Discussing the Role of Women in Economic Development Essay

This essay discusses the significant role of women in economic development, emphasizing the importance of women's empowerment for achieving sustainable growth. It highlights the barriers women face, including legal constraints, gender gaps, and unpaid labor, and examines how empowering women can improve economic diversification, income equality, and overall organizational efficiency. The essay also explores the steps developing countries can take to empower women, such as providing leadership opportunities, ensuring equal job opportunities, investing in women's entrepreneurial ideas, addressing unpaid labor, and implementing mentoring programs. It references the United Nations' focus on gender equality and the UN-2030 agenda, underscoring the need for global action to eliminate gender gaps and promote women's rights for better sustainable economic development. The essay concludes that women empowerment programs are gaining major importance as women empowerment impacts on the global economy and it is important to create alternative provisions for women empowerment and promote gender equality for better sustainable economic development.

Running head: ROLE OF WOMAN IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
ROLE OF WOMAN IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Notes

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ROLE OF WOMAN IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Globally, over 2.7 billion woman are legally constrained from having choice of jobs
as men. As per report based on 2018, 104 economy out of 189 still have laws preventing
woman from working in specific jobs. The United Nation’s 2030 agenda remains focused on
gender equality and woman empowerment yet gender gaps remains large and persistent. This
agenda also focused to remove unpaid work of women’s (Mehra 2019). Gender differences
and regulations can influence both developed and developing countries, influencing the
economy massively. Male workers instead of female workers dominated the core sectors of
the economy such as power and infrastructure, mining industry and banking and services
since 1900’s (Rakowski 2018). Women economic empowerment is a central by which
nations can realize economic improvement and gender equality. Woman empowerment
includes woman’s ability to participate in the existing industry. Participation of woman
empowerment is necessary to improve the production and decision making of a sector or
industry. Removing gender gaps and empowering woman in the economy will assist
developed and developing nations to achieve their sustainable development efficiently
(Dworkin, Gandhi and Passano 2017).
As the name suggests, Woman empowerment is also about distributing power to all
the women of the world and clarifying women about their rights and responsibilities, which
are invested upon them by law. Woman empowerment improves the decision making as well
as production of the work in any industry. Woman empowerment increases economic
diversification as well as income quality in addition to other possible positive outcomes
(Desai and Mariyam 2018). Increasing the woman empowerment and development rates in
countries like Sweden and Australia improved their overall GDP. However, it has been found
that growth does not lead to gender based equality automatically, it costs 15% of GDP of the

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country. From a recent study, it has been found that companies greatly advantage from
growing employment and leadership opportunities for women. Woman empowerment
improved the overall growth and effectiveness of the organisation. It is anticipated that
companies with three or more woman in senior management functions score greater in all
area of organisational development. One third of the woman employment globally persists in
agriculture including foresting and fishing (Murillo 2018). The share of woman in agriculture
is only 9.5 globally in upper middle income based countries and 2.6 in higher incomes based
countries. All across the world, woman farmers and workers have less access, control and
decision making power compared to men. Land is the most significant economic asset hence
woman only has 12.8 percent of agricultural landholders across the world. Over 80% of
households, woman workers are responsible for water collection. The amount of pay to
woman workers compared to men are very low and this could impact the economy of the
country massively as woman empowerment are increasing worldwide. Women are still
underrepresented in the parliament of different nations and still represents only 10% of the
representatives. Studies found that companies with greater gender equality have been able to
achieve their goals successfully and it has been found that woman workers are more efficient
than men to solve problems that are more complex. Woman professionals are more
competitive and focused in the work environment, encouraging men to perform well and
excel than their coworkers which overall improves the organizational efficiency (Buvinić and
Furst-Nichols 2016). Other than this, some specific advantages of woman empowerment can
be noted below.
Social
Still now, in the developing and underdeveloped country, woman has forced to work
and has been the victim of domestic violence. Woman empowerment will reduce the
domestic violence as educated woman knows their rights (Haugh and Talwar 2016).

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Economic
Woman population consists of 50% of world’s total population. Not only woman
empowerment and gender equality will mitigate the social barriers but also will improve the
employment rate of woman across the world (Chant 2016).
Political
Political empowerment will assist the woman empowerment positively. Woman in
position of power are more likely to improve the woman empowerment and gender equality
(Kumar 2017).
From a recent study of United Nations, it has been found that most of the women does
three times more unpaid work that men which reflect lower earnings and affects the overall
economy. When women’s are paid, their jobs tends to reflect stereotypes and provide relative
lower earnings. The United Nations report identifies four factors, which aid to prevent gender
inequality in all forms of work which includes, discriminatory facts, adverse social norms,
insufficient legal protection, gender gaps in unpaid household work and unequal access to
financial, digital and property assets (Bebbington and Unerman 2018). The below chart
shows 10 ten countries which has gender parity in unpaid works.

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As per United Nations, to improve the woman empowerment and reduce gender
inequality all across the world, several step can be taken. The five major steps, which aids to
empower women for sustainable development, is given below which will assist countries to
mitigate issues related to woman empowerment and gender gap.
1. Woman as leader and decision maker
Though many women’s are now powerful contributors to the economy of some states,
gender equality remains the problem in the greater part of the world. Several rules and
regulations assisted woman to participate in the technology industries, food production,
energy department and domestic wellness. However, most of the women’s does not have the
opportunity for jobs and resources to get better-paid jobs. As focus of the economy shifts
towards inclusive economic structures, providing woman with leadership opportunities and
making them, part of decision-making will go a long way in achieving woman empowerment
(Vandana 2017).
2. Job opportunities

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Despite woman are now the significant contributor towards social and financial
development, most of the women’s still does not have access to equal job opportunities.
Equal rights programs can invest significantly in promoting decent job opportunities and
public policies, improving growth and development for women.
3. Invest in woman entrepreneurial ideas
This is one of the most effective step improving woman empowerment and reducing
gender gap. Entrusting woman with entrepreneurial work will improve their state in the
business. Countries should initiatives to train woman in business skills for better job
opportunities. Many developing countries are spending a percentage of their annual revenue
in woman empowerment which is a good sign. By investing in woman education, and
providing them entrepreneurial opportunities, unequal pay gap can be evaluated and
mitigated successfully.
4. Action against unpaid labour works
One of the biggest concern for the economy of any country is unpaid labour and women
are the primary victim of it. Rural woman and domestic workers are deprived of economic
independence and many times their unpaid labour goes unnoticed. With strict empowerment
policies, resource management can solve these issues. By controlling the driving factors and
protecting women rights from violence and abuse will encourage them to explore and utilize
their potential in the economic development of the country (Narayan 2017).
5. Mentoring women
Implementation of rules and regulation alone wont drive away unequal pay gaps and job
opportunities for women. To eliminate the problems from root, gender-sensitive economic
policies should be deployed. To assist women actualize their potential as a worker and as a

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leader, mentoring programs should be adopted to take care both professional and personal
aspects. Empowerment skills can launch competent mentoring programs to cater to the
growing fiduciary demands of the economy.
There are still significant barriers to the woman working in male dominated industry. To
improve the economy through woman empowerment, these barriers needs to be eliminated by
rules and regulations of the respective country (Peters et.al 2016). Often, woman’s are
perceived as useless and they does not have the right to work in any industry. Both male and
woman working in male dominated industry faced the barriers related to woman
empowerment. Sometimes, in the name of woman empowerment, most of the organisations
forces woman to work additionally without any pay, which affects their earnings, and most
importantly the economy of the country. The recent UN report is a call to act to the global
community to speed up the progress on terminating these gaps to realize the vision of
comprehensive and sustainable growth.
A developing number of global companies are working to shape economic opportunities for
women in their supply chains and to deliver market-specific training and other support to
women, frequently in partnership with the public sector.
On a concluding note, the women empowerment programs are gaining major
importance as women empowerment impacts on the global economy. These programs are
influencing women to break free from traditional roles and access their job opportunities.
From the study, it has been perceived that the United Nations plays a crucial role in women
empowerment and gender equality. They have created UN-2030 agenda to support the
women empowerment by which women’s will get the same opportunities as men. To keep up
with the changing global trends and fulfil the sustainable development goals, countries needs

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to create alternative provisions for women empowerment and promote gender equality for
better sustainable economic development.

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References
Bebbington, J. and Unerman, J., 2018. Achieving the United Nations sustainable
development goals. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal.
Buvinić, M. and Furst-Nichols, R., 2016. Promoting women's economic empowerment: what
works?. The World Bank Research Observer, 31(1), pp.59-101.
Chant, S., 2016. Women, girls and world poverty: empowerment, equality or
essentialism?. International Development Planning Review, 38(1), pp.1-24.
Desai, J.N. and Mariyam, D., 2018. Financial Literacy an apparatus to Woman
Empowerment. Global Journal of Research in Management, 8(1), p.16.
Dworkin, S., Gandhi, M. and Passano, P. eds., 2017. Women's empowerment and global
health: A twenty-first-century agenda. Univ of California Press.
Haugh, H.M. and Talwar, A., 2016. Linking social entrepreneurship and social change: The
mediating role of empowerment. Journal of Business Ethics, 133(4), pp.643-658.
Kumar, D.P., 2017. Participation of women in politics: worldwide experience. IOSR Journal
Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS), 22(12), pp.77-88.
Mehra, M.R., 2019. Woman Empowerment and Socio-Economic Development. Journal of
Commerce, Economics & Management, 2(3), pp.22-24.
Murillo, A.S., 2018. Is It True That Socio-Economic Development Improves the
Empowerment of Women within the Household?.
Narayan, N., 2017. Contextualizing unpaid care work and women
empowerment. International Journal of Applied Research, 3(7), pp.654-659.

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Peters, H.E., Astone, N.M., Malik, A., Maret, F. and Heller, C., 2016. Women’s economic
empowerment: A review of evidence on enablers and barriers.
Rakowski, C., 2018. Engendering wealth and well-being: empowerment for global change.
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