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The contents reflect discussions from a Pathways workshop held in May 2008 with participation also from Diane Elson, James Heinz, Sue Himmelweit, Sue Holloway, Ruth Pearson and Janet Veitch. In 2006 the World Bank coined a catchy slogan ‘Gender equality is smart economics’. Said the World Bank’s President in June 2008, “The empowerment of women is smart economics … studies show that investments in women yield large social and economic returns”. Many international aid ministries and United Nations organisations are adopting the World Bank’s argument. …

Hania Sholkamy examines the disempowering aspects of women’s work and calls for a more progressive agenda to empower work and re-position it not only as an income generating activity, but as a social role, an ideal, and political engagement. …

Why is the extent of women’s work in Bangladesh under-reported? In Bangladesh women are engaged in a variety of economic activities from homestead-based expenditure saving activities to outside paid work. However, women’s work generally remains under-reported by official statistics, especially women’s non-market homestead-based economic activities, and even tends to be overlooked by women themselves. Non-recognition of women’s economic activity leads to undervaluation of women’s economic contribution and is also seen as a reason for their lower status in society relative to men. The consequences for women are immense, especially poor women, in terms of their own self-esteem, the value accorded them by their family and community and even in terms of their identity as citizens of Bangladesh. …

The different processes associated with globalisation have led to rising rates of paid work by women often in contexts where male employment is stagnant or declining. This paper explores how women and men are dealing with this feminization of labour markets in the face of the widespread prevalence of male breadwinner ideologies and the apparent threat to male authority represented by women’s earnings. Responses have varied across the world but there appears to be a remarkable resistance to changes in the domestic division of unpaid work within the household and a continuing failure on the part of policymakers to provide support for women’s care responsibilities, despite the growing importance of their breadwinning roles. Many of the services previously provided on an unpaid basis are being transferred to the paid economy but most working women continue to bear a disproportionate burden of domestic responsibility. …

This workshop held in Delhi from 19-21 October 2008 brought together academics, activists and practitioners to discuss the experience of organisations of women workers beyond the formal economy. The workshop aimed both to document experience and to tease out strategies that have ‘worked’ for particular gains in particular circumstances. Some of the questions addressed were: what makes it possible for marginalized women workers in the informal sector to take collective action around their needs and interests; what strategies, visions and discourses do they draw on? …

This paper is meant to inform the NWRO on the link between characteristics of work, domestic violence, and personal status as a platform for addressing the gaps in policy that leave women vulnerable. This paper looks at the results of the Working Women’s Characteristics Survey (WWCS) that was carried out as part of the “Understanding Women’s Work and its Empowering Potentials in their Everyday Life” project by researchers Hania Sholkamy and Ragui Assaad. The WWCS looks empirically, for the first time in Egypt, at the relationship between labour-market participation for women and different empowerment indicators, asking whether work is empowering for women in Egypt. Assuming an inextricable link between women’s work and their private lives, the WWCS looks at engagement in different types of labour-market participation, namely formal, informal and from-home employment, in relation to various empowerment indicators that reflect on women’s access to resources, and their agency within the home and outside of it. …

Women’s participation in the workforce remains low in India. This low participation is apparently a cumulative outcome of a complex web of factors. Yet, why it continues to remain so low in the current changing economic and social environment is far from clear. Given the suggested association between paid work and women’s empowerment, higher participation rates may be desirable. …

The agenda for change is based on an alternative vision – one in which the economy is shaped for people rather than people for the economy. …

The researchers have used the Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS) of 2006 (and its predecessors) to foster both qualitative and quantitative studies on various aspects of gender and work in Egypt, as well as building research capacity in this area. …

The conditional cash transfer (CCT) pilot in the Cairene slum of Ain es Sira started in May 2009 and was scheduled to last for two years. The Social Research Center (SRC) of the American University in Cairo provided technical assistance to the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity (MOSS) in designing, implementing and evaluating this pilot to inform national social policy decisions. Within the pilot, 380 most vulnerable families with children were registered to participate, receiving monthly cash payments in exchange for fulfilling child development goals related to health and education. …

The collection of essays in the book aims to capture the variety of policies, discourses, debates and interventions that have influenced the lives of women in South Asia and to identify those that have led to greater empowerment of women. …

This pack of 20 vibrantly drawn cards provides a clear and very accessible entry into some of Pathways’ research findings and recommendations. The cards feature research from Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Ghana, Pakistan, Palestine, and Sierra Leone, across the four Pathways themes of: conceptualising empowerment, empowering work, building constituencies and changing narratives of sexuality.  …

This research project explored how paid work can change women’s lives in terms of dealing with the public sphere and institutions, accessing services, commodities, resources, information, reducing isolation, increasing negotiation/bargaining skills, ability to protect themselves, etc. The context under which work can be empowering and the kinds of work that change lives was compared through comparisons of similar research undertaken by the West Africa and Middle East Pathways regional hubs in Ghana and Egypt. …

This Eldis Resource Guide features a collection of documents introducing some of the research on work (both paid and unpaid) undertaken by Pathways of Women’s Empowerment. The collection provides suggestions on how decision-makers can support mechanisms for improving women’s rights as workers, enhance their incomes and working conditions, and strengthen their ability to press for change. …

On International Women’s Day Rosalind Eyben reflects on the Institute of Development Studies’ progress in raising the profile of care in development. Feminist scholar-activists at IDS have been working with global and national networks as part of a collective effort to have care recognised and integrated into development policies and programmes. International Women’s Day is a good moment to take stock of how they are doing. …