TRANSFORMING GENDER NORMS FOR WOMEN’S ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND EMPOWERMENT

Female business ownership varied across and within regions, from lows of 18% in South Asia and 19% in the Middle East and North Africa, to highs of 47% in East Asia and the Pacific and 50% in Latin America and the Caribbean. [...] For example, Sida (2015) emphasises the importance of ‘equal access to and control over critical economic resources and opportunities, and the elimination of structural gender inequalities in the labour market, including a better sharing of unpaid care work.’ BMGF (2023) argues for investment in three critical areas: strengthening women’s access to income and assets, control of and benefit from ec. [...] Gender norms uphold patriarchy, a system of gendered power relations that supports particular forms of male domination and wider subjugation, usually to the disadvantage of women and girls and of men and boys who do not conform to dominant norms of masculinity in their culture (Harper et al., 2020). [...] Key concepts and definitions 17 Examples of individual-level change include: • cognitive change: recognition of the benefits of the new norms • emotional identification with the new norm and behaviour • changes in perceptions of the values and behaviours of others in a reference group • empowerment or personal transformation that encourages people to behave in a new way, to be a ‘norm entrepreneur. [...] Countries in the Middle East and North Africa tend to be characterised by the very low participation of men in unpaid care work, and a correspondingly low participation rate of women in the paid workforce.7 Meanwhile, the gender gap in unpaid care work is greatest in South Asia, where women spent almost nine times as much time as men on unpaid care work in Pakistan (2007) and India (1998–1999) (Ch.