
Gender norms that limit the access of women and girls to economic resources, training and skills development, and confine them to less lucrative work opportunities are particularly hard to change. This may be because gender norms about economic activity intersect with broader gender norms around, for example, women’s care responsibilities, whether they should be working at all and, if so, what kind of jobs are ‘suitable’. It may be because sharing economic power and resources is particularly threatening to gender norms in some contexts.
Even so, norms about women’s and girls’ economic activity are extremely varied and they can shift, for example when new economic opportunities arise, or when policies actively promote new norms. Economic empowerment initiatives can help to speed this process, but must also take into account norms that constrain women’s economic activity.
Recommended reading
The World Economic Forum’s 2020 Gender Gap report highlights the enduring (and in some cases, widening) gaps in women’s economic participation, representation in emerging fields and in economic decision-making, and the persistent gender pay gap. One reason for these ongoing inequalities is the persistence of gender norms that limit women’s economic participation and advancement. ALIGN recommends the following resources to better understand the impact of discriminatory norms and effective ways to address them, for more effective economic empowerment of women and girls:
Report
1 July 2016

Report
7 November 2018
Briefing paper
1 July 2017

Book/Book chapter
31 January 2019

Report
18 May 2018
Report
1 September 2013

ALIGN published resources on economic empowerment
Toolkit
13 July 2023

Briefing paper
31 March 2023

Blog
7 March 2023

Diagram/Infographic
1 April 2022

Briefing paper
22 July 2021

Blog
1 July 2021

Economic empowerment content from the ALIGN community
Book/Book chapter
1 March 2021

Blog
26 April 2019

Published by: The Urban Institute
Report
7 November 2018
Journal article
7 September 2023

Report
31 March 2023

Case study
14 November 2022

Report
21 July 2022
