Women (Still) Hold Up Half the Sky
20 Jun 2023

We wrote the first paper on Women Hold Up Half the Sky in 2008 , stating at the time that the old Chinese proverb was more aspiration than fact. In developed and developing countries alike, gender gaps persist in education, health, work, wages and political participation. Looking at these issues afresh, we find that shrinking working age populations mean that it is now more important than ever to utilise the full resources women have to offer (and to reward them fully). We estimate that even just halving the pay and employment gap between men and women could raise the level of GDP across DM and EM by between 5% and 6%.

Black Womenomics — Equalizing Entrepreneurship
9 Feb 2022

Black women make less in the labor market and face job-related economic disadvantages driven by systemic and individual discrimination that are compounded by the intersectionality of gender. Private business ownership contributes significantly to earnings and wealth inequality. Yet, Black women are underrepresented in business ownership. This study focuses on the entrepreneurship gap of Black women, some of the core broader economic and social factors driving it and implications for earnings, wealth and economic mobility.

Black Womenomics
9 March 2021

The economic and business case for diversity will only grow as US demographics and the labor force are set to become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse over the coming decades. Yet, due to complex historical factors and ongoing discrimination, Black Americans and especially Black women remain heavily disadvantaged across a broad range of economic measures, including wealth, earnings, and health.

Investing in EM Womenomics
29 Nov 2021

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in investing for social and environmental impact, including across emerging markets. One aspect of social impact investing concerns the role of women in the economy, and here we look at the empirical question of investing based on gender equality in emerging economies in the context of the EM sovereign USD bond market. Specifically, we construct a Womenomics Index across EM sovereigns based on five factors: education, labour, agency, women in power and health.

Womenomics: Europe moving ahead
13 Oct 2020

In Europe there are some tantalising signs of progress on women's contribution to the economy: most notably, participation rates for women in the workforce have risen dramatically and continue to move up. In many European countries they are now above rates in the US.