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This article seeks to clarify the effect of growth on gender equality for the case of Pakistan, a country that has seen periods of high growth alongside the persistence of stark gender inequalities. The paper addresses this aim by estimating gendered sectoral employment elasticities of growth for the period 1984–2017 and investigates their drivers. It finds that the secular trend toward productivity-driven growth since the turn of the millennium has lowered the responsiveness of men's employment to growth impulses in particular. For women, factors related to Pakistan's gender order are more relevant. Greater gender parity in education enables women to benefit from growth in the form of better employment access. The reverse is the case for improvements in relative women's life expectancy, understood as indicative of their social status. The paper interprets the related effect as a reduction in the precarity of women's employment associated with improved status. HIGHLIGHTS Employment dividends of growth are realized in a highly gender-differentiated way. Pakistan's gender order mediates women's volatile employment responses to growth. We use excess women's mortality as an indicator for Pakistan's gender order. Women workers bear the brunt of recessions through the loss and precarity of jobs. Education is especially relevant in reducing women's employment precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces the call for papers by the journal "Feminist Economics" for its special issue on gender and international migration. This issue intends to motivate both research and action, generating a discussion on the ways in which gender is an important dimension from which general and specific migration issues can be analyzed. Themes include rethinking theory on labor and capital mobility, the care economy, women and migration, and the challenges of social protection for migrant workers.

State-enforced curtailment of mobility – through social distancing and national or subnational lockdowns – has become a key tool to reduce COVID-19 transmission. Panama instituted a sex-segregated mobility policy to limit people's circulation whereby women were allowed to leave the home for essential services on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; and men on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Through a retrospective analysis of Global Positioning System (GPS) data, this paper presents an overview of aggregate mobility patterns in Panama following the policy implementation. The paper looks at relative mobility for women and men, examining differences by volume and type of movement. The results identify lower visits to all community location categories on women-mobility days; however, we find no statistically significant difference in aggregate mobility to workplaces. The results discuss the implications of these findings and the ethical questions raised regarding the use of sex and gender identity in COVID-19 policies. HIGHLIGHTS Google mobility data provide a novel opportunity to examine population movement during lockdowns. Panamanian men appear less strict than women with stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 lockdown. Lockdown policies may restrict women's public participation. Public domestic activities may hold new value and inform household bargaining during COVID-19. Policies based on government-indicated sex reproduce inequalities for non-binary individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving women's agency, namely their ability to define goals and act on them, is crucial for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women. Yet, existing frameworks for measuring women's agency – both disorganized and partial – provide a fragmented understanding of the constraints women face in exercising their agency, thus restricting the design of reliable and valid interventions and evaluation of their impact. This paper proposes a multidisciplinary framework for capturing individual agency, containing three critical dimensions: goal setting, perceived control and ability to initiate action toward goals ("sense of agency"), and acting on goals. For each dimension, the paper reviews existing measurement approaches and what is known about their relative quality. The study concludes by highlighting that future research to improve the measurement of women's agency should prioritize incorporating different contexts, age groups, and decision-making areas to ensure programming and policies are meaningful to the lives of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between gender, attitudes, and test scores in mathematics. The study argues that measures of children's capability in mathematics must include some indicators of attitudes toward the subject. These are particularly important when analyzing gender gaps because attitudes toward mathematics differ by gender. To this end, the study first analyzes the gender gap in attitudes and test scores separately using school fixed effects models. Second, it estimates a structural equation model, which takes into account that mathematical capability is a latent construct for which some indicators (test scores and attitudes) are observed. Using data from the Italian National Institute for the Evaluation of Education Systems (INVALSI) for school years 5 and 10 in 2014 and 2015, results confirm that when mathematics capability, including both attitudes and test scores, is measured, the gap between boys and girls changes, and it is therefore relevant to consider both concepts. HIGHLIGHTS Italy has one of the highest gender gaps in mathematics in the OECD. Gender gaps are substantial both in children's attitudes and their test scores. Tackling gender stereotypes may improve women's self-confidence in mathematics and the gender gap in scores. This may also help close the gender gap in STEM occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study shows that occupations in South Africa are segregated and stratified by gender. While some women (mostly Black and "Coloured") overwhelmingly fill low-paying jobs, others (mostly White and Indian/Asian, but also Coloured) tend to fill higher-paying professional positions. This paper finds evidence of a long-term reduction in gender segregation and stratification, with women and men entering occupations previously dominated by the other gender, although this trend is sensitive to several data considerations. Most recent evidence, however, points to stagnation in this process. Distinct worker characteristics by gender – including education, location, or age – cannot explain the existing segregation or women's overrepresentation in low-paying jobs, compared with men's representation. They do partially explain the overrepresentation of women in some higher-paying positions and the declining stratification of the labor market by gender. Education is the primary driver for upward mobility for women and gender equality in the South African labor market. Note: This study follows the current South African government's usage of the racial category "Coloured," with the caveat that the term is not in acceptable use outside South Africa. HIGHLIGHTS Gendered occupations and pay gaps in South Africa have not been adequately studied. Black women suffer double labor segregation in South Africa, by gender and by race. Post-apartheid progress in reducing labor segregation has been faster by gender than by race. Improved education offers women a route to better-paid professional occupations Although women now access better jobs, managerial positions remain disproportionately male. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of COVID-19 on self-reported stress and anxiety and on adverse health behaviors of doctors in Kazakhstan, focusing on gender and family. Addressing the mental health of doctors is vital for both the short- and long-term health of doctors, patients, and the healthcare industry. Comparing survey responses from 2018 to 2020, results find marriage to have a protective effect on men doctors. Unmarried men are more likely to experience stress, anxiety, and engage in poor eating habits during COVID-19 compared to married men. Conversely, unmarried women doctors are less likely to experience stress and anxiety during COVID-19 compared to married women with children; while marriage reduces the likelihood of women doctors engaging in poor eating habits during the pandemic, it increases their likelihood of smoking. The results suggest that policies to enhance the well-being of doctors during the pandemic should consider both occupational and household stresses. HIGHLIGHTS Pandemic-related stress levels of doctors in Kazakhstan differ by gender and family structure. Marriage and children have a protective effect on the mental health of men doctors. Married women doctors with children report greater stress, highlighting the burdens of professional mothers. Addressing mental health concerns requires consideration of occupational and household stresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic caused working from home to spike abruptly, creating a unique spatial organization of paid and unpaid work that was not so different for women and men. This paper reports early results from a survey of Australian men and women, conducted during state-imposed lockdown in May 2020, on how the pandemic affected paid work, domestic work, and caring responsibilities. Findings reveal a rise in domestic work burdens for all. Women shouldered most of the extra unpaid workload, but men's childcare time increased more in relative terms, so average gender gaps narrowed. The relative gap in housework remained. While the lockdown generated lower subjective time pressure, dissatisfaction with balance of paid and unpaid work rose markedly and from a much higher base for women. Overall, the results reflect a need for sustained policy attention to the care economy to narrow rather than widen gender disparity. HIGHLIGHTS Lockdowns created extra unpaid work, at the same time as people also worked from home. Men pitched in more, but only to about the same amount as women were doing before the pandemic. Employers expected their workers to be as productive as before the pandemic, ignoring care burdens. Childcare and school closures disproportionally affected women's paid and unpaid work. Women's economic security will be at growing risk unless affordable care services are available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Middle East and North Africa region has the lowest level of women's land ownership in the world, yet little research has explored the barriers and opportunities women face in land ownership in the region. This paper identifies patterns, opportunities, and constraints of ownership of land and other assets (houses, livestock, poultry, and gold) by women and men in the Old and New Lands of Egypt. Based on a survey complemented with qualitative interviews, the study finds that both women and men viewed land and houses as the most economically and socially important assets, but they differed in what assets they considered to be valuable for women. The findings highlight the importance of implementing policies that optimize women's property ownership, even if they own non-land assets. The study concludes that while legal and economic interventions aid in accomplishing gender-equity goals, consciousness-raising initiatives are as crucial as pro-women policy reforms. HIGHLIGHTS Women are disadvantaged in land ownership in the New and Old Lands in Egypt, though not to the extent the literature has assumed for the MENA region. Patterns of asset ownership and control are similar to other regions: men own and control more land and housing; women own and sometimes control (liquefiable) livestock and gold Men underestimate women's preferences for owning immovable property (land and housing) even in the New Lands, where 20 percent of land titles are distributed to women. Women who acquire land remained hesitant or unwilling to enable their daughters to inherit land at par with their sons. While pro-women policy reforms should be implemented, consciousness-raising initiatives are equally crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assets generate and help diversify income, alleviate liquidity constraints, and are key inputs into empowerment. Despite the importance of individual-level data on asset ownership, and the fact that most assets are owned by individuals, either solely or jointly, researchers typically collect micro data on asset ownership at the household level. Through a review of the existing approaches to data collection and the relevant literature on survey methodology, this study presents an overview of the current best practices for collecting individual-level data on the ownership and control of assets in household and farm surveys in low- and middle-income countries. The paper provides recommendations in three areas: (1) respondent selection, (2) definition and measurement of access to and ownership and control of assets, and (3) measurement of quantity, value, and quality of assets. It identifies open methodological questions that can be answered through further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the key pathways linking agriculture and nutrition run through women's work, yet the evidence on these links are weak. Using time-use data from two Indian districts, this paper seeks to fill this gap. In principle, women's agricultural work could have positive and negative implications for nutrition, through increased control over incomes or intensifying work burdens. The emerging evidence points to the nuanced ways in which social identity, seasonality, and context mediate women's work in agriculture and consequently food intakes and feeding practices. Overall, women's work in agriculture seems to have a negative effect on household nutrition through two pathways: lack of adequate time for care work in peak agricultural seasons, and seasonal energy deficits that adversely affect their own health. Recognition of women's physical contributions to both agricultural production and domestic reproduction, and supporting them adequately, is central to improving nutritional outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the link between the share of women managers and the size of the firm-level gender pay gap, looking separately at the private and public sectors. Using a large linked employer–employee dataset for Poland and nonparametric and parametric decompositions, the study finds that a greater share of women managers is associated with an increased advantage for women in selected types of public-sector units: the ones in which remunerations of women and men are already equal, and a large share of the workforce is tertiary-educated. The effects are, however, relatively small in size. In private establishments, lower gender wage inequality is associated with higher shares of women workers, but not women managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates analytically and through numerical simulations how the intrahousehold bargaining positions of a couple are affected by the opportunity to title agricultural land, and how the couple's choice between an individual male title and a joint title is determined. The results suggest that when land registration is offered to couples as a discrete choice between individual or joint titles, there is a risk that women with weak initial bargaining positions will be further weakened following the reform. A joint title will only be chosen if the spouses start off with relatively equal bargaining positions; otherwise a male title will be chosen. An application of the model to the situation of Madagascar, using household survey data, supports the predictions of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improved cookstoves (ICS) have been promoted for several decades, with little success. Advocates looking to drive uptake encourage greater involvement of women in ICS enterprises, on the largely unproven premise that women's participation in the value chain will enhance their financial bottom line while giving a boost to ICS sales. This paper tests the validity of that premise, using qualitative evidence from East Africa. The analysis shows gender-differentiated outcomes for enterprises across the value chain. Women-led enterprises are significantly underrepresented at higher levels of the chain, where sales volumes are highest. Value-chain positioning also influences access to key inputs like finance, potentially reinforcing the gender divide in enterprise performance. The findings challenge the dominant narrative in the ICS field about the inevitability of the link between market participation and economic empowerment for women and indicate a need to look beyond conventional market models to enhance financial outcomes for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, there is no consensus concerning the legal and moral judgment of sex work. Nevertheless, there is an overwhelming agreement on the need to fight against forced sex work. This paper uses a formal economic model in order to analyze how a law – introduced to punish clients of commercial sex services – affects market outcomes. More specifically, it examines how the so-called "neo-abolitionism" or "Nordic" prostitution regime impacts forced sex work. The theoretical analysis reveals that this effect is ambiguous and crucially depends on the size of the deterrence effect and on local properties of the market demand. In addition, it highlights the conditions under which the composition of clients changes toward more risk-seeking individuals. Policy implications that arise are identified and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interprets the pressure to raise Palestinian-Israeli women’s labor force participation within the unfolding neoliberal project in Israel, arguing that women’s stalled workforce integration reflects embedded economic rationality. Poor infrastructure and discriminatory policies, combined with Israel’s rapid economic privatization, set contradictory expectations for Palestinian-Israeli women: their opportunity-cost calculations include entitlements to economic protection alongside obligations to provide expenditure-saving domestic labor. Yet growing pressure and desire to join the paid workforce suggest that the gender contract may be changing. This cultural schema, which links women’s economic strategizing to their sense of feminine propriety, is transforming as part of a broader transition to a market-led gender regime, with the paradoxical effect of encouraging women’s employment while simultaneously impoverishing them. By dwelling on the dialectics of culture and the structure of work opportunities, and women’s agency, this paper aims to resolves an impasse in the current debate on women’s low workforce participation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on detailed occupation titles and making use of measures that do not require pair-wise comparisons, this paper shows that the occupational segregation of African American women declined dramatically in 1940–80, decreased slightly in 1980–2000, and remained stagnant in 2000–10. This paper quantifies the well-being losses that African American women derive from their occupational sorting. The reduction of segregation was indeed accompanied by well-being improvements, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. Regarding the role that education has played, this study highlights that it was only from 1990 onward that African American women with either some college or university degrees had lower segregation (as compared with their peers) than those with lower education. Nevertheless, the well-being loss that African American women with university degrees derived in 2010 for being segregated from their peers in education was not too different from that of African American women with lower education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite having higher average education levels, Nicaraguan women still earn much less than men. Furthermore, the country has one of the highest levels of occupational gender segregation in Latin America. This paper aims to explain the gender income gap in Nicaragua, taking into account individual characteristics, engagement in specific occupations and sectors, and geographical location. Using a multilevel framework, the study finds that while a considerable part of the income gap can be explained by women's employment in occupations and sectors with low remuneration, another substantial part of this gap is attributable to the prevalence of patriarchal gender norms – and thus cannot be explained by human capital factors. These results show that understanding labor market segregation is vital for comprehending the perseverance of the gender income gap, and they further imply that women's progress in breaching the gender stereotypes in Nicaragua is still limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite reductions in poverty generally, recent trends in Latin American countries show processes of both de-feminization and re-feminization of poverty. A rise in the numbers of women to men living in income-poor households has occurred despite feminized anti-poverty programs, most notably conditional cash transfers (CCTs), which target resources to women. This paper shows that methodological differences in what, how, and who is the focus of measurement may influence patterns of poverty "feminization." It also suggests that feminized policy interventions might in themselves be playing a role in the re-feminization of poverty, not least because of data and definitional limitations in the way female-headed households and, relatedly, women's poverty are understood. The somewhat paradoxical interactions between the feminization of household headship, the feminization of poverty, and the feminization of anti-poverty programs present interesting challenges for redressing gender gaps in poverty within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that different levels of empathy of men and women explain the well-documented gender differences in interventionist government economic policy views in the United States. Using the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to measure empathy, the study finds that more empathic people support more interventionist policies. While greater empathy leads both men and women to support more government action, there is no gender difference in the effects of empathy on policy views. When policy views are separated by area, gender differences on policies concerning poverty, inequality, and social welfare disappear once empathy is accounted for, though they persist in views on free markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between the gender of mayors in Spanish local government and different budget items. It uses a sample of local budgets for 8,112 town councils between 2002 and 2010, totaling 64,361 observations. The Spanish context is characterized by decentralization of public responsibility to a greater extent than in neighboring countries, feeding the debate on the operational efficiency of local government and the importance of gender in public management. Results show that councils with women mayors have lower annual interest and debt repayment obligations and have higher expenditure on security, protection, and social promotion. Thus, the presence of women in politics may serve to improve councils’ economic situations, which is necessary not only for social justice but also for economic efficiency. In addition, in councils with more inhabitants, women mayors are more common, but women are less likely to occupy the office for longer periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concentrates on the scientific work of Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012), who for more than forty years carried out theoretical and empirical research on common-pool resources. Ostrom theorizes that the commons often prevent resource exhaustion more effectively than the state, international institutions, or private owners. However, one of the foundations of commons, as an alternative program to the private/state dualism, ought to be the principle of equality that includes a gender perspective in theory and practice. The goal of this article is to provide thoughtful ways of incorporating gender in economic research from the viewpoint of feminist epistemology and to indicate the place of gender in Ostrom’s work. The methodology of this study could be used for reading economic publications through a gender perspective as well as for inspiring economists to use both gender as a category of analysis and gender-sensitive language in their theoretical and empirical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates why some Australian households use paid help with domestic labor while others do not. Consistent with earlier studies, the analysis examines hypotheses relating to resources, objective demand, and gender attitudes. Additionally, this paper examines the impact of attitudes toward using paid domestic labor, an area that has not been investigated previously. The findings suggest that resources and objective demand provide the parameters within which employing household help is made possible or necessary, but beliefs about the appropriateness of this strategy also play a role in determining whether Australian households use paid domestic labor. The paper concludes that understanding whether Australian households pay for domestic help is dependent not just on the level of resources and objective demand but also on whether individuals view paid domestic help as an appropriate strategy for undertaking domestic work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In England, the Government has implemented policies to increase and diversify participation in higher education (HE). Changes in funding arrangements that shift the burden of paying for education from the state to individuals have also been introduced. To reconcile the contradiction between widening participation and the individualization of the costs of study, HE is being framed as a risk-free and individualized financial investment. Informed by critiques from feminist economics and the philosophy of “rational economic man,” this paper argues that the government's HE policies are permeated by a narrow concept of reason and presuppose highly individualized, instrumental, and economic actors. Drawing on the findings from two studies conducted at the University of Hull, this paper demonstrates how this understanding of human behavior is incongruent with the experiences of one group of students - mature student carers - whose life choices are informed by their caring responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of women's mobility into and out of male-dominated occupations in Puerto Rico during a period of rapid development between the 1950s and the early 1980s. The paper uses data from the Puerto Rico Fertility and Family Planning Assessment of 1982, which includes detailed retrospective calendar histories of women's employment and other life-course changes. An event history approach allows an examination of the effects of human capital, family status, socialization, and opportunity structure in the labor market on women's entry into male-dominated occupations and their subsequent shifts to other occupations. The findings indicate that women's entry into male-dominated occupations increased for first jobs during this period of economic development, and there was modest cross gender-type mobility among women who experienced job changes. Finally, the variables more directly tapping labor-supply factors show stronger effects on women's labor-force behavior than those more directly tapping labor-demand factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on employment narratives recounted in life history interviews with women workers in Nanjing, China. Drawing on feminist perspectives on gender and global economic changes, it examines the micro-processes that underpinned China's economic restructuring and, through a gender-based analysis, shows how working women lost out in this process. After an overview of the institutional context in which China's economic restructuring occurred, this paper examines women's experiences in the workplace and identifies factors that contributed to their disadvantageous position in the work unit and that increased their vulnerability in the changing labor market. The evidence of gender inequality, assumptions about women's labor capacities, and the gendered consequences of economic restructuring suggest that older, less educated women workers, mostly from the Cultural Revolution generation, are unlikely to gain any benefit from whatever advantages accrue from China's economic integration into the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes changes in labor force participation rates over time for gender- and ethnicity-differentiated groups in urban China. From 1990 to 2000, urban labor force participation rates fell substantially with women's rates declining more rapidly than men's and minority women's declining more rapidly than Han women's. Women's labor force participation is determined by a complex interaction of often gendered economic, demographic, and cultural factors that vary considerably by ethnic group. This analysis employs probit regression techniques to census data to explore possible explanations for the observed changes. This paper focuses on five of China's larger ethnic groups: the Han, Hui, Korean, Uygur, and Zhuang. Although many of the findings differ by ethnic group, for married women there is evidence of a return to more traditional expectations about gendered household roles that is consistent across groups. The research techniques also uncover evidence of discrimination against men of certain ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the gendered impact of Chinese healthcare reforms, drawing attention to the complex and changing nature of gender inequities in China's current economic and social transformations. Using official and academic sources, it examines the reforms' impact on access to reproductive healthcare, the gendered effects of changes in health sector financing - particularly the collapse of insurance systems and rising costs of healthcare, and the implications of China's demographic transition on women's informal healthcare roles. This paper suggests areas that policy-makers, researchers, and activists should prioritize to address inequity, including developing public health policy based on the systematic monitoring of health impacts and trends from a gender perspective, strengthening rural medical facilities to meet the basic healthcare needs of rural populations (including sexual and reproductive health needs), and reforming the healthcare system together with social security systems to equitably cover the poor and the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the changing impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on gendered wages in urban China. Combining household survey data from 1995 and 2002 with province-level macro-data, the paper finds that FDI as a proportion of investment has a sizable and statistically significant positive effect on both female and male wages in both years. In 1995, women experienced larger gains from FDI than men, but those gender-based advantages had reversed by 2002, with men experiencing larger wage gains from FDI than women. The paper argues that these results reflect the shift of foreign-invested enterprises to higher productivity and more domestically oriented production, a shift that interacts with gender-based employment segregation to more greatly advantage workers in male-dominated than female-dominated industries. These findings indicate that FDI can have considerable structural effects on economies that reach beyond the particular workers and firms linked to foreign investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the findings of a survey of top economics graduate schools as they relate to women and men. The results provide strong evidence that at these top graduate schools, women graduate students are less integrated in their economic disciplines than are male graduate students. In the second part of the paper, this paper relates those findings to alternative theories as to why this is the case. This paper concludes by suggesting that the emphasis on theoretical studies in the current core of the graduate economics program can be seen as a type of hazing process that seems to have a significant cost since many women (and men) with great creative promise are discouraged from continuing in economics and do not benefit nearly as much as they would have from more policy-driven core courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, a considerable amount of research has focused on the evidence of gender differences in corruption. Research conducted on another predatory activity, tax evasion, similarly shows strong differences between women's and men's behaviors. This paper tests this finding in a transition country using a unique data set collected from a field survey of households in Tirana, Albania in 2000. Acknowledging that scholars generally explain gender differences in economic behavior either as biological or by social/psychological role theory, this paper examines a broader range of explanations for gender differences in tax evasion. Taking new institutional theory as a starting point to explain the differences in men's and women's tax behaviors, this paper discusses the relative importance of education, income, age, and number of children, among other factors. Finally, it explores the explanations provided by feminist theory and to what extent these can be integrated into the new institutional theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reform of the United States welfare system in 1996 drastically changed welfare receipt for low-income lone mothers. This paper explores the effects of these changes on lone mothers by summarizing empirical work on caseload reduction, labor force participation, income, poverty, material hardship, and family formation. While it appears that the economic status of many lone mothers improved during the economic expansion in the late 1990s, many lone mothers continued to experience poverty and material hardship. Building on the work of feminist scholars from both the US and other countries, this paper goes on to critique mainstream research on welfare reform. It identifies a particularly feminist approach to welfare reform research, stresses its advantages over mainstream research, and speculates about why there is comparatively less feminist research to date. The paper concludes by calling for more structural analyses of poverty and of lone motherhood itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last twenty years, eastern Sri Lanka has witnessed a bitter and bloody civil conflict. This paper explores the experience of female-headed households in the region. Only partially the product of war, such households cannot be bundled together as a social problem with a single solution. Our study endorses the feminist suspicion of falsely homogenizing accounts of women's lives and suggests instead an alternative emphasis on the many ways in which gendered relations of dominance and subordination are maintained. With its co-existing Muslim, Tamil, and Sinhala groups, eastern Sri Lanka facilitates the exploration of ethnicity as a source of variation. The households included in this study share a common structure and face the same economic problems, yet ethnic differences divide them. The paper charts the problems, strategies, and partial triumphs of these lone mothers and proposes policies to help them in their mundane but heroic struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores one angle of the race/gender/class intersection by examining the effect of residential segregation on black women and men's employment status in the US. Do the exclusionary mechanisms embedded in racially-based residential segregation affect black women and men's economic outcomes similarly, or are their employment outcomes differentiated by their different gender statuses? This paper lays out a theoretical framework for understanding the role residential segregation may play in shaping black men and women's labor market outcomes, outlining key mechanisms that link residential segregation to labor market inequality, highlighting the ways in which many of these mechanisms are gendered as well as racialized. This paper also offers an analytic design to test the hypotheses developed in this exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes the case for analyzing the gender impact of economic policy, based on the existence of an unpaid as well as a paid economy and on structural differences between men's and women's positions across the two economies. Economic policy is targeted on the paid economy. However, unintended impacts on the unpaid care economy may limit how effective any policy can be. Gender-impact assessment will not only make the effects of economic policies on gender inequalities transparent; it will also enable policy makers to achieve all their goals more effectively, whether or not these goals relate explicitly to gender. The introduction in the UK of a new Working Families' Tax Credit (WFTC), designed to make employment pay and help reduce child poverty, provides an example of how gender-impact assessment could have been used to improve an initial policy design. The paper also suggests criteria for evaluating economic policy, so that its full gender impact and its effects on both paid and caring economies can be assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker started the New Home Economics (NHE) at Columbia University in the early 1960s, they expanded on the field of family and consumption economics that Hazel Kirk and Margaret Reid began in the early 1920s. This paper studies forty years of household economics, the decisions that household members make regarding any allocation of resources. These decisions may regard consumption, labor supply, transportation, fertility, or health. A review of the history of the NHE shows that Jacob Mincer's original contribution tends to be underestimated. This paper also argues that the growth of the NHE benefited from the concentration of talent at Columbia, organizational support, the diversity of a student body that included many talented women, the ideological commitments that students, many of them married, had for the study of home production, a departmental policy de-emphasizing gender-related politics, and relatively high levels of civility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether European women have the same probability of saving for retirement as European men and if driving factors for this saving behavior differ by gender. The evidence is based on a sample of 6,036 individuals from eight European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). The results show that European women are less likely to save for retirement than men, although the determinants of this decision are similar for both genders. Moreover, the results suggest that country-level institutional factors play a more important role on the individual's retirement attitudes than gender differences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using Karl Polanyi's analysis of the social construction of markets in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, the paper applies his analysis to the formation of global markets in the late twentieth century. The paper argues that Polanyi's work needs to be engendered in order to take into consideration women's and men's different links to the market and to understand the construction of "economic man" gone global. The paper also addresses the feminization of the labor force across the globe and the possible effects on women's behavior and on the construction of "economic woman." The concluding section discusses alternative interpretations of this behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an ideological tug-of-war over women's place in Afghan society from the early years of the twentieth century between the modernizing tendencies of its urban-based elite and the forces of conservatism represented by the Islamiculema(religious leaders). Following the US-led invasion and the international donor community's subsequent efforts to “develop” the country, this struggle has acquired a new lease of life. Current debates reproduce the now familiar divide between cultural values and universal rights that characterizes the wider feminist literature. While Afghan voices have been part of this debate, they tend to be drawn from more educated and politicized groups. This paper uses the narratives of a small group of Afghan women from poorer urban households to explore how they evaluate the changes that have taken place in Afghan society and where their views position them in the ongoing debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reexamines the linkages between women's work, agency, and well-being based on a household survey and in-depth interviews conducted in rural Tamil Nadu in 2009 and questions the prioritization of workforce participation as a path to gender equality. It emphasizes the need to unpack the nature of work performed by and available to women and its social valuation, as well as women's agency, particularly its implications for decision making around financial and nonfinancial household resources in contexts of socioeconomic change. The effects of work participation on agency are mediated by factors like age and stage in the life cycle, reproductive success, and social location – especially of caste – from which women enter the workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes children's well-being using the capability approach, with a special focus on gender differences. The two areas analyzed are the capability of senses, imagination, and thought; and the capability of play. Using data from the 2008 Multipurpose Survey on Daily Life released by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, a structural equation model is estimated in which the capabilities are defined as latent variables that are intrinsically interrelated. For each capability, a set of indicators of functionings is utilized and the effects of individual and social conversion factors – including parents’ unpaid work, their level of education, and employment status – are analyzed. The model is applied to Italian girls and boys ages 6–10 in 2008. The analysis confirms that the two capabilities are interrelated. Policies aimed at improving children's achievements in education also improve the capability of play and vice versa. Differences by gender occur in the factors’ effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender-disaggregated expenditure incidence analysis (EIA) is a tool for assessing the gender responsiveness of budgets and policies. However, to date there has been a limited take-up of gender-disaggregated EIA in policy and budget decision making. Using data from the 2007 Timor-Leste Living Standards Survey (TLLSS) and interviews and discussions with stakeholders, this paper conducts an EIA of expenditures on public schools and discusses the effectiveness of this analysis as an input into budget decision making. While gender-disaggregated EIA can assist in identifying gender gaps, its potential can only be fulfilled when combined with additional gender analysis and supported by a deep understanding of budget decision-making processes and the actors involved. The gender-disaggregated EIA of Timor- Leste's educational spending confirmed its usefulness as an indicator of inequalities in educational expenditure. However, a range of political, cultural, and technical barriers constrains the use of gender-disaggregated EIA in policy and budget decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study advances research on the structural dimension in the predominantly individual-oriented field of poverty studies by evaluating to what extent cross-national differences in population and structural characteristics can explain the differences in poverty outcomes by gender. To facilitate an approach that integrates individual and structural context dimensions, the paper takes advantage of multilevel techniques to test gender differences in the risk of being poor, entering into poverty, and exiting from poverty among seventeen European countries. The analysis covers single-adult households, drawing on data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) for the years 2007–8. The study concludes that structural effects, such as welfare state policies, labor market characteristics, level of inequality, and the level of women's empowerment in the country, seem to be more relevant than individual effects in explaining differences in the gender poverty gap among countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on survey data for 2002 and 2006, this paper investigates the determinants of credit constraints among women and men in two urban slum communities of Manila in the Philippines. The results show that women are more likely to be credit constrained than men. Rather than wealth, informal lenders seem to rely more on reputation and credit history to screen prospective borrowers, and the consequences of repayment delays or defaults are more severe for women than for men. These findings provide empirical support for women-targeted credit interventions in urban poor contexts, particularly those that enable women to build and capitalize on good credit histories. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This contribution analyzes the variations in reported life satisfaction for men and women in the United Kingdom. While average levels of life satisfaction are similar for men and women, the variations in life satisfaction are more marked for women. Analyzing the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for 1996-2007, the paper finds that hours of paid work increase life satisfaction for both men and women, while housework hours are statistically significant only for retired men and women. Childcare (for children ages 3 to 4 years) and caring for adults affect women's life satisfaction negatively but are statistically insignificant for men. Some of these differences might be explained by the fact that women and men in the sample assign differing weights to satisfaction with different life dimensions. Job satisfaction, in particular, matters much more to men than to women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the role of gender wage discrimination in household poverty rates in several European Union (EU) countries using the European Community Household Panel. In order to quantify the impact of discrimination on poverty, it proposes the construction of a counterfactual distribution of wages where discrimination against women has been removed. Using this new wage distribution, the study computes total household income and compares poverty rates in the absence of discrimination to those actually observed. The results show that, in general, discrimination against women plays a determinative role in the current levels of poverty in EU countries, although results by country show that this role differs in intensity and pattern. Further, the study finds that in EU countries the effect of discrimination on poverty risk dramatically increases for individuals in households that largely depend on working women' earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Egypt, girls' work primarily takes the form of domestic tasks, which are not considered in many studies of child labor. This paper investigates the effect of girls' work on their school attendance. It uses a modified bivariate probit approach to estimate the effect of work on schooling while allowing for the simultaneous determination of the two outcomes. It presents evidence that the substantial burden of girls' domestic work leads to lower rates of school attendance. Policies that attempt to ban the labor-force work of children will have practically no effect on girls' education in Egypt, while interventions reducing the drudgery of household labor through, for example, improved water and sanitation infrastructure, have better prospects for success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries, low and stable inflation is the focus of monetary policy. Recent empirical evidence from developing countries indicates, however, that the costs of reducing inflation are disproportionately borne by women. This paper seeks to determine whether a similar pattern is evident in nine Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Economic Development (OECD) countries, using quarterly data for 1980-2004. The study examines economy-wide and sectoral employment effects by gender by utilizing two methodologies: single equation regression and vector autoregression analysis. Results indicate that the link between monetary policy instruments (short-term interest rates) and employment in the industrial countries under investigation is weak and does not vary by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With few exceptions, the empirical literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) continues to be gender blind. This paper contributes to filling this gap by assessing the importance of gender inequality in education as a determinant of FDI. The authors estimate a standard gravity model on bilateral FDI flows that is augmented by educational variables, including different measures of gender inequality in education. The analysis covers an unprecedented number of both host and source countries of FDI, thereby reducing the risk of distorted results because of a sample selection bias. The results support the view that foreign investors are more likely to favor locations where education-related gender disparities are small. However, the discouraging effects of gender disparity on FDI are restricted to middle-income (rather than low-income) developing host countries and to investors from developed (rather than developing) countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]