Conference Agenda

Due to structural inequalities, women face greater privations in their well-being than men. Measuring women´s poverty relative to men´s has not been easy due to the statistical reliance on the household as the unit of measure. This unit of analysis is not ideal due to the unequal distribution of resources within the household. The objective of the study is to construct a multidimensional poverty index (MPI), in which the unit of analysis is the individual, allowing to identify and compare the poverty of Mexican women and men. A dimension of time poverty which denotes time scarcity for leisure and self-care is included. This privation has direct and indirect effects on individuals’ well-being. The measure is constructed with the National Expenses and Income Survey (ENIGH) (2020) applied by the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). The Alkire-Foster (2011) methodology is used to estimate and compare women´s and men´s poverty in different age groups. Results show that the MPI is greater for women than men, but its significance and importance vary with age. While education is the dimension that contributes the most to the adjusted headcount ratio, time deprivation is also an important dimension, especially for women.

The focus of this research paper is to examine the relationship between gender inequality in credit access and firm productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite lagging behind other economies, evidence suggests that credit accessibility is unequally distributed across genders in this region. Given this context, it is imperative to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the impact of this issue on the productivity of firms operating in Sub-Saharan Africa. We source data from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys for 24 Sub-Saharan African economies. The study employs multilevel modelling technique to analyse the impact of firm, industry, and country-level characteristics on a firm's access to credit and performance, taking into consideration the clustered nature of these effects. The results reveal a gender disparity in credit availability for enterprises with female top managers. Further analysis indicates that firms with female participation perform significantly less efficiently than those under male leadership in terms of both total factor productivity and labour productivity. These results are confirmed by the Propensity Score Matching method, as a robustness test. These findings have significant implications in terms of policy makers’ and other stakeholders’ decisions in prioritizing gender equality in entrepreneurship by creating policies that improve credit accessibility for female-led enterprises. This can be done by simplifying the application process, providing financial management training, and creating credit facilities with lower interest rates.

In this seminal report, The Swedish Women’s Lobby analyzes the Swedish tax system from a feminist economics perspective and proposes a new tax system for a gender equal economy.

The report begins with an analysis of the distribution of resources within the public financial system in Sweden based in the context of the development of capitalism and paid/unpaid labor. We show that the progressivity within the fiscal system has decreased since the 1990s and that this has contributed to uphold the income gap between women and men, which has been at a constant 20 percent since 1995. We show how specific groups, especially single mothers, have seen a steady economic decline in the same time period due to the eroding value of important allowances.

The report is then sectioned into categories: taxes on labor, taxes on capital, taxes on housing and real estate, company taxes, and consumption taxes. In the section on labor taxes, we discuss the concepts of intensive and extensive margins toward labor market outcomes from a feminist economics perspective. We find that the concept of the extensive margin is more relevant to policy design based on existing research on women’s entrance to the labor market.

Every category and each sub-tax is analyzed from a gender budgeting and a feminist economic perspective. Who gets how much and what is the underlying rationale for the design of the specific tax. We find that there is a strong implicit gender bias within the Swedish fiscal system. Among them are: a progressive tax on labor income but not on capital income, tax cuts for the type of businesses that men are more likely to own that do not exist for the type of businesses women are more likely to own, tax cuts aimed at promoting purchases from industries particularly dominated by men, profitable salary exchange arrangements only available to high income earners of which a majority are men, tax cuts for traveling to and from work which favors driving over public transport and decreases high income earners’ tax burden, both of which benefits men more than women.

For each tax, we present policy recommendations to equalize the effect of the tax and promote economic gender equality. We propose a progressive capital income tax, an increased progressivity in labor income taxes, decreased VAT on foods, a decreased and flat tax for very small businesses, and increased and indexed housing and child allowances.

Enrolment rates of girls in India has improved over the years. This is particularly true for girls in the 6-14year age group. However, after the age of 14 enrolment rates drop drastically. According to Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), only 45% of girls aged 16-17 years are enrolled in schools. This phenomenon has been explained in the literature through three channels - household level (parental education, household income, caste etc.), school level (costs of schooling, infrastructure, access to school etc.) and child level (opportunity cost of schooling and child labor, gender, birth order etc). This paper focuses on the third channel and explores the role of unpaid domestic and care work known as Non SNA work on schooling outcomes. Unlike market work which has an evident impact on schooling, Non SNA work impacts schooling in multiple ways such as dropping out, irregular attendance, class repetition etc.

As per the Time Use Survey (TUS) 2019, young girls aged 15 years spend more than 2.5 hours a day on Non-SNA work. This increases to 4.5 hours for girls aged 19 years and 7 hours for females aged 25 years. In this backdrop, the paper looks at females in the 15-25 year age group which are the years corresponding to secondary, higher secondary and tertiary education and to identify the burden of Non SNA work. Using the TUS 2019 dataset and the UDISE+ data, the paper attempts to answer the following questions :

1. What are the mechanisms through which Non SNA work affects schooling outcomes?

2. Is there a trade off between schooling and Non SNA work?

3. Is Non-SNA work a significant deterrent to higher education?

This paper contributes to the existing literature by expanding the definition of work to include unpaid domestic work and establish a causal relationship between Non SNA work and school enrolment using an Instrumental Variable Approach. Further, the paper shall also discuss the role of State and policy in reducing the burden of Non SNA work.