemic change to overcome deep-seated patriarchal attitudes and barriers.

How it works

Social constructs wield an undeniable sway over our perceptions of gender roles and the intricate process of identity formation. These constructs, intricately woven into the societal fabric, hold the power to dictate what behaviors are deemed acceptable or appropriate solely based on one’s gender. Yet, their ramifications extend beyond societal norms; they intricately shape how individuals perceive themselves and their place within the world.

From early childhood, societal messages inundate young minds with definitions of what it means to be a boy or a girl.

Toys, clothing, and even linguistic nuances are often gendered, reinforcing the notion that certain traits and actions are inherently masculine or feminine. Boys are nudged towards assertiveness, competitiveness, and independence, while girls are gently guided towards nurturing, empathy, and compliance. These stereotypes, rather than serving as mere labels, confine individual expression and perpetuate inequality by assigning value based on gender.

As individuals progress through development, these societal constructs continue to shape their sense of self and their interactions with others. Adolescence, a tumultuous phase of identity construction, sees young minds wrestling with societal expectations and their innermost truths. For many, conforming to traditional gender roles may offer a sense of belonging and validation, while straying from these norms can trigger ostracism and prejudice.

The impact of societal constructs on gender identity is particularly profound for transgender and nonbinary individuals. Society often struggles to acknowledge identities that transcend the binary notion of male and female, leading to marginalization and erasure. Transgender individuals may find themselves hindered by barriers to accessing healthcare, employment, and basic rights due to pervasive discrimination rooted in gender identity. Furthermore, the pressure to conform to cisnormative standards of beauty and behavior can exacerbate feelings of dysphoria and isolation.

However, amidst these challenges, a growing movement is challenging traditional gender norms and championing inclusivity and acceptance. The LGBTQ+ rights movement, gaining momentum in recent years, has been instrumental in spotlighting the diversity of gender identities and advocating for greater visibility and representation. Social media platforms have emerged as vital arenas for marginalized voices to resonate and communities to unite in solidarity for change.

Nevertheless, progress towards gender equality remains uneven, with deep-seated attitudes and systemic barriers hindering substantive change. Patriarchal structures persist in perpetuating gender inequality, relegating women to subservient roles and reinforcing toxic masculinity. Addressing these inequalities requires confronting not only individual attitudes but also dismantling the broader social and economic systems that sustain them.

Education emerges as a potent tool in challenging societal constructs and fostering gender equality. By integrating diverse perspectives into educational curricula and nurturing critical thinking skills, educators can empower students to interrogate the gender norms shaping their realities and envision more inclusive futures. Similarly, workplaces can implement policies promoting diversity and inclusion, such as gender-neutral dress codes and pronoun usage, fostering environments that embrace the full spectrum of human identity.

In essence, the impact of societal constructs on gender roles and identity formation is profound and multifaceted. By acknowledging the pervasive influence of these constructs and actively working to dismantle them, we can strive towards creating a more equitable and inclusive society for individuals of all genders. This journey demands the interrogation of traditional norms, the amplification of marginalized voices, and the advocacy for systemic change across all strata of society. Only through such concerted efforts can we authentically realize the promise of gender equality for generations to come.

Cite this page

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Impact of Social Constructs on Gender Roles and Identity Formation . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-impact-of-social-constructs-on-gender-roles-and-identity-formation/ [Accessed: 23 May. 2024]

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Impact of Social Constructs on Gender Roles and Identity Formation . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-impact-of-social-constructs-on-gender-roles-and-identity-formation/ [Accessed: 23-May-2024]

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How tennis inequality lets women down: Prize money, scheduling and Saudi Arabia

This article is part of the launch of extended tennis coverage on The Athletic , which will go beyond the baseline to bring you the biggest stories on and off the court. To follow the tennis vertical, click here .

Last month at the Madrid Open, Coco Gauff was warming up on the least desirable practice courts when she saw some male players — without small numbers next to their names — on the much better courts.

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Gauff is familiar with the misogynist history of the tournament. She partnered with compatriot Jessica Pegula against Victoria Azarenka and Beatriz Haddad Maia in the women’s doubles final in 2023, after Azarenka and other players commented on unfair scheduling and the size disparity of birthday cakes for Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka.

Officials refused to let the foursome speak after the match.

Gauff said she had seen progress this year. But she couldn’t help but notice the weirdness: she, a Grand Slam champion and the world No 3, was warming up at an event just one rung below the U.S. Open on “really bad” courts.

“When you look out on the practice court and you see guys who are ranked 30 or 40 spots lower than you on the court, you’re like ‘OK, what happened?’” she said a few days later.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like a big deal. She played her match on the top court, in a desirable time slot. There are plenty of benefits that Gauff and a handful of other women at the top of tennis enjoy, including prize money and endorsements that can reach into the tens of millions of dollars.

Still, to exist as a female tennis player in 2024 is to endure what can feel like endless slights: the micro-aggressions baked in; the structural inequality foundational to a sport run mostly by men; stark set-piece examples of inequality that can be hard to comprehend and harder to endure, for their magnitude, their reasoning, or more commonly both.

“I get a little bit frustrated here because I feel some tournaments in Europe can fancy men more than women,” Ons Jabeur, the two-time Wimbledon finalist from Tunisia, told The Athletic in Madrid.

“I see that especially on social media, more posts about the men, more this more that and for me it’s really frustrating because we play really well. And it’s such, you know, an amazing sport for women. So I wish we can be more seen,” she said.

“I think we deserve better.”

It’s not just Europe.

Jabeur, 29, just finished playing the Italian Open, where the women competed for a prize pool of $5.5 million. The men’s equivalent was $8.5 million.

In August, the men and women arrive at the Western & Southern Open in Mason, Ohio. The men play for $7.9 million; the women for $6.8 million, even though the tournament owner, Ben Navarro, has a daughter, Emma, who plays on the WTA Tour.

A tournament spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Consider that m ore generally, the WTA Tour’s most lucrative route to additional funding centers on being in lockstep with the ATP Tour men, over letting Saudi Arabia, a country where women do not have equal rights, pump money into tennis.

H ow else do elite women get the short end of the racket handle in the sport to which they dedicate their lives?

Let us count — just some of — the ways.

Tennis’ top women say the sport is broken. This is why

Ever the bridesmaid

It’s the final weekend of a Grand Slam tournament . The women’s singles final takes place on the Saturday. The climax arrives 24 hours later, with the men’s final.

It’s been that way basically forever. There’s an implicit message that everyone in tennis, from the little girl who just started taking lessons to the world No 1, receives.

Tournament officials often say it has to be this way. The men play best-of-five sets in the Grand Slams; the women play best-of-three . (We’ll get to that. We have thoughts.)

Whoever plays the final on Saturday has to have one day during the tournament where two players compete on consecutive days, between the second day of quarter-finals and the semi-finals. Since the men play longer matches, it wouldn’t be fair for their semi-finalists to have to play on consecutive days, would it?

Perhaps not. The French and Australian Opens now stretch their first round over three days, and the other Grand Slams could follow suit. Surely there is a permutation that allows the men and women who have reached the late stages of the peak of their sport equal rest?

Of course, there are also television contracts that exist — television contracts that get renegotiated all the time. If there is a will, perhaps there is a way.

If there is a will.

Darren Pearce, chief spokesperson for Tennis Australia, said they have looked at a swap and will continue to do so. They moved the women’s final to Saturday night in 2009 to maximize domestic exposure, but they have to consider time zones and international exposure as well. Pearce cited Australian Ash Barty ’s win in 2022  as an example of the Saturday offering “so much more coverage and exposure in Australia.”

The U.S. Open has looked at swapping the two finals “in an effort to optimize viewership and interest,” said Brendan McIntire, a USTA spokesperson.

Last week (Wednesday May 15), ESPN announced that its free-to-air broadcaster, ABC, will show the U.S. Open men’s final , though the women’s final the day before will remain on the pay channel, ESPN, because ABC has contractual commitments to college football that Saturday.

The U.S. women’s final has outperformed the men’s final four of the past five years in television viewership, and the men’s final competes with the opening weekend of the NFL. In this case, the second-class spot may be a blessing.

What about the big mixed events where both the women and the men play best-of-three sets? 

Indian Wells has a finals Sunday on which both the women and the men play — guess who plays first? Cincinnati will hold the finals on the same day this year, and we’ll see who goes first. Miami, Madrid and Rome have the women play Saturday, the men Sunday. 

“ I don’t really think that it’s just a question of money, but also respect,” Jabeur said. “ It’s small details that make the difference.” 

It happens in a macro way, too. The WTA Tour Finals take place the week before the ATP Tour Finals . The Billie Jean King Cup wraps up before the Davis Cup, although there will be overlap from this year.

Next year, Great Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association will host a women’s WTA 500 at the Queen’s Club in London . It will begin immediately after the French Open, the week before the men take the stage at Queen’s, and in the build-up the focus has been not on the benefits of a women’s tournament at such a prestigious event, but whether or not the ATP is happy that the grass will be pristine enough for male feet after a week of tennis.

There will not be equal prize money.

What's the one thing you would change about tennis?

Games, sets, and matches

Jessica Pegula, the world No 5 and a member of the WTA Player Council made it very clear at the French Open in 2022.

“I don’t want to play three out of five,” Pegula said. 

She’s hardly the only one. It’s a slog, with matches that can stretch beyond five hours, and then you have to do it all over again two days later. There is not a throng of women’s players clamoring for best-of-five tennis at the Grand Slams.

It’s still t he third rail of equality in tennis. 

Best-of-five sets only exists at the Grand Slams, where women and men compete for the same prize money — and a lot of folks complain that it’s equal pay for less work every time it comes up. It’s a prime example of another uneven dynamic, where women have to account for every possible bad-faith accusation that could emerge before opening their mouths on the biggest issues in their sport.

Duration isn’t the only element of work. Best-of-three requires immediate competitiveness, with little time for recovery. It’s not Swiatek’s fault that she is so good at plowing through the competition, and it’s no player’s fault that the best players in the men’s game might drop two sets to lesser opponents and have to claw back three.

It’s also not any WTA player’s fault that tennis audiences sometimes dismiss the variety of styles in the women’s game as “boring” — though they’re probably talking without watching. Anyone who has watched a WTA match this year, especially between Swiatek, Sabalenka, Gauff, and Rybakina would have to agree with the Pole’s comments after her Madrid final against Sabalenka.

“ Who’s gonna say now that women ‘s tennis is boring? ”

Men's grand-slam matches are 25% longer than in 1999. Does something need to change?

Stardom also fluctuates. When Wimbledon, and the French, U.S. and Australian Opens sell tickets, sponsorships and media rights, they mostly don’t sell separately for the men’s tournament and the women’s tournament. There were plenty of days and nights when Serena Williams was the featured match in New York and elsewhere, and a couple of guys were the undercard or the afterthought. In Rome this month, where men and women play best-of-three, the WTA semi-finals featured the top three players on tour and the best form player of 2024 in Danielle Collins , with the final again between world No 1 Swiatek and world No 2 Sabalenka.

The men’s semi-finalists had an average ranking of 19, with one of the finalists, Alexander Zverev, about to defend himself in a domestic abuse hearing while continuing to play . Some of that is to do with the caprices of injury and form — but they are intrinsic parts of tennis, and they don’t change the fact that the WTA Tour appears to be locking in to a generational rivalry while the ATP Tour is in relative flux.

If a similar dynamic emerges at Roland Garros, is the men’s event still qualitatively better because of two more sets?

Billie Jean King, the trailblazing Grand Slam champion and founding figurehead of the WTA Tour, is adamant: as long as there are different formats, there will be inequality.

Hang around with her even a little bit, and three phrases keep coming up.

“Same format.” “Equal content.” “Equal exposure.”

To King, if a women’s match only lasts 60 percent as long as a men’s match, then they will receive 60 percent of the television exposure as the men, and spend 60 percent of the time on the biggest courts in the biggest tournaments.

That math practically guarantees that women are less well-known and attract less money. There are exceptions — Williams, Maria Sharapova, Naomi Osaka , Emma Raducanu, Coco Gauff — but the numbers are hard to overcome. World No 1 Swiatek has recently bagged the huge sponsorships her status deserves, but it’s taken time.

Iga Swiatek's 100 weeks as world No 1: The streak, the slams, the bagels

Tournament directors say having men and women play best-of-five is impossible from a scheduling perspective. Too many too-long matches. Too few courts. And the players don’t want it.

King and others have offered a solution — best-of-three for everyone the first week; best-of-five the second. There’s precedent — 50 years ago at the French Open, the men played best-of-three for the first two rounds. Bjorn Borg and Chris Evert won their first Grand Slam titles, and you might remember that they did pretty well after that. The sun also continued to rise in the east.

The knock-on effects of the current system on scheduling also virtually guarantee more conflict and inequality — sometimes in the name of equality.

As night follows day

Tennis players of a certain age who spent time around private clubs remember times not very long ago when men got first dibs on high-demand slots. Elina Svitolina said that the men (regular players, not tour stars) still get the prime slots at the club near her home in Monte Carlo. Svitolina, top 20 in her sport, formerly a world No 3, had to practice early morning or at dusk.

Three years ago, the French Open started holding a night session with a featured singles match, which now starts at at 8:15 p.m. in the main stadium, Court Philippe Chatrier. The tournament markets it as the match of the day. The U.S. and Australian Open schedule two matches in their night sessions, until the late rounds.

During the first three years, Roland Garros organizers scheduled a total of four women’s matches at night. Amelie Mauresmo, the former women’s world No 1 and tournament director, initially justified the disparity by explaining that men’s tennis is more appealing.

She tried to walk that back but also explained that charging a premium for a session that might finish in an hour is problematic — a knock-on effect of those unequal formats that deprives top women of a primetime audience. Moving a doubles match onto Chatrier after Iga Swiatek blows through an opponent 6-0, 6-1 isn’t seen as viable.

Swiatek made it clear last year that she doesn’t care for playing at night.

“There are players who like the hype and the energy, and maybe the conditions, but for me it’s more comfortable to just have the normal day/night rhythm,” Swiatek said. “I think it’s more healthy for me to play day sessions.”

That was arguably a self-inflicted wound, as were Aryna Sabalenka’s recent comments about preferring men’s tennis . However, this also illustrates another unspoken dynamic: women have to be extra careful not to say anything denigrating about their sport, lest they get criticized for not supporting fellow players, even though a top men’s player saying something about their sport would likely not be considered an existential threat to its repute.

It’s also rare that male players speak up. Andy Murray’s corrections of journalists’ “first…” stats are an exception: the three-time Grand Slam champion has routinely reminded journalists of their forgetting about the Williams sisters, most notably in 2017 when a reporter claimed Sam Querrey was the first American to reach a major semi-final since 2009. Canadian Denis Shapovalov wrote that “I think some people might think of gender equality as mere political correctness” in an essay on the equal pay in the Players’ Tribune in 2023.

Furthermore, it’s well-documented that top men’s players have unspoken preferences, which they often communicate to tournaments, and which tournaments — unspokenly — try to accommodate or nudge around. (They do this some for top women, too). Rafael Nadal has said clay-court tennis should never take place at night, and it goes on.

The other scheduling inequality also happens at night. No-one, man or woman, wants to play the second late match at the U.S. or Australian Open, with a ridiculous start time .

The men argue that if women are getting equal pay then they should play the late match half the time. OK, but then a men’s match goes five sets in four hours and the women start at 11:30 pm in an empty stadium.

Sometimes scheduling benefits to men happen so fast no one really notices. The Madrid Open experimented with a new doubles format this year, cramming the men’s event mostly into the second half of the second week.

That meant men who weren’t playing the singles got an extra week off. A highly-ranked man who lost early could find a doubles partner, and with him an extra few days of free food, lodging and practice. Nice.

The women’s doubles? It started at the start. They didn’t have that option. Organizers didn’t purposefully set out to deprive them; it just happened, and they had to deal with it.

This attitude extends to matters of inequality in planning and infrastructure off-court, too; anxiety about change doesn’t just extend to the number of sets played or matches scheduled.

Wimbledon only relaxed its all-white dress code after concerns from players about menstruation last year, where the tournament previously required all clothing, including underwear, to be white. At the time, Magda Linette told The Athletic that she has “had a couple of situations at Wimbledon where I felt very uncomfortable,” and welcomed the change, but it had required strident protest at the previous year’s tournament to make it happen.

Top players have become increasingly open about discussing the impact of menstruation on form and performance, with numerous female players talking about PMS’ impact on their game — albeit while coding it as “girl things” in press conferences. China’s Zheng Qinwen saw cramps derail what would have been a famous victory against Iga Swiatek at the French Open in 2022, while Swiatek herself opened up about PMS contributing to her loss to Maria Sakkari of Greece at the same tournament in 2021. “PMS really hit me that day. I’m telling this for every young girl who doesn’t know what’s going on. Don’t worry, it’s normal. Everybody has it,” she said.

Women also suffer speculations about general injuries and “illness” that men never have to go through. Combined with the sport’s limited provisions for players that want to have children — there is no maternity pay, even though players that take time out can retain their previous ranking to enter 12 tournaments over a three-year period after giving birth — these changes and the increased visibility, through players like Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Caroline Wozniacki, and Elina Svitolina, also reinforce that tennis’ women are playing in a structure built for men.

On the tour, it is ever thus.

Wimbledon are relaxing their all-white dress code to ease the stress of women's periods

(Down) the bottom line

Ultimately, the starkest measure comes in dollars, euros, pounds.

Women and men have received equal prize money at all of the Grand Slam tournaments since 2007. Amid some fanfare, last year the WTA Tour announced that the 500-level tournaments would follow suit, along with that 2027 plan for the 1000-level tournaments one rung below the Grand Slams. But not until 2033, in almost a decade. At the time of the deal, Paula Badosa said, “I don’t know why it’s not equal right now.” Tour officials said new sales and marketing efforts need time to produce more revenue.

The WTA requires top players to participate in every Masters 1000 tournament as part of that deal. World No 4 Elena Rybakina, and Swiatek too, have previously expressed disappointment at the way the WTA communicated these changes. Last year in Rome, Rybakina had to lift her title gone midnight after rain delays. Organizers refused to move the match to Sunday, because of the men’s final. Schedule, audience, money.

Tournament organizers have long complained that equal prize money is impossible when WTA media deals are worth about 20 percent of ATP equivalents. Consequently, the WTA contributes far less than the ATP, and the prize money reflects that. That’s how two tournaments in Auckland, New Zealand organized essentially by the same people have the women playing for $262,000 and the men for $660,000. 

Last year, male players shared $336million in prize money, including the Grand Slams. Women shared $170million.

Why are those media deals worth so much less? Women often receive second billing in mixed tournaments, play less desirable schedules and don’t get the same television coverage, because their matches are shorter. And then the players get blamed for not being able to bring in as much money. This is how it all coheres, into the ultimate self-fulfilling, blame-the-victim ouroboros that is seemingly impossible to slay.

Last year, Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, struck a deal with CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm, which bought 20 percent of a WTA commercial subsidiary for $150 million . The tour has launched a commercial ventures entity aimed at enhancing sales and marketing efforts and improve the visibility of tournaments, part of which is improving streaming and online showings of matches, which are currently limited in comparison to the ATP Tour.

“I would love to go to the hotel and open the TV and see a woman’s tennis match,” Jabeur said midway through the Madrid Open. “I haven’t seen once one tennis match of woman. For me, it’s really frustrating to see that.”

There are more improvements. After a series of disastrous decisions on venues, scheduling, and promotion which came to a nadir in Cancun last year , women will compete for about the same amount of prize money as the men at the season-ending Tour Finals — the WTA’s premier event and a knock-out showcase for the top eight players in the world — for the next three years.

They’ll just have to do so in Saudi Arabia , a country with a long history of human rights abuses, that has jailed women who have run afoul of the country’s leaders by pushing too hard for equality.

Welcome to the new dawn.

(Top photos: Hannah Peters; Julian Finney/Getty Images; Design: John Bradford)

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Matthew Futterman is an award-winning veteran sports journalist and the author of two books, “Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed” and “Players: How Sports Became a Business.”Before coming to The Athletic in 2023, he worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is currently writing a book about tennis, "The Cruelest Game: Agony, Ecstasy and Near Death Experiences on the Pro Tennis Tour," to be published by Doubleday in 2026. Follow Matthew on Twitter @ mattfutterman

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World Economic Situation and Prospects 2024

Global economic growth is projected to slow from an estimated 2.7 per cent in 2023 to 2.4 per cent in 2024, trending below the pre-pandemic growth rate of 3.0 per cent, according to the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) 2024. This latest forecast comes on the heels of global economic performance exceeding expectations in 2023. However, last year’s stronger-than-expected GDP growth masked short-term risks and structural vulnerabilities. 

The UN’s flagship economic report presents a sombre economic outlook for the near term. Persistently high interest rates, further escalation of conflicts, sluggish international trade, and increasing climate disasters, pose significant challenges to global growth.

The prospects of a prolonged period of tighter credit conditions and higher borrowing costs present strong headwinds for a world economy saddled with debt, while in need of more investments to resuscitate growth, fight climate change and accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“2024 must be the year when we break out of this quagmire. By unlocking big, bold investments we can drive sustainable development and climate action, and put the global economy on a stronger growth path for all,” said António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General. “We must build on the progress made in the past year towards an SDG Stimulus of at least $500 billion per year in affordable long-term financing for investments in sustainable development and climate action.”

Subdued growth in developed and developing economies Growth in several large, developed economies, especially the United States, is projected to decelerate in 2024 given high interest rates, slowing consumer spending and weaker labour markets. The short-term growth prospects for many developing countries – particularly in East Asia, Western Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean – are also deteriorating because of tighter financial conditions, shrinking fiscal space and sluggish external demand. Low-income and vulnerable economies are facing increasing balance-of-payments pressures and debt sustainability risks. Economic prospects for small island developing States, in particular, will be constrained by heavy debt burdens, high interest rates and increasing climate-related vulnerabilities, which threaten to undermine, and in some cases, even reverse gains made on the SDGs.

Inflation trending down but recovery in labour markets still uneven Global inflation is projected to decline further, from an estimated 5.7 per cent in 2023 to 3.9 per cent in 2024. Price pressures are, however, still elevated in many countries and any further escalation of geopolitical conflicts risks renewed increases in inflation. 

In about a quarter of all developing countries, annual inflation is projected to exceed 10 per cent in 2024, the report highlights. Since January 2021, consumer prices in developing economies have increased by a cumulative 21.1 per cent, significantly eroding the economic gains made following the COVID-19 recovery. Amid supply-side disruptions, conflicts and extreme weather events, local food price inflation remained high in many developing economies, disproportionately affecting the poorest households. 

“Persistently high inflation has further set back progress in poverty eradication, with especially severe impacts in the least developed countries,” said Li Junhua, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. “It is absolutely imperative that we strengthen global cooperation and the multilateral trading system, reform development finance, address debt challenges and scale up climate financing to help vulnerable countries accelerate towards a path of sustainable and inclusive growth.”

According to the report, the global labour markets have seen an uneven recovery from the pandemic crisis. In developed economies, labour markets have remained resilient despite a slowdown in growth. However, in many developing countries, particularly in Western Asia and Africa, key employment indicators, including unemployment rates, are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. The global gender employment gap remains high, and gender pay gaps not only persist but have even widened in some occupations.   

Related Sustainable Development Goals

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