Women becoming more economically empowered, says UN report

The latest report by a UN body indicates women in the world are increasingly becoming economically empowered.

The report by UN Women dubbed 'Progress of the World’s Women 2019-2020' indicates that women are increasingly having access to resources through earned income, social protection and asset ownership.

This, the report says, has triggered some shifts in the balance of power within the home, giving women greater economic security and weight in decision-making processes.

The report says the increased economic might by women is also helping them cushion their families from financial hardship.

However, the report observes that despite the progress in their economic standing, women living with a male partner still contribute less in support of family duties.

“Even in developed countries where women’s gains have been more sweeping and sustained, those who live with a male partner still generally contribute less than half of the family income and accumulate an even smaller share of its wealth,” says the report in part.

‘Motherhood penalties’ in the form of reduced employment rates and a pay-gap between women with and without children are a persistent problem.

The report also indicates that lone-mother families that lack income protection from a second earner, for example, face a much higher risk of poverty compared to two-parent families.

The report, however, also recognises that while overall, women’s access to economic resources has improved, the distribution of unpaid care work remains largely unequal.

Compared to men, the report says women do three times the amount of unpaid care and domestic work within families, with particularly stark inequalities in developing-country contexts, where access to time-saving infrastructure and public services is more limited.

On family, the report says women’s voice in reproductive matters like childbearing is rising. It indicates that today, there are many indications that women are increasingly able to exercise voice within their families.

“Women are exercising greater agency and voice in decisions regarding whether and when to have children, and how many. In practical terms, smaller families can be less costly to maintain, and women’s care and domestic work burden within them may be smaller,” says the report.

According to the report, declining birth rates in some regions also indicate that women and men may be having fewer children than they desire.

The report adds that couples may be limiting the number of children they have in response to economic conditions that make childrearing financially challenging or because in the absence of quality long-term care services, they also have older parents to care for.

It also says women may also be choosing to have fewer children because men still do not do their fair share of unpaid care and domestic work.

All over the world, birth rates are declining, although the pace of change varies across regions.

The report also indicates that women and men across the world are delaying marriage. It says over the past three decades, significant changes have occurred in whether, when and with whom women and men form intimate partnerships.

Delaying marriage, the report observes, has enabled women to complete their education, gain a stronger foothold in the labour market and support themselves financially.

Cohabitation according to the report is on the rise with some regions registering an increasing number of women opting out of marriage altogether.

“These decisions can arise out of necessity as much as choice when the cost of setting up a family for some couples is too high. It can also reflect women’s growing reluctance to enter into partnerships in which they are expected to take on a subordinate role,” the report says.

The report also observes that a rise in divorce rates has been one of the most visible features of family change in most regions since the 1980s.

The liberalisation of divorce laws in some developed countries the report says has led to lower rates of suicide by women, a lower incidence of reported domestic violence and fewer instances of women being murdered by their spouses.

Source: Progress of the World’s Women 2019-2020 by UN Women