Opinion – Pablo Acosta: Gender equality promotes economic development

Developed economies generally have higher levels of gender equity between men and women. That is, when societies become more inclusive, their economies become more resilient. Indeed, in the relationship between economic development and gender equality, causality is likely to be valid in both directions.

International Women’s Day celebrated this Tuesday (8) is an opportunity to remind us of the advances and challenges of women’s economic inclusion. A significant and growing body of research connects legislative reforms aimed at gender equality to the economic outcome of women and, consequently, of entire countries.

The Women, Business and the Law 2022 report released this month shows that economies in all regions have progressed towards greater equality between men and women over the past 50 years. The study analyzes the incidence of laws from 190 countries on women’s economic opportunities based on a series of indicators that make up the life cycle of a working woman: mobility, work, salary, marriage, motherhood, entrepreneurship, etc.

The synthetic analysis of these indicators shows that, on the world average, the equality index is 76.5 out of a possible 100 points. That is, a woman has access to three quarters of the rights of a man. This figure represents a small improvement of 0.5 points from the year 2020, but it is an important leap compared to five decades ago, when women had less than half the rights of men.

The areas of greatest progress in the last year were salary, work and maternity, with emphasis on the development of laws promoting equal pay, protection from harassment in the workplace and combating domestic violence.

The progress pointed out by the report, however, occurs unevenly, and still signals a long way to go. In Latin America, the average gender equality of countries is 80.4, second only to the averages of high-income countries in the OECD (95.2) and Europe and Central Asia (84.1). However, it is important to highlight the variation that exists among the countries in the region. If, on the one hand, Peru stands out with 95, Haiti, on the other hand, presents worrying results of 61.3. Brazil appears above the regional average, scoring 85.

However, an important caveat needs to be made. Regulatory frameworks are fundamental for guaranteeing rights and directing public policies, but implementing them is a huge challenge. The report raises the need not only to measure the number of laws that promote equality, but also to analyze how these laws are changing social gender norms. In the case of Brazil, the document mentions, for example, that despite the existence of entrepreneurship laws aimed at women, there is still a higher proportion of unregistered female entrepreneurs than men.

Putting these laws into practice requires, among other things, training public sector actors and acting on the structural causes of gender inequality, such as social norms that still allow or accept the existence of disparities. In places where social gender norms are deeply rooted, or where legal reforms are made contrary to customary laws, changes in the law will not automatically improve the conditions of women.

Therefore, a pilot project by the World Bank – Salvador: Preventing Gender-Based Violence in the Unified Social Assistance System, financed by donors and implemented through a partnership with the municipality of Salvador and the NGO Promundo, sought a different approach.

Implemented since last year, the project starts from the understanding that fighting and preventing violence against women and girls —the most extreme expression of gender inequality— requires coordinated efforts between different sectors, and social assistance, which operates in the territory together to vulnerable populations, has a fundamental preventive and protective role and has great potential to act on changes in social norms.

The project aims to develop strategies for the prevention of gender violence based on actions to strengthen the technical and institutional capacity of the municipal government and actions that seek to transform perceptions, norms and values ​​of the beneficiary families of the social assistance system in Salvador. Qualitative evaluations with professionals and beneficiaries served by the program showed an important change in attitudes and beliefs, and in the understanding of social norms and possible lines of action to prevent violence against women and girls.

This preventive role of social safety nets in reducing gender-based violence is also covered in detail in the 2021 study Safety First: How to Leverage Social Safety Nets to Prevent Gender-Based Violence, which brings global best practices implemented to promote gender equality through public policies to reduce violence against women and girls.

The path towards gender equality is still long and requires social efforts, policies and actions that accompany the country’s laws to promote equality. It is necessary to transform the social norms in which inequality is inserted and address its structuring causes.

This column was written in partnership with my colleagues at the World Bank, Rovane Schwengber, a specialist in Social Protection, and Flávia Carbonari, a senior consultant specializing in gender.