Access to resources and stable property rights is highly gendered in many parts of the world. Women and girls in particular suffer from inequitable land rights and experience restricted access to resources and inheritance. Boys and men can also be denied access, such as when the first son inherits more than the second or third son. Rights to resources may also affect ability to access other resources or services. For example, a woman’s lack of land ownership or rights may inhibit her ability to access credit, as land is often used as collateral. Achieving more equitable access to resources offers significant opportunities both for economic growth and women’s empowerment.

Various programmes to increase access to financial services have been widely used to offer opportunities to poor women and men. While results are mixed in terms of success, evaluations of gendered targeting of micro-financial services have shown that male beneficiaries contribute less to household well-being and food security (Mayoux, and Hartl, 2009). While microcredit schemes have the potential to contribute to women’s small scale income generating activities and increased confidence, they can also contribute to indebtedness and further vulnerability. They also tend to only reach the middle poor, not the very poorest.

While some studies have found that women who start their own business, gain employment, or own property or land experience a lower incidence of domestic violence, other studies show a higher incidence. This is particularly the case in culturally conservative settings, and reflects the impact of shifting power dynamics. Programmes aimed at empowering women economically, including microcredit schemes, therefore need to consider how best to mitigate negative impact, for example, by including violence prevention initiatives.

Women’s domestic roles often make them disproportionate users of natural resources. Wells set up far from homes can contribute to women’s and girls’ increased workload. Forest conservation projects can limit women’s access to forest products and impact negatively on their survival strategies. Donors need to ensure women’s participation in programme design.

Women’s contribution to agriculture is often less visible than that of men. Men are more likely than women to own land, access credit and fertilisers to increase agricultural output, and to sell high value agricultural produce. Women, on the other hand, tend to provide high levels of unpaid labour and grow less profitable crops or crops for household use. Men’s more numerous options and more formal role in agriculture can be attributed to the social norms dictating formal work as men’s domain, which facilitates their access to information, credit and technologies. Because of these norms, female-headed households often face particular challenges in rural settings.

Despite these constraints, women contribute substantially to food production worldwide. They often grow the majority of staple crops for domestic consumption and petty trading, and raise chickens and other smaller animals. Ensuring women’s access to equal education and resources, such as agricultural extension, credit, and technological inputs could therefore unlock a huge potential for agricultural growth and effectiveness. Similarly, strengthening women’s opportunities and business skills to access agricultural markets is important. Recent research has particularly emphasised the potential for educating and empowering adolescent girls and the contribution that they make to agriculture and related domestic work (Bertini, 2011).

Men’s higher participation in the formal labour market compared with that of women can be explained through a combination of: i) differences in time use between men and women; ii) gendered differences in access to productive inputs; iii) different levels of education; (iv) gender stereotyping in vocational and skills training and mismatches with labour market demand; and v) gendered outcomes of institutional and market failures. Domestic responsibilities also act as a barrier to women’s equal participation in the labour force.

There are also gendered differences in jobs taken up by men and women. While men are more likely to be found in the construction industry and in managerial positions, women’s employment tends to be confined to traditionally feminine jobs such as care, low skilled manufacturing, and lower administrative positions. Women’s income earning activities are also often confined to the informal sector, including domestic work, petty trading and home-based work.

Globally, there has been a shift towards the ‘feminisation’ of the labour market. This suggests both an increase in women’s participation in paid employment, and the labour market becoming more ‘flexible’. This change has impacted on both men’s and women’s employment and employment conditions. Workers now face decreased job securities with subcontracting, home-based work and part-time work increasingly on offer.

The global economy is characterised by high unemployment rates for both young men and women. While the percentage of unemployment is higher among young women, more young men are affected as their labour market participation is higher. The longer that young people are without employment, the more difficult it becomes to reintegrate into the labour force, and discouraged youth are in danger of feeling useless and alienated from society. In cultures where income earning is seen as a prerequisite for marriage, male unemployment can be particularly frustrating for individuals. In severe cases, the presence of high numbers of unemployed men can lead to political instability, conflict and the radicalisation of unemployed youth.

Mainstream economics has traditionally centred on the monetised aspects of the economy, neglecting areas of ‘social reproduction’ or ‘unpaid work’, which includes subsistence production and unpaid care. Unpaid care work includes ‘housework (meal preparation, cleaning) and care of persons (bathing a child, watching over a frail elderly person) carried out in homes and communities’.

Women carry out the vast majority of unpaid care work across all societies. Despite the economic and social value of such work and its contribution to well-being, it is not included in labour force surveys or in the calculation of GDP. It is estimated that the care economy could amount to between 10 per cent and 39 per cent of GDP (Budlender, 2008, cited in UNRISD, 2010). In some contexts, home-based care programmes have emerged where public health services have been inadequate to meet demand.

Policies need to acknowledge and address the care economy and provide support to care providers (whether paid or unpaid) to ensure that they have access to social rights and economic security. Given the predominance of women in this sector, such policies could help to improve gender equality and women’s economic and social security. To develop policies, an empirical foundation is needed to capture the extent of care work. Time use surveys, used increasingly in developing countries, can contribute to the gathering of such data. Recent research (Chopra, Kelbert, & Iyer, 2013) shows that unpaid care is largely invisible in social policy.

It explores issues of care work by listening to men who are involved in non-traditional forms of care work in the family and professional realms. The main findings are:

• Most cases care work seemed to be thrust upon men by life circumstances rather than an individual choice.
• Early childhood experiences worked in multiple and sometimes contrary directions in influencing men’s caregiving practices.
• Men’s relationships with partners (particularly the mothers of their children) greatly affected to what extent men participated in care work in the household.
• Many men who carried out care work sought to give it a traditional masculine meaning or make it fit within their self-image as traditional or hegemonic men.
• Men’s satisfaction with care work was varied; some men described great satisfaction derived from care work while others said they felt incomplete, depressed or undervalued.