This Focus Note explores why this remains the case— even after significant efforts to narrow the financial inclusion gender gap—and what can be done to achieve equality in this sphere. Since closing the gap will require contextually adapted solutions, Ghana and Tanzania were selected as two...

This Focus Note includes illustrative examples from successful initiatives around the world that demonstrate the potential of these strategies—from digital financial solutions that respect privacy concerns to data-driven approaches that challenge institutional biases. Development actors,...

Despite significant strides toward gender equality, women around the world continue to encounter systemic obstacles that hinder their entrepreneurial success. This paper systematically reviews the literature on the barriers female entrepreneurs face and the solutions proposed to overcome these...

This paper develops a conceptual framework to analyze how gendered social norms mediate the effects of legal frameworks on women’s economic empowerment. Using the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law domains, Safety, Mobility, Work, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Childcare, Entrepreneurship,...

The rapid growth of the gig economy is reshaping traditional employment structures, creating new pathways for entrepreneurial activities, especially for women. Female entrepreneurship has always been a trending issue worldwide, particularly in developing conservative societies where females face...

This study investigates the configurational pathways enabling women in Oman to translate entrepreneurial intentions into technology venture creation. By integrating institutional theory and resource‑based view, we develop a novel framework examining how formal institutional support (FIS),...

This article explores how female entrepreneurs construct and negotiate entrepreneurial identities across socialist, transition, and post-socialist periods in Slovenia. Drawing on feminist, post-structuralist, and identity-theory perspectives, we ask what determines women's entrepreneurial...

The proportion of women on the executive and supervisory boards of Germany's largest private companies has risen considerably since data collection for the DIW Women Executives Barometer began 20 years ago. While it was just over one percent on the executive boards of Germany's 200...

Can employer-side wage subsidies increase hiring women in low female labor force participation settings? This paper tests this using a randomized experiment with 1,227 Pakistani firms on a national jobs platform. Treatment firms were offered a six-month wage subsidy determined via the...

A comprehensive understanding of the determinants of sexual violence constitutes a crucial step toward effective prevention. While there is much research on the role of socio-economic circumstances of both victims acund perpetrators, little is known about whether an individual's physical...

We trace the impact of a partial liquor ban - from launch to reversal - on alcohol consumption and women's experience with intimate partner violence (IPV) in Kerala, India. Decomposing the policyinduced and reversal effects by employing difference-in-differences and event-study approaches, we...

Gender quotas remain controversial despite evidence of their effectiveness in reducing labor-market gender inequality. We study how informational narratives about quotas affect support, and how effects depend on pre-existing causal beliefs about inequality. In a pre-registered survey experiment...

Gender-based violence (GBV) remains a critical threat to women's safety and equality worldwide, yet the role of climate and environmental stressors in shaping violence against women remains underexplored, particularly in developed countries. This study identifies the causal impact of shortrun...

This paper studies the causal impact of female political representation on legislative behavior, social attitudes, and gender-based crime. Using a regression discontinuity design based on close mixed-gender electoral contests, we compare electorates that narrowly elected female versus male...

Gender-based violence (GBV) remains a critical threat to women's safety and equality worldwide, yet the role of climate and environmental stressors in shaping violence against women remains underexplored, particularly in developed countries. This study identifies the causal impact of short-run...

We study the role of mayoral gender in attracting public funding in Italian municipalities. We exploit a novel administrative dataset containing detailed information on all projects aimed at the digitalisation of local public administrations and funded under Italy's National Recovery and...

Women increasingly migrate as primary movers, yet how gender inequality shapes this process remains unclear due to methodological limitations. Competing theories predict that greater gender equality should facilitate women's migration by loosening norms and expanding women's aspirations, whereas...

In developing economies, women entrepreneurs play a vital role in advancing inclusive growth, yet their financial and digital capabilities often remain constrained by gendered barriers. This study investigates how financial literacy evolves into a gender-sensitive capability that drives digital...

This important book in the EFMD series shines a light on women (and sometimes the absence of them) within business schools, as well as their contributions and impact across multiple spheres within and beyond their schools. Despite the clear rationale for promoting sustainable gender equity, the...

Official Spanish birth registry data report sex ratios well above expected levels between 1975 and 2000, peaking at 109 boys per 100 girls in the early 1980s, the highest in the world at that time. Prior research has attributed these elevated ratios to factors such as maternal age, birth order,...

Abortion remains a highly contested issue in women's health. Using Norwegian administrative data from a setting with legal and accessible abortion, we estimate the causal effect of abortion on mental health. Exploiting variation in age-at-abortion within a stacked difference-in-differences...

We study the role of mayoral gender in attracting public funding in Italian municipalities. We exploit a novel administrative dataset containing detailed information on all projects aimed at the digitalisation of local public administrations and funded under Italy's National Recovery and...

This study investigates gender differences in labor market outcomes among highly educated individuals in Japan, emphasizing heterogeneity by fields of study, with a focus on STEM. Using data from the Japanese Panel Study of Employment Dynamics (JPSED), we find that women with STEM degrees begin...

Gender equality and economic growth have historically tended to move together yet identifying causal effects has been difficult. This paper uses data on the support for female suffrage in Switzerland in order to explore the impact of technology adoption on gender norms. We argue that the early...

Physical activity likely improves health. Yet, even as health outcomes are positively associated with physical activity, confounding bias exists. We examine a large-scale government campaign to encourage physical activity among women in the United Kingdom as a source of an exogenous increase....

The parliamentary elections held in Bangladesh on 12 February 2026 marked a turn­ing point in the country’s recent history. In August 2024, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had served for a total of 20 years, with one interruption, was removed from office. An interim government led by Nobel...

Over the past century, women have gained formal political rights, yet remain under-represented in leadership-partly due to lower demand for representation among women themselves. In this paper, we shift the perspective from why men extended political rights to women toward what shaped women's...

We study how faculty promotion decisions shape women's careers and the academic pipeline, using data from 4,000 Spanish university departments across all disciplines. We identify exogenous variation in promotions using the random assignment of evaluators to promotion committees between 2002 and...

Does increased legal infrastructure empower victims to leave abusive relationships? Structural barriers often prevent victims of intimate partner violence from seeking help, with two-thirds of female victims in Europe neither reporting incidents nor accessing support. I study Germany’s 2002...

Hintergrund der Studie und Datengrundlage: - Die russische Invasion der Ukraine hat seit dem 24. Februar 2022 eine massive Fluchtbewegung ausgelöst, bei der überwiegend Frauen und Kinder in europäische Länder, einschließlich Deutschland, geflüchtet sind. Rund eine Million Menschen aus der...

Die Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern ist seit 1999 ein politikfeldübergreifendes Ziel der EU. Dennoch stellte der Sonderbericht des Europäischen Rechnungshofs zum Gender Mainstreaming im EU-Haushalt 2021 fest, dass dieses Ziel bislang kaum adressiert wurde. Auch in der Gemeinsamen...

Esta publicación presenta los hallazgos de un estudio colaborativo entre el Instituto de Investigación de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo Social (UNRISD) y el Ministerio de la Mujer y la Equidad de Género de Chile (MMEG), desarrollado en el marco de un Memorando de Entendimiento...