UN Women’s work on women’s economic empowerment has a broad and ambitious mandate and aims to strengthen women’s economic rights and respond to pressing global needs. This independent corporate thematic evaluation was undertaken to assess the relevance, effectiveness, coherence, efficiency, and sustainability of UN Women’s contributions to women’s economic empowerment by advancing gender responsive laws, frameworks, policies, and partnerships, and proposes recommendations and insights to strengthen this area of work.

This paper proposes replacing the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Gender Inequality Index with two new gender indexes: the Global Gender Parity Index and the Women’s Empowerment Index. The proposal builds on a review of concepts of gender equality in the capability approach that underpins UNDP’s human development paradigm and the relevant international policy frameworks. It also implements current proposals for reform.

Drawing on evidence and the Luxembourg Income Study Database, this policy brief highlights the importance of child support for lone-mother families and factors that may prevent lone mothers from receiving this transfer. It makes a series of recommendations to ensure regular and adequate child support is provided.

This policy paper explores the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination faced by racially marginalized women, rooted in systemic racism, sexism, and other systems of inequality. It offers recommendations to States, international actors, and civil society organizations on ways to implement urgent reforms to improve access to services and human rights protections for women who are marginalized based upon their race, gender, and migration status.

This study highlights the laws and policies in G7 countries that impact the lives of women. It showcases the progress of 350 companies (largest 50 companies in each G7 country) against Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) indicators, underscoring the importance of WEPs as a framework in providing concrete steps to advance women’s economic empowerment in the workplace, marketplace, and community.

This paper uses harmonized collections of national labor force datasets to compare the size and shape of the paid care sector around the globe. The paper then explores the relationship between the size of the care sector and various measures of need for care, finding very little evidence of relationship. Finally, the paper explores wages and working conditions for paid care workers in a subset of countries for which data is available.

UN Women continues to argue that it is important to ensure that adopted economic stimulus and recovery package are gender-responsive. Packages must be implemented in a way that does not disproportionally and negatively impact women and girls. Policies adopted in response to the COVID-19 crisis must identify areas that macro-level policies can effectively target to address gendered impacts of the crisis. This policy tool is specifically designed to achieve this.

The MeToo movement and much other work have increased public attention on sexual harassment. Yet, many workers still await adequate protection and enjoyment of their rights. This discussion paper focuses on sexual harassment of workers in the informal economy, with a focus on farmworkers and domestic workers. The paper provides suggestions for action by governments and civil society organizations for a world of work free from sexual harassment.

Analysing data from 11 national household surveys, this research found that, while women typically earn less than men and pay more in transfer fees, the average remittance amounts they send are the same as or even greater than those of men, implying that they tend to remit a larger portion of their earnings than do men. The research also showed that migrant women are more dependent on in-person cash transfer services to send remittances.

This guidance note highlights the emerging impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on women migrant workers, focusing on the key challenges and risks they face. It makes recommendations in the context of the economic and social response and recovery packages that governments are putting forward, supported by examples of existing good practices from around the world.

This paper concerns the implications of migration within Central America for family life. Focusing on the case of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, it shows how Nicaraguan families develop strategies based on a history of informal and flexible caregiving. While these informal strategies allow families to navigate the challenges migration and family separation entail, they also contribute to continued vulnerability and reinforce the gendered burdens of caregiving within transnational families.

This report outlines the current context with respect to the problem of violence against women migrant workers. It provides information on the measures taken by Member States and activities undertaken within the UN system to address this issue and ensure the protection of migrant women’s human rights.

A two-page brief providing an overview of UN Women’s “Policies and practice guide on gender-responsive implementation of the Global Compact for Migration”.

This paper investigates how women’s right to live free from violence operates in the context of insecure immigration status. It identifies a tension between human rights and immigration control that is present in theory, policy frameworks, and migrant women’s lived experiences. It contends that this tension has led to a proliferation of rights’ statuses for migrant women who are exposed to intimate partner violence.

This paper examines case studies of returnee women migrant workers in Nepal to look specifically at the narratives emerging from the voices of women migrant workers. It aims to give voice to the subjectivities of migrant women in Nepal, unpacking their reasons for migration and their struggles to secure a livelihood in the context of globalization.

This paper looks to the impact migrant status has caring for children, how state policies support or obstruct the care of migrants’ children, how migration reshapes the meaning of “family”, and how it reconstitutes gender relationships.

UN Women’s project, “Promoting and protecting women migrant workers’ labour and human rights: Engaging with international, national human rights mechanisms to enhance accountability”, is a global project funded by the European Union (EU) and anchored nationally in three pilot countries: Mexico, Moldova, and the Philippines. This brief draws from the project’s knowledge products and provides an overview of the key situational and policy concerns for women migrant workers in each of the three pilot countries.

Based on research and lessons learned from UN Women’s EU-funded global project “Promoting and protecting women migrant workers’ labour and human rights: Engaging with international, national human rights mechanisms to enhance accountability”, which is piloted in Mexico, Moldova, and the Philippines, this Brief explores the economic and social contributions of women migrant workers to development.

Based on research and lessons learned from the joint UN Women–EU-funded global project, “Promoting and protecting women migrant workers’ labour and human rights: Engaging with international, national human rights mechanisms to enhance accountability”, which is piloted in Mexico, Moldova and the Philippines, this Brief considers the different ways that women transfer and spend remittances, and provides recommendations to better understand and maximize these remittances.