Who are the agents of change and how they can become active?

Women and men play different roles in the diverse collection of societies and economies that exist. However, due to objective barriers, women face difficulties accessing the same labour market opportunities as men.

Changing this situation is the goal of women’s economic empowerment, specifically, women having equal participation and access to resources.

There are different agents who have different tools and possibilities to influence women’s economic empowerment. Among them, there are women themselves, but also men, employers, trade unions or the state. Many economists admit that creating supportive conditions for women to enable them to become independent and active at the labour market contributes to overall economic growth and prosperity.

For that reason, empowering women economically becomes a more and more important topic on the agendas of decision- and policy-makers.

However, this requires not only a system change in policies and infrastructure, but also a change in our mindsets. Without involving men more in child and family care, a shift in the traditional family-paradigm cannot be achieved.

Moreover, every tool for women’s economic empowerment needs to be assessed individually in respect of the overall country-specific situation and policies should be introduced while considering the whole societal context.

A more complex view of the relationship between gender and the economy is analysed in the article on „Introduction to Feminist Economics“. Hereby, if you are interested to know more about the key assumptions of the feminist paradigm and find out about the roots of gender inequality, we would like to invite you to read this article for another dose of inspiration.