Women and girls put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work every single day in India | Photo courtesy: Pixabay
Women and girls put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work every single day in India | Photo courtesy: Pixabay
Blog
31 January 2020

Are economic systems sexist?

Author: Diya Dutta
Published by: IDR

Women’s unpaid care work is the hidden engine that keeps the wheels of our economies, businesses, and societies moving, yet it is not accounted for.

Inequality is writ large in our economies. Not only are the top one percent capturing greater wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the population, there appears to be significant gender disparity within billionaire wealth as well. Globally, roughly one out of ten billionaires today are women—and the same was true in 2010.

The situation is particularly telling in India—currently there is only one female billionaire for every 20—down from one in 12 in 2018.

In its annual Global Gender Gap Report (2020), India continues to be ranked poorly in terms of improving the gender gap. At a composite rank of 112 out of 153 countries, it has moved down four places from its previous rank of 108, and the economic gap has gotten significantly wider since 2006...