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This chapter presents a range of data on the self-employment and entrepreneurship activities by women in the European Union. It also presents recent evidence on the barriers that women face in entrepreneurship, including the proportions of women that report that they lack the skills for entrepreneurship and that a fear of failure is a barrier to business creation. Data are reported for European Union Member States and OECD countries, as well as averages for the European Union and OECD.

Gender inequalities are still inherent in many public policy areas, and these are often reinforced through decisions on how public resources are allocated and used. Gender budgeting is a practice that can help ensure that gender equality considerations are systematically taken into account in budget decisions. The 2015 OECD Recommendation on Gender Equality in Public Life identifies gender budgeting as a key tool of a system-wide government approach to deliver gender equality outcomes. Effective implementation of gender budgeting can help redress gender inequalities, through raising awareness of how policies included in the budget impact people differently, and prioritising projects that help close gender gaps.

Cabinets and legislatures are key players of institutional efforts to promote gender equality and diversity in public life. The laws and policies that create the legislative and regulatory framework for promoting gender equality and for preventing and responding to gender-based discrimination can be initiated, debated and adopted within the legislatures. These laws and policies help shape societal attitudes toward women’s roles, capacities and responsibilities. Given this role, it is important that legislatures themselves serve the needs of women and men as well as manifest the values they seek to promote through legislative processes. However, gender equality in politics is not merely achieving an equal share of seats and positions. A co-ordinated, whole-of-government commitment is crucial, as well as clear and effective mechanisms for translating public policies, services and budgets into concrete benefits for men and women from diverse backgrounds.

Ensuring gender balance in judicial leadership has been increasingly highlighted by OECD countries as a key governance issue related to fairness, transparency and the effective rule of law. A diverse judicial workforce, composed of both men and women from different backgrounds, can bring different voices and perspectives to the bench. Such diversity can also strengthen the integrity of the judiciary, promoting citizens’ trust in justice services. Strengthened participation of women in judicial professions, particularly at senior levels, can help eliminate gender stereotypes and increase women’s willingness to enforce their rights.

Equal representation of women in the public sector represents a key indicator of progress towards building a more diverse and inclusive workforce. The public sector is expected to lead the way and set standards in implementing gender equality and promoting diversity in the public sector. In turn, encouraging a greater diversity of staff in public employment can contribute to organisational performance and foster policies and services that better reflect citizens’ needs.

The narrowly defined composite indexes presented in Government at a Glance represent the best way of summarising discrete, qualitative information. “Composite indexes are much easier to interpret than trying to find a common trend in many separate indicators” (Nardo et al., 2005). However, their development and use can be controversial. These indexes are easily and often misinterpreted by users due to a lack of transparency as to how they are generated and the resulting difficulty to truly unpack what they are actually measuring.

Achieving gender parity in parliaments and government is crucial to ensure that women’s perspectives are integral to public decision-making, being reflected in government policies and strategies. In adopting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), SEA countries have committed to achieving women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of public decision making. Yet women’s political representation in SEA countries has hardly increased over the past decade. Women are still under-represented, filling only one-tenth of ministerial positions and one-fifth of parliamentary seats on average.

Government performance is highly dependent on workforce quality. At the same time, size of public sector employment reflects both societal agreement about the role of government in the economy and society, as well as the way in which public services are delivered – whether through government employees or partnerships with the private or not-for-profit sectors.

This chapter explores how public governance frameworks to support gender equality can accelerate implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Achieving gender equality is a complex, transversal and multidimensional task. It requires the involvement and buy-in from all government actors as well as a broad array of stakeholders across society. An intersectional governance approach is critical to implement gender equality while addressing economic, social, political and environmental aspects of gender gaps at the global, national and local levels. This goes hand-in-hand with the call to leave no one behind, which requires policy coordination and coherence across all dimensions of sustainable development in order to reduce global inequality – both within and between countries.

Iceland is a global frontrunner in gender equality and can offer leading-edge practices of international interest. The Government of Iceland recognises that gender equality is a continuous process and calls for whole-of-government attention to further boost inclusive outcomes in all policy areas, from education to access to labour markets to environmental protection.

This chapter examines how donors are taking into account gender perspectives in aid for trade, as women’s economic empowerment is one of the key drivers of sustainable development. It introduces data showing that donors have been increasing gender-responsive aid for trade. At the same time, there is scope for improvement, particularly in sectors such as transport, energy, finance and business, mining and industry, where the proportion of gender-responsive aid is low. Good examples by a few donors are therefore highlighted to provide lessons to others that are facing challenges in taking account of gender perspectives in these areas. They reveal that many projects entail training of women as government officials or as project beneficiaries, particularly for income generation. Other activities include studies or development of project designs that are gender-responsive in the particular area. Given the Joint Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment, donors need to build the evidence base, establish an adequate monitoring and evaluation system, and ensure accountability towards women’s economic empowerment.

This chapter provides a brief overview of employment in the space sector. It also presents one of the first exercises at the international level to produce indicators to evaluate the space sector from a gender perspective. It provides exploratory indicators on government space agencies, higher education institutions and the private sector as well as female tertiary education enrolment and graduation statistics in space-related fields.

This chapter examines physical infrastructure’s potential for reducing and redistributing the time and effort women spend on unpaid care work in different intervention areas. Examples are furnished of time use data serving to guide investment decisions (water access); of how investments are context-dependent and might not always save time (electrification); of the effectiveness of gender-sensitive planning (transport); and of one factor behind a greater engagement of men in care and household tasks (labour- and time-saving technologies). Few programmes benefiting women actually have the explicit aim of reducing the drudgery of unpaid work or monitoring time use; initiatives undertaken by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the NGO Helvetas are introduced as rare exceptions. The chapter concludes by describing the benefits of having women engaged in project design and investment decisions, and the pitfalls of scaling up through market based solutions.

This chapter provides a brief overview of financing options to alleviate women’s unpaid care work burden, focusing on investments in infrastructure, social protection and public services. It begins with reporting on comparative spending commitments to promote gender equality via four infrastructure sectors. It then describes options for financing social protection (highlighting the effectiveness of mixing contributory and non‑contributory systems) and financing public service (with full public funding of care services viewed through the criteria of affordability and acceptability). Evidence is also presented on childcare provision, which covers the whole range of financing options. Mention is made of the importance of donors for health services in low-income countries, with newer sources of funds delivered through individual interventions (involving e.g. foundations and pro bono work by medical professionals). The chapter concludes by examining the funding dynamics of NGOs, which run the majority of programmes focused solely on promoting shared responsibility within the household.

This chapter discusses the impact of gender-sensitive approaches to the provision of public services on women’s unpaid care work. It begins with a look at the care need figures for different population groups, the largest of which is children. It then describes provision of care services – to children, the elderly, carers themselves – by different classes of social actors: the state as a direct provider, the market, and third sector organisations. The focus then turns to approaches to unpaid caregiving under the umbrella of public services that have been attempted in the case countries of Brazil, Kenya and Nepal; examples are given of NGOs and other, newer actors (e.g. social enterprises) stepping in to specifically address this burden when public health systems have not. Childcare services – especially preschool provision (ECD) – are explored, with Nairobi City Council furnishing an instructive example of collaboration with other actors to extend and upgrade provision of these services in the market.

This chapter explores ways in which social protection policies can address women’s unpaid care work. It begins with a look at coverage gaps associated with significant underinvestment in social protection, such as in maternity leave and paid parental leave for men. There follows a discussion of policy options to redress women’s socio-economic disadvantage resulting from unpaid care responsibilities. Highlighted are the interventions of health and social insurance; cash transfer programmes; cash-for-care benefits; public works programmes; pensions; and leave benefits. The dynamics of such programmes are examined through examples from the focus countries: provision of welfare payments or transfers to enable families to care for vulnerable groups (Kenya); adapting social security and benefits to address the specific needs of unpaid care workers (Brazil); and expansion of the Social Security Fund to include informal workers and provide allowances to different categories of women, though not explicitly recognising their role in caring work (Nepal).

The chapter begins by noting persistent and pervasive perceptions that fuel the social norms underpinning gender differences in time spent on unpaid care work within households. It goes on to describe approaches to promoting shared responsibility – involving men in community discussions, gathering evidence of time use gaps between women and men, and the potential contribution of the media (including the use of champions and role models) are among the examples cited. The focus then turns to lessons learned in the three focus countries, Brazil, Kenya and Nepal (See Annex A for the criteria for selecting the three focus countries). The study highlights specific efforts of non-governmental organisations in these countries as the primary actors in promoting shared responsibility, rather than government. The chapter closes with current attempts to monitor and measure changes in social norms.

Women’s unequal share of unpaid care work can prevent their full participation in the economies of developing countries; however, care needs are growing globally. How can governments and development partners meet the needs of families and communities, while ensuring that all citizens benefit from economic opportunities and fair remuneration? As part of the OECD Policy Dialogue on Women’s Economic Empowerment, this report focuses on identifying what works to address unpaid care work and sheds light on how governments, donors in the private sector and civil society actors – among others – can design policies to support both those who need care and those who provide care. The report brings together existing knowledge of policy options for unpaid care work across regions, in four policy areas: infrastructure, social protection, public services and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household.

Globally, men are more exposed to informality than women, but the share of women in informal employment exceeds that of men in a majority of countries (Chapter 1). Across countries, however, risks and vulnerabilities associated with the informal economy (Chapter 3) disproportionately affect women. This chapter provides updated evidence on gender disparities in key informal employment outcomes, such as employment status and wage levels. It then examines the role of gender-based constraints in employment outcomes and access to social protection. Last, it reviews gender-sensitive approaches that have been instrumental in empowering women in the informal economy in a number of countries, with a view to identify priority areas for policy makers. It is evident that the vulnerability challenge in the informal economy needs to be addressed through a gender lens. In particular, gender-sensitive risk management instruments are critically needed to ensure that current attempts to extend social protection to informal economy workers do not leave women behind.