Macroeconomic Policy and Employment Generation: Gender Dimensions

Abstract

This paper examines the employment of women and men at the macro level, with a particular focus on developing countries. Much of the research and policy development on gender equality in employment has been focused on micro and meso level measures to enable women to compete with men on an equal basis, including measures to improve women’s access to education and training, credit, land and other assets; and measures to reform the governance of markets to cre- ate a “level playing field” (see, for example, World Bank 2001; 2006). Such measures are important, but this paper argues that they are not sufficient. To the extent that they are successful, they will simply redistribute some jobs from men to women. This will reduce gender gaps, but not in a way that meets the United Nations objective of “full and productive employment and decent work for all”. There needs to be an expansion of the number of decent jobs, as well as an im- provement of women’s access to them. This requires supportive macroeconomic policies. The first section provides a brief discussion of global trends in labour mar- kets. The second section focuses on gender and unemployment, with particular reference to studies on countries in the Caribbean and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). The third section considers how macroeconomic policies (such as monetary and fiscal policy), which are gener- ally considered gender neutral policies, nevertheless can have gender-differen- tiated impacts. The conclusion suggests that micro and meso level polices to combat gender inequality in the labour market need to be complemented by ap- propriate expansionary macro level polices.