Working Paper
Ban on female migrant workers
This study examines the skills-differentiated impact of a restrictive female labour migration policy in Sri Lanka using monthly departure data from 2012 to 2018 in a difference-in-difference model. The policy has resulted in decreasing departures...
Blog
The Polarized post-2015 Development Puzzle: The Poorest still Fall Behind
by
Marikki Stocchetti
April 2013
23 April 2013 Marikki Stocchetti 2015 will mark a moment of truth for the international community as the era of the Millennium Development agenda...
Blog
Jobs Drive Development: An interview with Martin Rama
by
Carl-Gustav Lindén
January 2013
15 January 2013Martin Rama from The World bank discusses the process behind the World Development Report 2013 on jobs, which he directed.He emphasises...
Blog
Microcredit and Poverty Alleviation: Can Microcredit Close the Deal?
by
M. G. Quibria
October 2012
M.G. Quibria In the wake of the worst famine of Bangladesh of the post-World War era Professor Muhammad Yunus launched a microcredit experiment in...
Blog
Reflecting Change: The Second Edition of ‘From Poverty to Power’
by
Duncan Green
November 2012
Duncan Green Updating a book on contemporary events can be unnerving. In the intervening years, events and new thinking combine to expose the...
Blog
The Bangladesh Paradox – An Interview with Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury
by
Carl-Gustav Lindén
January 2014
Carl-Gustav Lindén Bangladesh has made some remarkable strides in development and poverty reduction since independence, despite generally weak...
Blog
Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo
by
Malokele Nanivazo
April 2012
Malokele Nanivazo Sexual violence crime (SV) in wartime is not a new phenomenon. Mass rapes have occurred in armed conflicts in Rwanda, Kosovo...
Blog
Urbanization and Development in Asia: Linkages with Globalization and Migration
by
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen
June 2012
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen The Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary, was the venue for the launch on 16 June 2012 of the just...
Working Paper
Gender Earnings Differentials and Regional Economic Development in Urban China, 1988-97
Gender earnings differentials in urban China by region and their changes during the first decade of economic reform are examined. It is found that the female–male earnings ratio increased during the early stage of reform. The male earnings premium...
Working Paper
Women and Food Security in South Asia
The food security scenario in South Asia has witnessed rapid progress over the last few decades, yet nutrition outcomes, especially those related to women and children, have failed to keep pace. This paper contends that the role of women in providing...
Working Paper
Rethinking the Informal Economy
This paper explores the relationship of the informal economy to the formal economy and to the formal regulatory environment. It begins with a comparison of the earlier concept of the ‘informal sector’ with the new expanded concept of the ‘informal...
Working Paper
Women's Status and Children's Food Security in Pakistan
This study examines the role of women's intra-household status relative to men in children's food security in Pakistan. Data from the 1991 Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (PIHS) yield a measure of evidence of a positive relation between women's...
Working Paper
From Local to Global and Informal to Formal
This is a brief sketch of the Self Employed Women’s Association’s (SEWA) three-decade-long journey from the local to global and informal to formal sector in search of finding work and income for now 720,000 women workers. Though SEWA remains a local...
Working Paper
Voluntary Contributions to Informal Activities Producing Public Goods: Can These be Induced by Government and Other Formal Sector Agents?
This study attempts to determine the extent to which human potential may be unlocked by government or other formal sector actions that induce voluntary contributions by individuals to the activities of Indonesia’s posyandus or village health posts...
Working Paper
Public Policies to Promote Productive Occupation and Increase Formality Among the Moderately Poor
Public policy aimed at building capacity among the extremely poor (support for food and nutrition; health; education and, more recently, financial services), combined with a stable macroeconomic environment, has proved to be successful for poverty...
Working Paper
Environmental and Gender Impacts of Land Tenure Regularization in Africa
Although recent developments greatly increased interest in African land tenure, few models to address these issues at the required scale have been identified or evaluated. Rwanda’s nation-wide land tenure regularization programme is of great interest...
Working Paper
Gender-Related Indicators of Well-Being
This paper discusses the rationale as well as the challenges involved when constructing gender-related indicators of well-being. It argues that such indicators are critically important but that their construction involves a number of conceptual and...
Working Paper
Is It What You Inherited Or What You Learnt?
Using original survey data on Senegal that include an individualized measure of consumption, we study the role played by land inheritance, other bequests and parental background as influences on an adult’s economic welfare and economic activities...
Working Paper
Does Women’s Status Matter for Food Security? Evidence from Bangladesh
Using data from a survey of Bangladeshi households, this paper investigates the link between female status and food security. Employing three different indicators of female status – husband’s and wife’s assets brought at marriage, female share of...
Blog
Decoding development – insights from UNU-WIDER's synthesis process and beyond
At UNU-WIDER, we undertake our work explicitly within the context of an emergent strategy designed to maximize the impact of our research findings. We...
Journal Special Issue
Globalization-Poverty Channels and Case Studies from Sub-Saharan Africa
This issue analyses the impact of globalization on Africa and present an overview of the six Africa case studies.
Journal Special Issue
Female Entrepreneurship Across Countries and in Development
In this article we provide an introduction to the papers in the special section of this edition of the European Journal of Development Research. We start by framing the challenges posed by female entrepreneurship to the research community, note some...
Report
Aid in a Post-2015 World
The ReCom – Research and Communication on Foreign Aid – programme produced 247 original studies. More than 300 researchers from 59 countries came together and provided evidence on what does and could work in development, and what can be transferred...
Working Paper
Marital trajectories and women’s wellbeing in Senegal
Divorce and widowhood followed by remarriage are common for women in Africa. A key question is how such discontinuous marital trajectories affect women’s wellbeing. Women’s marital trajectories in Senegal are described and correlated with measures of...
Working Paper
The Economics of Marriage in North Africa
Marriage is the single most important economic transaction and social transition in the lives of young people. Yet little is known about the economics of marriage in much of the developing world. This paper examines the economics of marriage in North...
Working Paper
Gendered Perspectives on Economic Growth and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
Researchers have linked sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) poor growth performance in recent decades to several factors, including geography, institutions, and low returns to investment. This literature has not yet integrated the research that identifies...
Policy Brief
Can We Eradicate Hunger?
World hunger is prevalent yet receives relatively less attention compared to poverty. The MDGs have taken a step to address this with the resolution of halving the number of starving people in the world by 2015. A substantial and sustainable...
Working Paper
Tenure Insecurity, Climate Variability, and Renting-Out Decisions Among Female Smallholder Farmers in Ethiopia
Land tenure arrangements in Africa are generally skewed in favour of males. Compared to males, female plot owners face complex sets of constraints and systemic high tenure insecurity which culminate in low yields. In order to obtain better returns...
Working Paper
Adaptation to Climate Variability and Change in Uganda
This paper hypothesizes that adaptation to climate change is influenced by the gender of the decision maker of the household. Using a two-wave household panel survey dataset, choice of adaptation strategies employed by female- and male-headed...
Working Paper
Gender Difference in Support for Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Little investigation has been made to explain why women are less likely than are men to support democracy in sub-Saharan Africa. This gender difference in politics has been found in numerous studies and may hinder the much needed legitimation of...
Blog
Extreme poverty - the poorest are being left behind
by
James Stewart
March 2016
At our 30th Anniversary Conference we took the chance to interview Martin Ravallion of Georgetown University—we asked him to discuss his recent work...
Working Paper
Health and Labour Market Participation in Uganda
The paucity of non-agricultural paid employment, and under utilization of female labour in Uganda, and other sub-Saharan African countries, is often seen to be the next major obstacle to further poverty reduction and development in the region...
Working Paper
A Model of Nutrition, Health and Economic Productivity
The objective of this paper is to develop a Model that integrates the biologically determined human need for food energy and the economic activity (most) people Bust engage in to be able to eat. The optimal work effort and the optimal body size of...
Blog
Aid and gender – making foreign aid count
International Women’s Day on 8th March 2016 is a time to celebrate. It is also a time for reflection. We must constantly remind ourselves that while...
Working Paper
Sex Workers in Calcutta and the Dynamics of Collective Action
This paper explores the nature of collective action and group behaviour through a case study of a highly successful political organization of poorer sex workers in Calcutta. The paper asks: What stimulated the participation of sex workers in their...
Working Paper
Inequalities, Agency, and Well-being
The capabilities approach has emphasized that inequalities can be analyzed in various dimensions of human functioning. Indicators of these inequalities can be incorporated into assessments of well-being. The capabilities approach also highlights the...
Working Paper
Group Functioning and Community Forestry in South Asia
This paper examines group functioning in the management of common pool resources, such as forests. In recent years community forestry groups have mushroomed in South Asia. But how participative, equitable and efficient are they? Many have done well...
Book Chapter
An Empirical Analysis of the Economics of Marriage in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2. Marriage is the single most important contractual arrangement youth in North Africa undertake as they navigate their transition to adulthood. Despite its importance in shaping subsequent...
Book Chapter
Gender, Economic Growth, and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (May 2012)
Tony Addison Finland traditionally celebrates the start of summer on 1st May (the ‘Vappu’ holiday), and UNU-WIDER currently basks in warm sunshine. At...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (January 2012)
Tony Addison January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The...
Blog
From The Editor's Desk (December 2012)
Tony Addison This year has rushed by at speed. For UNU-WIDER it’s been a year of big successes. We will have published some 110 working papers by the...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (August 2012)
Tony Addison With this issue, Angle returns refreshed from its Nordic summer break. The sun continues to shine on the Baltic, although it is getting...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (April 2012)
Tony Addison With our temperatures now well above zero, we head for the official end of the Finnish winter on 1st May (the ‘Vappu’ holiday). As...
Blog
Foreign Aid for Gender Equality: The Challenge for Donors
by
Malokele Nanivazo, Lucy Scott
August 2012
Malokele Nanivazo and Lucy Scott The first gender equality workshop under UNU-WIDER’S ReCom—Research and Communication in Foreign Aid project was held...
Blog
Foreign Aid for Gender Equality: Future Agenda
by
Malokele Nanivazo, Lucy Scott
September 2012
This is the second of a two-part article presenting key discussion points from the UNU-WIDER gender equality workshop held 12-13 July 2012, in...
Blog
From the Editor's desk (October 2011)
Tony Addison As autumn moves into winter in Helsinki, it is time to bring you the October edition of UNU-WIDER’s newsletter, WIDER Angle. Regular...
Working Paper
Governance and the reversal of women’s rights
States’ governance of gender is not unidirectional. In addition to ‘stagnation’ and ‘progress’, there can be an active reversal of rights already granted to women. Using the case of abortion rights in El Salvador, this paper investigates the...
Blog
Higher education and role models key for supporting further gender equality
by
Elli Keränen
February 2016
Gender equality is one of the cross-cutting concerns of the UNU-WIDER work programme 2014-18. In this interview economists Elizabeth Asiedu and Jean...
Working Paper
Evolution of the Women's Movement in Contemporary Algeria
The paper discusses some of the social and historical factors behind the evolution of contemporary women's organizations in Algeria. The paper states that the women question was never a priority. Yet, since the late 1980s, women became advocates of...
Working Paper
Gender-based violence and gender bias in schooling decision
This paper examines the impact of gender based violence against women and girls (GBV), in the environment the children live in, on school attendance, school achievement, as well as boys’ and girls’ dropouts. Based on the sixth phase of the...
Working Paper
Gender and the Development Process in a Changing Global Environment
Prior to the 1970s, the "problems of women", in the societies where their rights were recognized, were defined and dealt with by various movements and political groups in the context of moderating or eliminating legal and customary forms of...
Journal Article
Supporting Women Entrepreneurs in Tunisia
Whether policy support should be designed differently for women entrepreneurs is a particularly relevant question. To answer this, and to inform the design of policies to provide appropriate support for women entrepreneurs, the article compares male...
Working Paper
Gender Aspects of Urban Economic Growth and Development
The urbanization process is frequently shaped by prevailing constructions of gender. The recognition of this phenomenon is vital both in diagnosis and policy terms. This paper aims at illustrating the importance of gender in three major related...
Journal Article
Does Gender Influence the Provision of Fringe Benefits? Evidence From Vietnamese SMEs
This contribution studies the provision of fringe benefits using a unique survey of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. Analysis of the survey reveals that women who own SMEs are more likely than men who own similar firms to provide...
Journal Article
Gender Implications of Biofuels Expansion in Africa
We use a gendered dynamic CGE model to assess the implications of biofuels expansion in a low-income, land-abundant setting. Mozambique is chosen as a representative case. We compare scenarios with different gender employment intensities in producing...
Working Paper
Primary Education in India
This paper uses two large repeated cross-sections, one for the early 1990s, and one for the late 1990s, to describe growth in school enrolment and completion rates for boys and girls in India, and to explore the extent to which enrolment and...
Working Paper
Gender, Local Knowledge, and Lessons Learnt in Documenting and Conserving Agrobiodiversity
This paper explores the linkages between gender, local knowledge systems and agrobiodiversity for food security by using the case study of LinKS, a regional FAO project in Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Tanzania over a period of eight years and...
Working Paper
Widening Gap of Educational Opportunity?
This study attempts to convey an accurate and dynamic account of educational inequality in China during the last decade. The study finds that there is clear evidence of rapid expansion of education, and younger students all over China are benefiting...
Working Paper
The Gender Dimensions of Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Based on analysing World Bank and other donor post-conflict reconstruction (PCR) loans and grants from rights-based, macroeconomic and microeconomic perspectives, we conclude that few PCR projects identify or address gender discrimination issues...
Working Paper
Welfare Implications of Fiscal Reform
This paper investigates the effect of a food subsidy programme in India on child malnutrition by addressing the following linked questions using household survey data that includes information on usage of the public distribution system. First, does...
Working Paper
Gender and Education as Determinants of Household Poverty in Nigeria
The paper examines the linkages between gender of household heads, education and household poverty in Nigeria between 1980 and 1996. Data analyzed were obtained from four national consumer expenditure surveys conducted in Nigeria in 1980, 1985, 1992...
Working Paper
Gender Differentiation in the Analysis of Alternative Farm Mechanization Choices on Small Farms in Kenya
Using multinomial logit we analyze factors that influence the choice of mechanization technologies in Nyanza Province. The results show that farmers are aware of the attributes of the mechanization technologies, and that animal traction is the most...
Working Paper
The behavioural implications of women’s empowerment programmes
Participatory community programmes are a potentially important tool for social empowerment and economic development. How do participatory programmes that specifically target women affect community trust and cohesion? This question is important since...
Working Paper
Gender and the Distribution of Wealth in Developing Countries
Only recently has it been recognized that women may not share in the wealth of men, even within the same household or family. Moreover, there is growing evidence that the gender distribution of wealth matters. This paper first reviews the available...
Blog
Women Are the First Victims of the Asian Crisis
by
Noeleen Heyzer, Martin Khor
December 1998
by Noeleen Heyzer and Martin KhorThe debate on the Asian crisis continues. There are two sets of reasons given to explain why the Asian Miracles...
Blog
Household Vulnerability and Resilience to Economic Shocks: Findings from Melanesia
by
Simon Feeny
December 2013
9 December 2013 Simon Feeny Vulnerability and resilience are very closely related terms. Vulnerability is usually referred to as the likelihood of...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (August 2013)
22 August 2013 Tony Addison Angle returns from its Nordic summer break, to bring you more news and results from UNU-WIDER’s programme. Coming up in...
Working Paper
Migration impact on left-behind women’s labour participation and time-use
This paper aims to study the impact of migration on labour supply and time-use of women left behind in Kyrgyzstan. Using the household survey data for 2011, labour supply is measured by occupational choices and working hours. Apart from the labour...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (June 2013)
29 June 2013 Tony Addison The June-July summer issue of Angle comes to you amid the 19 hours daylight of the Finnish mid-summer. Last week UNU-WIDER’s...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (March 2013)
Tony Addison This month saw UNU-WIDER in Stockholm for the ReCom results meeting on ‘aid and the social sectors’, which took place at Sida on 13 March...
Blog
From the Editor’s Desk (October 2013)
31 October 2013 Tony Addison October finds Angle in New York, for our event on ‘Fragility and Aid–What Works?’ at the Permanent Mission of Germany to...
Blog
Female Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries
by
Maria Minniti, Wim Naudé
August 2010
Maria Minniti and Wim Naudé In recent years, the rate of new business formation by women has significantly outpaced the rate of new business formation...
Book
African Youth and the Persistence of Marginalization
The much heralded growth and transformation of many economies in sub-Saharan Africa over the last decade continues to receive prominent attention in academic scholarship and among policy practitioners. An apparent feature about this transformation...
Blog
Report from Gender Equality Results Meeting
by
Roger Williamson
January 2014
Roger Williamson The Danish State Secretary for Development Policy Charlotte Slente, welcomed the participants and contributors to the meeting and...
Blog
Multidimensional Poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo
by
Malokele Nanivazo
June 2014
25 June 2014 Malokele Nanivazo After a long series of conflicts and apparent macroeconomic mismanagement, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) seems...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (September 2013)
24 September 2013 Tony Addison As Helsinki moves into a crisp sunny autumn, Angle brings you news of two big UNU-WIDER events. ‘Egalitarian Principles...
Research Brief
The Effectiveness of Aid to Women’s Political Participation in MENA
Official development assistance to women’s equality organizations and institutions is effective in increasing women’s political empowerment. In contrast, aid targeting reproductive health and family planning does not appear to impact women’s...
Research Brief
Gender Sensitivity of World Bank Investments
Many World Bank investments include women’s concerns only superficially. Lack of attention to gender roles negatively impacts women’s rights. The Bank’s continued promotion of user fees in sexual and reproductive health projects prevents poor women...
Working Paper
Gender and Distributional Preferences
We conduct a lab experiment to assess whether gender of dictators and recipients, and distributional preferences affect allocations in a modified dictator game where both parties perform a cognitive task and the resulting pie to be split is the sum...
Journal Article
Gender and distributional preferences
We conduct a lab experiment to assess whether gender of dictators and recipients, and distributional preferences affect allocations in a modified dictator game where both parties perform a cognitive task and the resulting pie to be split is the sum...
Working Paper
A Review of External Assistance and Aid Effectiveness for Maternal and Child Health
This paper primarily focuses on how global funding has supported interventions that have proven to be successful in reducing maternal, newborn, and child mortality around the world. The growth rate of development assistance targeted towards these...
Working Paper
Non-Traditional Aid and Gender Equity
This paper investigates the role of non-traditional aid in meeting global challenges in improving gender equality and gender-related socioeconomic needs in the twenty-first century. We define non-traditional aid as private donations from individuals...
Book Chapter
Women’s Labour Supply and Household Insurance in Africa
This paper investigates whether cyclical variation in women’s labour supply in Africa contributes to smoothing household consumption. We find little support for this hypothesis. Using comparable individual data on about 0.5 million women in 30 Sub...
Working Paper
Gesture Politics or Real Commitment?
Donors of foreign aid increasingly claim to consider gender inequality in the recipient countries to be a serious concern. While aid specifically to promote gender equality receives only a tiny share of aid budgets, allocations to education, health...
Working Paper
The Challenge Fund Aid Modality
This paper compares the use of Challenge Funds by the UK’s Department for International Development and Sweden’s International Development Agency to address gender challenges in development. Challenges Funds are meant to bring the interests of...
Working Paper
Gender Mainstreaming in Nordic Development Agencies
The Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, was critical in making gender equality a development goal and adopted gender-mainstreaming as its primary mechanism to achieve this. Effective implementation of gender-mainstreaming...
Working Paper
Assessing the Effectiveness of World Bank Investments
Today it is widely acknowledged that increasing the gender sensitivity of development aid increases its effectiveness. This report evaluates the extent to which the World Bank integrates gender concerns into its policies and investments, pointing out...
Working Paper
Contested Relationships
This article examines the relationship between women’s economic and social empowerment in the context of extreme poverty. It is based on the findings of primary fieldwork on the char islands of north-west Bangladesh, investigating the processes...
Working Paper
International Migration, Remittances and Labour Supply
The Republic of Haiti is a prime international remittance recipient country in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, relative to its gross domestic product (GDP). The downside of this fact may be that Haiti, based on population size, is also...
Working Paper
The Danish Model and the Globalizing Learning Economy
Although Denmark shares with the other four Nordic countries certain attributes, such as pragmatic protestant religion, small and homogenous population, strong social democratic parties and ambitious welfare states, it also has its own...
Working Paper
Multiple Pathways to Gender-Sensitive Budget Support in the Education Sector
In order to correct for the initial gender blindness of the Paris Declaration and related aid modalities as general and sector budget support, it has been proposed to integrate a gender dimension into budget support entry points. This paper studies...
Working Paper
The Effectiveness of Foreign Aid to Women’s Equality Organizations in the MENA
In this paper, we address the question of whether official development assistance promotes gender equality in the Middle East and North Africa region by examining the effects of aid to Women’s Equality Organizations and Institutions on women’s...
Book
Modernizing Women
Exploring the impact of social change in the Middle East on women's status and roles, as well as women's varied responses, this book focuses on the gender dynamics of some of the major social processes in the region: economic development and women's...
Book
Identity Politics and Women
Identity politics refers to discourses and movements organized around questions of religious, ethnic and national identity. This work focuses on political-cultural movements that are making a bid for state power, for fundamental juridical change, or...
Blog
Achieving gender equality in India: what works, and what doesn’t
by
Smriti Sharma
November 2016
Discrimination against women and girls is a pervasive and long-running phenomenon that characterises Indian society at every level. India’s progress...
Book
Democratic Reform and the Position of Women in Transitional Economies
Exploring the effects of the post-1989 developments in Eastern and Central Europe on the social and economic position of the women of the region, Valentine Moghadam explains how the economic crisis and subsequent development, social breakdown, and...
Book
Women, Culture, and Development
Women, a majority of the world's population, receive only a small proportion of its opportunities and benefits. According to the 1993 UN Human Development Report, there is no country in the world in which women's quality of life is equal to that of...
Book
Gender and National Identity
This lucid and accessible collection explores gender and national identity within political movements in the Middle East, the Maghreb and South Asia. It reveals how nationalism, revolution and Islamization are gendered processes, and argues that in...
Book
Gender and Development in the Arab World - Women's Economic Participation
This volume aims at remedying the relative dearth of studies addressing issues of women and development in Arab countries. One major concern of its authors is to improve the statistical information available by including the often omitted aspect of...
Book
Gender and National Identity
This lucid and accessible collection explores gender and national identity within political movements in the Middle East, the Maghreb and South Asia. It reveals how nationalism, revolution and Islamization are gendered processes, and argues that in...
Book
Gender and Development in the Arab World - Women's Economic Participation
This volume aims at remedying the relative dearth of studies addressing issues of women and development in Arab countries. One major concern of its authors is to improve the statistical information available by including the often omitted aspect of...
Working Paper
Children and the youth in rural Vietnam
Structural transformation in rural Vietnam has led to rising incomes and a diversification of livelihoods away from agriculture. Using panel data on children in 2,181 rural households surveyed over the 2008-14 period, we examine how the welfare of...
Working Paper
The Care Connection
With the aim of reducing women’s greater unpaid care work than men’s and increasing women’s paid employment, this paper examines the extent to which World Bank investments address unpaid care work. The paper conducts an in-depth gender analysis of 36...
Book
Identity Politics and Women
Identity politics refers to discourses and movements organized around questions of religious, ethnic and national identity. This work focuses on political-cultural movements that are making a bid for state power, for fundamental juridical change, or...
Position Paper
Aid and Gender Equality
This position paper on Aid and Gender Equality was prepared by UNU-WIDER under the ReCom programme of Research (Re) and Communication (Com) on foreign aid. It aims to provide a coherent up-to-date overview and guide to a complex issue in the...
Research Brief
Assessing the Role of Gender in DfID and Sida Challenge Funds
Corporate actors are now playing an important role in international development and contributing new ideas to development aid. Corporate–donor partnerships represent unique opportunities to combine the experience of donors with the innovative...
Working Paper
Women’s Empowerment
Revisiting foundational feminist work on the concept of empowerment from the 1980s and 1990s, this paper draws on the findings of a multi-country research programme, ‘Pathways of Women’s Empowerment’, to explore pathways of positive change in women’s...
Blog
Why Ending Malnutrition is a Quintessential 21st Century Development Goal
by
Lawrence Haddad
February 2015
In the run up to the announcement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) in September every development issue is clamouring for attention. The...
Working Paper
Old-age pensions and female labour supply in India
Whether cash transfers have unintended behavioural effects on the recipient household’s labour supply is of considerable policy interest. We examine the ‘intent to treat effect’ of the Indira Gandhi National Old-Age Pension Scheme on prime-age women...
Working Paper
Self-employment and labour market dynamics of men and women in El Salvador and Nicaragua
We study the labour market dynamics of men and women in El Salvador and Nicaragua, focusing on the factors that help men and women move into an advantageous labour market state from an unfavourable state. We consider ‘advantageous’ states to be...
Working Paper
Ethics, Rhetoric and Politics of Post-conflict Reconstruction
Since existing injustices and the quest for justice are seen to be the main causes for violent clashes, it is often claimed that the restoration of justice must be the most important goal of post-conflict reconstruction. However, the current policy...
Working Paper
Gender Wage Differentials in China's Urban Labour Market
This paper describes and decomposes wage differences between female and male workers. The results indicate that females receive low wages because of unequal pay within sectors, and that the wage gap caused by the difference in sectoral attainment is...
Working Paper
Gender, HIV/AIDS and Rural Livelihoods
HIV/AIDS has a severe impact on food security, affecting all of its dimensions: availability, stability, access, utilization. FAO recognizes that HIV/AIDS is a determining factor for, as well as a consequence of, food insecurity. Although the...
Working Paper
Gender and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa
The study suggests that gender inequality acts as a significant constraint to growth in sub-Saharan Africa, and that removing gender-based barriers to growth will make a substantial contribution to realizing Africa’s economic potential. In particular...
Blog
The COVID-19 crisis, informal workers, and gender — understanding the intersections
by
Martha Chen
March 2022
The COVID-19 crisis — the pandemic, restrictions, and recession — has not been a grand leveler. While all of us, rich and poor, faced the fear and...
Working Paper
Women’s Status and Children’s Food Security in Nepal
This paper focuses on gender aspects upon children’s food security. Using data from the 1995/1996 Nepal Living Standards Survey, this study attempts to find evidence to whether children are heavier for their age, taller for their age or heavier for...
Working Paper
Civil wars and stumbling of patriarchal societies
This research project traces how women’s participation in the Liberian civil wars, as combatants and peace agents, reconstructs gender relations in the post-civil war context. The current literature examines the role of women in the governance of...
Working Paper
Social protection for working-age women in Tanzania
Tanzania has expanded its social protection framework significantly over the past decade, but the country continues to grapple with important gender inequalities. This paper examines, first, the evolution and effects of Tanzania’s social protection...
Working Paper
Empowering Women Through Livelihoods Orientated Agricultural Service Provision
The paper considers the impact of livelihoods oriented agricultural service provision for smallholder farmers on gender relationships and food security. The paper contents that the democratization and liberalization of agricultural services towards...
Working Paper
Two decades of Tanzanian health policy
Tanzania has undertaken important health sector reforms in the new millennium, and the most recent Health Sector Strategic Plan (2021–26) lays out ambitious targets to achieve universal health coverage. Yet, women in Tanzania continue to face...
Working Paper
Women’s inheritance rights and time use
This paper examines the impact of the Hindu Succession Act on married women’s time use in India. The Hindu Succession Act was amended between 1976 and 2005 by giving equal inheritance rights to women for inheriting property. To estimate the effect of...
Working Paper
Environmental Determinants of Child Mortality in Kenya
This paper focuses on the determinants of infant and child mortality in Kenya. It specifically examines how infant and child mortality is related to the household’s environmental and socio-economic characteristics, such as mother’s education, source...
Working Paper
Enhancing the livelihoods of marginalized indigenous women through customary forests in Bali, Indonesia
This study examines how, why, and under what conditions marginalized women of customary communities can contribute and gain access to the benefits of the social forestry programme. We found that customary communities’ dependence on forest resources...
Working Paper
Household Access to Microcredit and Children’s Food Security in Rural Malawi
Using data from the 1995 Malawi Financial Markets and Food Security Survey, this study seeks to discover if women’s relative control over household resources or intra-household bargaining power in rural Malawi, gauged by their access to microcredit...
Working Paper
Forest Management, Gender, and Food Security of the Rural Poor in Africa
This paper addresses the economic impact of forest management on gender and food security of rural poor in Africa. The analyses reveal that deforestation places major demands on women and children’s time, limiting their opportunities to obtain an...
Working Paper
Women’s Status and Child Labour in Nepal
This paper uses data from the Nepal Living Standards Survey 2 (2003/2004) to find evidence to whether children are less likely to work and more likely to attend school in a household where the mother has a say in the intra-family decision-making...
Working Paper
Employment policy in Mainland Tanzania: what’s in it for women?
Tanzania has experienced relatively strong and stable economic growth accompanied by social stability over the past two decades. The country is also pursuing an ambitious development plan with significant employment objectives. For development to be...
Working Paper
Non-formal Institutions, Informal Economies, and the Politics of Inclusion
Africa’s formal economies responded poorly to economic reform measures in the 1980s and 1990s while informal markets and institutions responded dynamically and proved to be more resilient. Using comparative analysis of African informal economies...
Working Paper
Why Engendering PRSPs Reduce Poverty, and the Case of Rwanda
To achieve the poverty reduction goal, HIPC countries need to mainstream gender considerations into their PRSPs (poverty reduction strategy papers). Mounting worldwide evidence that greater gender equality correlates with high economic growth and...
Working Paper
The Impacts of the Food, fuel and Financial Crises on Households in Nigeria
This paper examines the impacts of the financial, food and fuel crises on the livelihoods of low-income households Nigeria. It uses primary household level data from Nigeria to analyse the impacts of induced price variability on household welfare...
Working Paper
Women’s Labour Supply and Household Insurance in Africa
This paper investigates whether cyclical variation in women’s labour supply in Africa contributes to smoothing household consumption. We find little support for this hypothesis. Using comparable individual data on about 0.5 million women in 30 Sub...
Journal Article
The impacts of trade liberalization on employment and wages in Tunisian industries
This paper investigates short and long-run effects of trade liberalization on employment and wages. Employment and wage equations are estimated using data (1971–96) for importable and exportable industrial sectors in Tunisia. Causality tests show...
Working Paper
Two for the Price of One? The Contribution to Development of the New Female Elites
This paper describes the very different role played by female elites in contemporary developing countries, as compared to the 'early' industrializing countries of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It shows that women are far more important...
Working Paper
Women and Landed Property in Urban India
This paper examines land tenure in informal urban settlements in India from a gender perspective through field research conducted in Ahmedabad in collaboration with the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA). The author describes the formal and...
Working Paper
Urbanization and the South Asian Enigma
South Asia has the highest rate of child malnutrition in the world, despite rapid economic growth compared to other regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. Known as the ‘South Asian enigma’ this feature is partly attributed to the low status of women in...
Working Paper
Tunisia's Development Experience
Tunisia’s recent growth and development performance relative to countries in its region, and relative to countries at similar levels of development in other parts of the world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, have been notable. An analysis of...
Working Paper
Supporting Women Entrepreneurs in Tunisia
Whether policy support should be designed differently for women entrepreneurs is a particularly relevant question. To answer this, and to inform the design of policies to provide appropriate support for women entrepreneurs, the paper compares male...
Working Paper
The Gendered Nature of Asset Accumulation in Urban Contexts
This paper examines the gendered nature of asset accumulation between 1978 and 2004 in Indio Guayas, a low-income community on the periphery of the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. In so doing, it emphasizes both the importance of combining quantitative...
Working Paper
Gender Implications of Biofuels Expansion
We use a gendered computable general equilibrium model to assess the implications of biofuels expansion in Mozambique. We compare scenarios with different gender employment intensities in producing jatropha for biodiesel. Under all scenarios...
Working Paper
The Impacts of Trade Liberalization on Employment and Wages in Tunisian Industries
This paper investigates short and long-run effects of trade liberalization on employment and wages. Employment and wage equations are estimated using data (1971–96) for importable and exportable sectors in Tunisia. Causality tests show that causality...
Working Paper
Intra-Household Efficiency
An experimental design using treatments of a voluntary contribution mechanism is used to test household efficiency. Efficiency is decisively rejected in all treatments contrary to the assumption of most household models. Information on initial...
Working Paper
Ties that Bind
I present a model of intra-household allocation to show that when income is not perfectly observed by both spouses, hiding of income can occur even when revelation increases bargaining power. I draw data from Ghana and exploit the variation in the...
Working Paper
Changing Land-tenure Arrangements and Access to Primary Assets under Globalization
This paper illustrates how, in relation to globalization, formal and informal land institutions are prone to generate conflict over land rights and examines the implications of such conflicts on security levels of access to primary assets for the...
Working Paper
Gender Dimensions to the Incidence of Tariff Liberalization
This paper evaluates a topic in the globalization and poverty debate that is often difficult to measure, namely the transmission of price changes associated with tariff liberalization to households. Furthermore, it raises the question of whether...
Working Paper
Is the Nutritional Status of Males and Females Equally Affected by Economic Growth? Evidence from Vietnam in the 1990s
While the nutritional status of individuals became in recent years a central issue in development economics, relevant and reliable data are often scarce. Available living standard surveys provide a wide set of information about household food...
Working Paper
Differences in Food Insecurity between Girls and Boys
Using data from a 2004 household-based survey of children, we examine differences between boys and girls in self reports of food insecurity in Zimbabwe. Previous studies have taken only the views of the household head into consideration in...
Working Paper
Domestic Violence Against Women
Using data from a survey of Bangladeshi households, this paper explores the determinants of domestic violence against women as well as its implications for the resources allocated to women. The findings reveal that higher education of women and that...
Working Paper
The Effects of Expanding Education on the Distribution of Income in Ceará
Does more education really mean less poverty and less inequality? How much less? And what are the transmission mechanisms? This paper presents the results of a microsimulation exercise for the Brazilian State of Ceará, which suggests that broad-based...
Working Paper
Foreign Trade and the Gender Earnings Differential in Urban Mexico
This paper examines the effect of foreign trade induced product market competition, upon workplace gender discrimination in urban Mexico as measured by the gender earnings differential. More than four decades ago, Becker argued that labour market...
Blog
Ending child marriage and closing the education gap
by
Niaz Asadullah, Fathema Khatoon, Abdul Alim
July 2016
Women in most parts of the developing world are under-represented in the workplace and poorly paid. One reason for this is the gender gap in education...
Working Paper
Culture and the Fertility Transition in India
The paper examines the evidence for various explanations usually offered for the differences in fertility behaviour across regions and over time in India. Female education has been found in other research to be the single most important factor...
Working Paper
The Role of Women’s Empowerment and Domestic Violence in Child Growth and Undernutrition in a Tribal and Rural Community in South India
Moderate undernutrition continues to affect 46 per cent of children under 5 years of age and 47 per cent of rural women in India. Women’s lack of empowerment is believed to be an important factor in the persistent prevalence of undernutrition. In...
Working Paper
Gender and Ethnicity in Post-Conflict Kosovo
The paper examines the comparative economic wellbeing of female- and male-headed households among Serbs and Albanians in post-conflict Kosovo. Evidence from the living standards measurement study (LSMS) household survey, 2001, shows that Serb...
Working Paper
Health, Shocks and Poverty Persistence
In this paper we review the evidence on the impact of large shocks, such as drought, on child and adult health, with particular emphasis on Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. Our focus is on the impact of shocks on long-term outcomes, and we ask whether there...
Working Paper
Gender and Informal Sector Analysis in India
The main purpose of this paper is to look at the incorporation of gender and the informal sector within a general equilibrium framework for India. Moreover, we clarify some important links between a gender aware informal sector based social...
Working Paper
Natural Disasters and Remittances
This paper explores the linkages between poverty and disaster vulnerability in the context of remittance flows to households in the Caribbean. Jamaica is used as the case study country. The paper discusses the channels through which natural disasters...
Working Paper
Social Capital, Network Effects and Savings in Rural Vietnam
Information failures are a major barrier to formal financial saving in low income countries. Households in rural communities often lack the information necessary to set up formal deposit accounts or are uncertain about the returns to saving formally...
Working Paper
Displaced Communities and the Reconstruction of Livelihoods in Eritrea
Since large-scale programmes of post-war resettlement and reintegration are costly, it is important to learn the lessons of the resettlement programme started after the end of Eritrea's liberation war in 1991. Eritrea's system of land tenure largely...
Working Paper
Household Welfare and Education in Urban Ethiopia
This paper investigates the correlates of household welfare in urban Ethiopia with an emphasis on the impact of education. We use household panel data collected between 1994 and 1997. Welfare is approximated by household income. Although non-educated...
Working Paper
Development and Patriarchy
What are the links between development, social change, and women's status in the modernizing countries of the Middle East and North Africa? What is the relationship between socio-economic development, patriarchal structures, and the advancement of...
Blog
Does women’s education reduce rates of death in childbirth?
by
Sonia Bhalotra, Damian Clarke
November 2016
Every single day, approximately 830 women die from causes related to childbirth. Despite considerable advances in maternal health over the last three...
Seminar
Nandera Mhando and Nasibu Mramba on improving young women’s working conditions in Tanzania’s urban food vending sector
Nandera Mhando and Nasibu Mramba gave a presentation on 14 April 2021, as part of the Sustainable development solutions for Tanzania – strengthening research to achieve SDGs project. The presentation was held as a webinar, in collaboration with...
Wed, 14 April 2021
Past event
Project
Gender and food security
Theme: 2006-07
UNU-WIDER’s recent project ‘Hunger and Food Security’ exerted a strong attraction for academia, international organizations (FAO, WFP, and UNCTAD), civil society organizations, and the media. The first project meeting, held in Jaipur in March 2005...
Blog
Sharing for Prosperity
by
Heikki Eidsvoll Holmås
April 2013
17 April 2013 Minister Heikki Eidsvoll Holmås Economic growth in itself will not end poverty. Stronger policies for fairer distribution are needed in...
Research Brief
How can aid promote the empowerment of women?
Aid projects that specifically target women tend be better at increasing gender equality than those that mainstream gender. The gender gap can be narrowed through public works that focus on providing decent employment for women as well as training...
Journal Article
Gesture Politics or Real Commitment?
We investigate whether donors give more aid to countries with larger gender gaps in education, health, or women’s rights, and whether they reward improvements in those indicators. We find some evidence that high gender gaps in education and health...
Blog
Gender Mainstreaming in Nordic Development Agencies: Seventeen Years after the Beijing Conference
by
Malokele Nanivazo, Lucy Scott
December 2012
Malokele Nanivazo and Lucy Scott In the last 50 years there has been a growing awareness and consensus on the intrinsic significance of gender...
Research Brief
A Systematic Review of the Impact of Microfinance on Poverty
Microfinance evaluations reveal a positive impact on per capita income, non-land asset value and poverty incidence. Across countries and methodologies, microfinance is most likely to have a short-term positive effect; regionally, the most positive...
Research Brief
Is unpaid care work addressed well in World Bank projects?
Only three out of 36 World Bank investments in Malawi, Mali, Niger and Rwanda appropriately address women’s unpaid care work. Despite the lack of World Bank investments specifically targeting unpaid care work, Bank investments do appear to be...
Blog
Female Empowerment and Extreme Poverty Reduction: Progressing On One without the Other?
by
Lucy Scott
May 2012
Lucy Scott Women are increasingly seen as an important part of the international development agenda. Empowering women and promoting gender equality...
Blog
From the Editor’s Desk (November 2012)
Tony Addison This month saw the visit of Kaushik Basu, the World Bank’s new Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, to...
Book
Patriarchy and Development
At the end of the twentieth century, after four world conferences on women, debates on the impact of economic development on the lives and status of women - including their life-options and opportunities for betterment - continue unresolved. Is...
Book
Capital, The State And Labour
Capital, the State and Labour explores these transformations in eight countries or regions – the OECD, Eastern Europe, Brazil, South Korea, China, India, Malaysia and Japan – to examine the causes of this change and the likely prospects for the...
Book
Making Peace Work
Reconstruction from conflict is a complex and demanding task, and a major challenge for post-conflict countries as well as the international community. Countries and their donor partners face multiple priorities – rebuilding infrastructure, assisting...