adequate standard of living and women are treated with respect and dignity, is crucial to advancing gender equality. Yet, this type of work remains scarce and economic policies in all regions are failing to generate enough decent jobs for those who need them. The vast majority of women still work in insecure, informal employment. In South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and East and South-East Asia (excluding China), more than 75 per cent of all jobs are informal. In rural areas, many women derive their livelihoods through small-scale farming, almost always informal and frequently without any direct pay. Alongside economic policies that can create decent employment, extending labour rights and social protection to those in informal employment, such as domestic workers and homebased workers, is essential to increase the viability and security of their livelihoods. Inspiring initiatives, some led by women, point to ways forward. For example, working with local government and urban planners, street vendors in India and Papua New Guinea have negotiated improved and safer spaces to sell their goods. In Colombia, waste pickers have demanded recognition for the invaluable service they provide and won the right to bid for lucrative municipal contracts. In rural areas, including in Ethiopia, Ghana and Rwanda, enabling women to register land titles in their own names or jointly with husbands, reforming agricultural extension services, supporting women’s organizing in cooperatives and subsidizing their access to inputs and resources has been vital to enhance the productivity and sustainability of women’s agricultural selfemployment. Despite women’s increasing levels of education, gender stereotypes in households and labour markets continue to structure the kinds of work that women and men do, the conditions under which they work and their rewards from work. Occupational segregation by gender means that women are still overwhelmingly clustered in low-paid, poor-quality jobs. The most pernicious impact of segregation is pervasive gender pay gaps, which mean that women are systematically paid less than men for work of equal value. Some
83 per cent of the world’s 53 million domestic workers are women, and their number is increasing steadily in developed and developing countries alike. Working behind closed doors, almost 30 per cent of these women are deprived of any labour rights and more than half of them are not entitled to earn the minimum wage.14 Many also suffer from systematic abuse and violence. For these and millions of other low-income workers, minimum wages are a crucial step towards their enjoyment of the right to an adequate standard of living. Action to end harassment and violence against women in the workplace is also essential to restoring their dignity. Women’s continued heavy responsibilities for unpaid care and domestic work limit the types of work they can undertake, which further reinforces their socio-economic disadvantage. Measures to reduce the drudgery of unpaid work through investment in time-saving infrastructure such as safe water sources within easy reach, can free up women’s time for paid work. Parental leave and childcare services can help women and men with care responsibilities and enable women to enter and remain in the labour market when their children are young if they choose to. Among developing regions, Latin America has seen the most progress in family-friendly policies over the past decade and has also seen the most significant increase in women’s labour force participation.15
2. Gender-responsive social policies
Social transfers—including family allowances, unemployment benefits and pensions—protect women and men in the face of contingencies such as unemployment or old age. They also help families shoulder some of the costs involved in raising children or caring for other dependents— challenges that have become more pressing in the face of population ageing and changing family structures. A growing number of women in both developed and developing countries raise children on their own, and social transfers can make a huge difference for these families. In Brazil and Poland, for example, they reduce poverty rates among single mothers by 21 and 34 per cent, respectively. Social services that directly address women’s rights, including housing, health, education, training and